I am still thinking about how conceived notions can really mess with your mind. This is because I finished re-teaching myself the Fan Form yesterday, and I got stuck at the very end for quite some time*. As I mentioned yesterday, it involved a toss of the fan, and I kept ending up with the fan facing the wrong way. It was frustrating the hell out of me because no matter how many times I watched that two seconds, I could not figure out what I was doing wrong.
I looked at the feet, the fan, and the waist. I looked at the left hand (the hand that was holding the fan) and then the right hand. And I still kept fucking it up. I was starting to question my sanity. I followed along, and even though I was doing what the teacher was doing, the fan kept ending up the facing wrrong way.
It wasn’t until I looked really carefully at the right hand (the catching hand) that I realized what I was doing wrong. The teacher had her right hand inversed so she was catching the fan ‘backwards’. It hadn’t occurred to me that this might be the case because that’s just not something we normally do in Taiji. I should have at least thought of it because there is another place a few movements earlier where she reversed her hand holding the fan. It was in a movement that is pretty much the Snake Creeping Downward, but with a fan.
Side note: It’s exciting to me when I recognize postures from the Solo Form in other forms. Especially when I don’t need any prompting in order to do so. To be fair, this was not a hard one to recognize because Squatting Single Whip is pretty iconic. If youv’e done any Taiji, you’ll recognize it. In fact, it’s the one I mentioned two posts ago that teachers like to do when they’re aiming on being showy/flashy. Not to say the posture in and of itself is flashy or showy, but that it’s one that can easily be made flashy/showy with little effort.
When I saw what the teacher in the video was doing, I mentally smacked myself on the forehead. I had looked at everything but the relevant hand–which was a great metaphor for missing the important things in life. Even when I looked at her right hand, I was watching the fan and not the hand. It’s a good lesson in looking at everything and not having any preconceived notions as to what is important and what isn’t.
I have included another Fan Form above. It’s interesting to me to watch all the different Fan Forms because while they have similarities, it’s the differences that make them interesting. The Fan Form I do is a bespoke one that my teacher’s teacher’s (other) student created–and my teacher’s teacher has given it his blessing.
I taught it to myself after my medical crisis (I think. Or just before. Either way, I had to teach it to myself after my medical crisis), and I thought I did a good job. A few weeks ago, when I decided to teach myself the left side of the Fan Form, I reached a part that was a little hazy in my brain. One of the things to look out for when practicing a martial art (or anything, really) is how you can get lax with the form over time.
In addition, my brain has been scrambled because of my medical crisis. I am fortunate that I regained almost all of my former abilities within three months of the ordeal. Within a year, I would say that I was as close to 100% as I was going to get. I was so immensely lucky–and I don’t take that lightly.
However. One of the things that’s wrong with my brain is that my memory is shit now. I used to have a steel trap of a memory. If I met someone once, I would remember their name forever more. I used to work in a department of 500 people and had to sign in people for training several times a month. In my years of doing that work, I only forgot two people’s names.
After my two cardiac arrests and stroke, my memory went in the shitter. I am ok with names, still, but…let’s put it this way. In the first months after I left the hospital, I could not think of certain words as I was writing or talking. After mentally fumbling around,I could retrieve the word or one that was close enough. I was unhappy about it because words were my thing, but there wasn’t anything I could da bout it.
I also couldn’t do simple math in my mind. This was something I could do before. I was quite good at math, actually, though it was not something I had any particular fondness for. I could not add or subtract, which was distressing. Fortunately, that has mostly come back. My memory for names is fine, but my memory for dates and times? Still shit.
In a weird way, the fact that my head took such a knocking made me more relaxed about the mistakes I made. I used to be a perfectionist, and while I still self-flagellated when I made a mistake, I got over it much more quickly than I did in the past.
So when I went back to the Fan Form videos in order to see what I was fudging, I wasn’t that upset to find out that I had forgotten whole chunks of the form. The first half was pretty decent except for a few tweaks here and there. It was in the second half where things got wobbly. And it was at the very end where I lost whole chunks of movements.
I’m pretty pleased with it right now. My impulse is to chalk it up in the done counter and move on. However, I want to make sure I don’t forget it again, so I’m going to give it a week to make sure it sticks. That’s all for now. More tomorrow.
*Meaning ten to fifteen minutes, but it felt like days.