2017 In Summary

I didn't blog much in 2017 -  just too much going on - but it wasn't because I wasn't training (on the contrary, training took precedence over writing).

I can't pack all of the year's experiences into one post so instead I'll do my best to summarize what I worked on and some of the highlights from the year.

Wu-Style Training

Last winter and spring, I learned the Wu 45 Form as a follow up to the Wu 13 Form I learned the previous fall (described here).

Sifu Amin Wu spent two months in the summer visiting Beijing and during that time I practiced the form and prepared to participate in a group competition with some other students from the school. At the end of the summer, Sifu Wu helped the group polish the form and we won for both the 45 Form and best group overall.

In the fall, Sifu Wu taught a class on refining the Wu 45 Form, which clarified a number of details in the form for me. She also taught a Wu 13 Form class at Google that helped me improve many of the fundamental Wu-style moves.

I'm still not as comfortable with Wu-style as I am with Yang-style but recently I've experienced having the form flow, so that's progress. This year, I'll continue to work on improving the 45 Form.

Wu 45 Group Competition Medal

Yang-Style Training

For Yang-style, in 2017 I focused on improving the 32 Form. In the winter and spring, I took Sifu Wu's Tai Chi Flow (Yang-style fundamentals) and Yang 24 Form classes. While these classes are not directly the 32 Form, they form the basis of many of the moves in the 32 Form and helped me to improve my form.

In the spring, Sifu Wu gave a 2-day workshop on Refinement and Applications of the 24 Form, which was fantastic - having 2 days of focused instruction on the advanced parts of the form gave me the opportunity to pick up a lot of details that I hadn't seen before (particularly the applications).

In the fall, Sifu Wu taught a 32 Form class, which was great opportunity for me to understand the form deeper now that I've been practicing it for almost 2 years - it was certainly a much different experience than when I learned the form in the winter/spring of 2016.

With Yang-style, over the last year the movements of my upper and lower body have become more coordinated and flow a lot better, which makes doing the Yang-style forms a lot of fun and I particularly enjoy the 32 Form now. I've also been working on stretching to increase my flexibility so that I can lower my stance - progress is slow but I have made improvements.

This year, I'll learn the 48 Form and, once I've learned enough of it, I'll stop practicing the 32 Form on a regular basis. I'm going to miss the 32 Form, I've really came to enjoy it, but I've been told that the 48 Form is even more fun.

2017 Amin Wu Spring Workshop

I Liq Chuan

Between Yang-style and Wu-style training, it's been difficult to find time to train I Liq Chuan as much as I'd like to, particularly solo-training. Still, I've been able to meet up with my ILC training partners fairly regularly and to continue my Student Level 4 training with them and by attending workshops with both Ashe and Katya Shestakova. In December, Sifu Chin came to Oakland for a workshop and I successfully graded Student Level 4.

This year I will start training Student Level 5 (fixed-step spinning hands). I'm not sure how well that will go, trying to train both Tai Chi and ILC. I've been able to manage it so far but push hands and spinning hands training emphasize different things, so I'm just going to have to see how things work out.

ILC Student Level 4 Sash

Getting Serious about I Liq Chuan

In mid-February, I added practicing the first five ILC basic exercises to my morning Taiji practice. Up to that point, my only ILC practice was in our Monday class and, while I had made some progress, much of my improvement in ILC had come via the work I had done in Taiji, both in the form and the four energy pattern (i.e. push hands).

The current training system for ILC is relatively new and still being refined and I had been hesitant to add the ILC basic exercises to my routine because I wasn't sure that I wanted to get up a half hour earlier every day to practice something that might not be of any benefit, particularly when I could spend that time practicing Taiji, which I knew would give me benefit. In the end, I decided to give it a try for a couple of months and then evaluate my progress and their utility.

The first couple of weeks of practice sessions were pretty rough. I really didn't know what I was doing so practice was both frustrating, because I couldn't do the exercises well, and boring, because it was just a repetition of the same thing over and over (and over ...).  When I started, I focused primarily on absorb/project and, over the last several weeks, have been working my way thorough the exercises of the horizontal plane.  Working through the exercises raised a lot of questions that Mike and Keith - and Sam's video - have helped me work through. I have improved, albeit slowly, and actually come to find practice more interesting.

At this point, I can't say that practicing the first five basic exercises has actually improved my push-hands or spinning-hands ability. Still, it was practicing these exercises that gave me the insights into the 'wrecking ball', which has noticeably improved my Taiji and, as I've started focusing on the frontal plane, I have gotten some insights on the four energy pattern. With this in mind, I have decided to continue my morning practice of the exercises and expand them over time to include the first ten basic exercises. In November, I plan to take the ILC student level 1 test at which point I will revisit the utility of daily ILC practice. For the curious, I have laid out a schedule of practice leading up to the test and added it as a page on this site.

The Wrecking Ball

While practicing ILC recently, I stumbled across a new insight. It started while I was in the ILC forward stance - front foot turned in slightly (5 degrees) and back foot turned out moderately (40 degrees) - very similar to a Taiji archer's stance.

I was practicing shifting my weight back and forth while keeping my balance (center of mass) between the center of my feet. I was shifting pretty much through the full range of motion such that at one extreme most of my weight was on my front foot and then gradually shifting back until most of my weight was on my back foot. As I was doing this, I was keeping my upper body square to the front and, after a while, I started to feel a small internal twisting toward my back leg as moved back that let off as I moved forward.

After feeling this for a while, I started to twist my waist in sync with this internal twisting - all the while keeping my leg motions exactly the same - so that as I shifted backward, I followed the internal twist by twisting to the back leg and as I shifted forward, I followed the internal twist by twisting to the front leg.

The important point was that the twisting of my waist was not being driven by my legs, which is the way I have always tried to twist my waist. The twisting of my waist was actually independent of my leg motion - it was just a matter of opening the hip I was shifting away from while closing the hip I was shifting towards. It gave the most peculiar sensation, as though my stomach was a pendulum swinging back and forth from leg to leg although, as I've played around with this movement, sometimes it feels more like a wrecking ball than a pendulum.

Not this is anything new - early in the beginning Taiji class at TTOPA they teach an exercise in 'merging twisting and shifting' that emphasizes this exact point and the Taiji classics speak about 'loosening your waist to drive all movement' - but it's the first time its ever clicked with me such that I've gotten a real taste of what's going on.

I've been playing around with this technique when practicing ILC and Taiji and it  makes a difference. In the Taiji slow form, I haven't been able to apply it to all of the movements but it has changed how I do a number of them where twisting and shifting dominate - it's been particularly noticeable with cloud hands and I now sometimes feel like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine when doing it - I'm probably going to need to tone that down a bit but, for now, it's a lot of fun.