Hello colleagues of this incredible community, today I want to tell you about a very gratifying experience that I lived two weekends ago, precisely on a Saturday. In the school of martial arts to which I belong are organized different events on topics to practice very specific techniques of each specialty, this time it was the turn of tui shou, a basic technique of tai chi chuan combat impressive for its simplicity and the difficulty involved in its execution, it is a back and forth in defence and attack that focuses on perceiving and redirecting the opponent's energy, receiving the intention to divert it from the place of attack, of course that was the last class of the day, this training place is an hour and a half away from my house, by 3 different bus lines, so going there to make it worth the effort would take me the whole day, and what a pleasure it was, I was training for more than 6 hours straight, I was exhausted, happy, and convinced that I really enjoy martial arts.
The first class was the beginning class of the animal chi kung series, we were studying the movements of the tiger, its element, as most of us who were present also studied in the same school traditional Chinese medicine, we saw the relevant correspondences to that animal as well, so it was a master class that addressed all aspects of medical chi kung, beautiful class and very dynamic.
The movement of the tiger being related to the water element, has the particularity of the mobility of the spine in a very fluid way, I admit that if it were not for the classes of Arabic and African dances, it would have been more difficult for me to execute the movement with such ease, what ends up giving a consistent framework to this first animal is that related to the internal waters, kidneys and bladder, the associated emotion is fear and conversely the fierceness with which the tiger captures its prey, an act that is represented in the exercise. It is very therapeutic in itself, but has the added bonus of replicating the emotion and for people who find it difficult to take the initiative because of impostor syndrome for example, it is a very good exercise.
I resumed the practice in the middle of the quarantine because for the reasons that we all know the regular tai chi chuan classes I was attending were stopped at first and I had to look for alternatives, this school to which I currently belong began to offer online classes for the same reason and the price was more than accessible, so without hesitation I enrolled under the excuse of the instructorate. Not in tai chi, which is what I like the most, but since I already belonged to another school, I preferred to do something different, and by exercising only chi kung, which is very demanding physically but also very relaxed in the movements, I began to need a little more activity, a situation that led me to also enroll in Chinese boxing, known as shaolin, long and short style. That was something I always wanted to do and at the same time always postponed in my life.
The second class I did was the most physically demanding, two uninterrupted hours of Shaolin forms, the first form we saw was the last one we are learning, choy li fat, which we didn't practice in its entirety, only as far as I have learned the form.
The second was the mantis form, which we studied in the summer and reviewed it several times during the day. It is very similar to the movements of wing chun in the upper body, as legend has it that it was created by a master from the south who was training in the north and found combat difficult as his opponents were physically taller than him, so he developed grip techniques inspired by the observation of the praying mantis, to which he added movements of the monkey style for the feet to accompany these new techniques with agility.
And finally we practised the first long boxing form of Shaolin Tun da complete, like mantis, from beginning to end, they are not very long forms like those of Taichichuan but we did them almost a thousand times, if I am exaggerating but I really did not want to and could not stop doing it, I am infinitely grateful to the teacher who lent himself to guide me in the class. We were going hand in hand during the two hours we had to practice.
In the middle of the classes, since it was the first time that I approached the association because of the obvious distance issue, I was invited to share the classic Saturday snack that the colleagues do, so we had a delicious cedron tea with an apple pie twice as high as the traditional ones (my favourite, by the way) and I took the opportunity to take the classic photo of sifu-disciple with my sifu ^.^
I couldn't hide my happy face. And tiredness, but mostly happiness for being there.
Finally, the last class was the first one I named at the beginning of the post, tui shou, the class was given with different techniques for those who are practitioners of wing chun on the one hand and tai chi kung on the other hand, at the end we did a brief demonstration in couple of what we learned in the class, the technique is wonderful because it connects you with the present moment in the energy of the other, It predisposes you to the perception of the impulse and how to dominate and redirect it, the teachers also demonstrated what a competition combat with this technique would be like, which gives the sensation that it can be repeated and trained to infinity because it doesn't tire you, it is a pure perceptive swaying, beautiful wherever you look at it. In addition to the fact that each person executes it differently according to themselves and that is perceived.
I really enjoyed the whole day, I felt in a fairy tale Marcial 😁, to the point that less for the tiredness than for the joy, going back home seemed solved in the blink of an eye, it should be noted that as soon as I put my head on the pillow I slept until noon the next day, but happy to practice and personally meet all the teachers, which is the important thing!
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My Sifu with his Sifu in China 🤗
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