I am still pushing forward with the Double Fan Form, and it is still kicking my ass. I wrote about it a few days ago in this post. I mean, I’ve written about it before, but that was the latest time I’ve written about it.
I was naive and a bit cocky when I started teaching myself the form. As I said in yesterday’s post, I’m used to learning forms at a fast pace. Even the Saber Form, which I did not get at all, I was at least learning the postures pretty easily–until the end of the fourth (of six) rows. That’s where there is the most difficult movement, and my teacher quit teaching the form to me at that point. In part because I got into a minor car accident and needed to take a break from it, but moreso because she did not feel comfortable with that posture/movement. She didn’t tell me that until much later.
My teacher does not like the weapons. I didn’t realize that until much later because, of course, she isn’t going to tell me that. I found out when she was teaching me the Double Saber Form. We made it roughly halfway through and then the pandemic hit (I think that’s the timeline). She sent out a video of her teacher doing the Double Saber Form. I asked if I could teach myself the rest, and she immediately said I could.
I ask her because I feel it’s respectful to her as my teacher. We are also friends, but it just feels right to me. She always says yes and is happy that I am expanding my knowledge on my own. She’s thrilled that I am getting even more into weapons, though it’s not her first love. Or her tenth, I think. I get the feeling that she only does them because her teacher insists on it. And maybe because she realized that it’s a part of the martial art(s).
I know she really respects her teacher, so it’s probably in large part because he wants her to learn the weapons. She’s talked to him about me teaching myself various weapons, and he told her that if I ever wanted to go to his classes, he would be more than happy to have me. He’s a huge weapon freak, too. And he’s very excited that I’m teaching myself the Double Fan Form.
I have to say, when I look back at my bumpy road to where I am now, I would never have dreamed that I would fall in love with the weapons like that. And after my struggles with the saber (my second weapon form learned), I was humbled.
Now, I marvel at how eager I am to tackle a new weapon form. I have learned (in order if I remember correctly): Sword Form; Saber Form; Cane Form, Wu-Li Dancing Sword Form; four rows of the Karambit Form (not Taiji); staff/spear drills; Double Saber Form; Fan Form; Cane Form with the saber; Swimming Dragon Form. Hm. I can’t really count the Karambit Form, but I will learn the whole thing one day. I’m also learnig the Double Fan Form, of course (the point of this post). I am messing with the Double Swords, but cant’ actually find an official form to teach myself. ,I may have to come up with one. And I’m messing with a Karambit/Fan Form, too.
I’m also learning how to do active stepping in Bagua (which is like walking in mud). Right now, I’m just walking the circle, but at some point, I’ll be doing the Swimming Dragon Form with active steps.
Then, of course, I will start doing what I wanted to learn Bagua to do in the first place: Swimming Dragon From with Deerhorn Knives. I love the Deerhorn Knives ever since my teacher put a pair into my hands. The second she did, I knew I wanted them into my life. I have used them to walk the circles and do the 8 basic positions (both ways), but that’s it. And, yes, they are based on actual deer antlers.
To be honest, I thought I would, well, not breeze through the Double Fan Form, but make steady progress. Wait. I’m doing that, even if it’s not as fast as other forms have been. Then what is my actual frustartion? It’s that I am not clicking with it. Yes, I’m slowly learning the postures, but it doesn’t feel quite right.
When I learned the Sword Form, everything just flowed beautifully. Oh, by the way, the video I included above is Master T.T. Liang doing his Double Saber Form. He is a master in my lineage (one of my teacher’s teacher’s teachers). This is not the exact Double Saber Form I learned, but it’s the root of it.
You can see that the left hand and the right hand do mostly the same thing, but mirroring. And if one hand is doing something differently than the other, it’s usually one hand not moving and the other doing the movement.
With the Double Fan Form, you have each hand doing something differently many times throughout the form. There are times when they mirror each other, yes, but there are other times when they are doing completely different things. And, to be fair, they are movements I do in the Fan Form as well ,but this time, with a fan in each hand.
Interesting note: I watch three different videos of two different women. One of them does the form from the back and the front in the same video (obviously, not doing them at the same time, but they are side-by-side). I watch that video at half-speed so I can see every detail. She also does one from the front at normal speed. I watch that at .75 speed. Then, there’s the other woman who does it smoothly from the front (the other woman does it posture by posture), and I watch that at normal speed.
I need all that because it’s so fucking hard. I will watch the first woman’s first video and then the second video. I watch both, back and forth, several times. When I have a decent grasp on the posture, I watch the third video to smooth things out.
It was so validating when my teacher said, unprompted, that it was really hard. I had thought maybe I was just fucking things up because of my brain issues. Watching the videos, I thought it was fairly easy. Well, not easy, but that I would be able to pick it up fairly quickly. That has not been the case.
One thing I have to tell myself is not to overcomplicate things. I have a tendency to do that, and in Taiji, you want to do things as easy and simple as possible. That’s all for now.