Doc Stier wrote::o
origami_itto wrote:I find muscle and mind confusion pays off.
Thank you. I am so advised. Damn! I never realized that?
You know I completely missed this one.
I would often presume to lecture one so learned as yourself, Sifu.
What I mean here is difficulty means progress. Staying in my comfort zone I'll never get any further, right?
So we push the boundary, work with concepts that confuse us, attempt movement that makes us feel clumsy until it feels smooth and we get it right, then we keep going till we can't get it wrong.
But along the way...
Pushing through those periods of mental and physical confusion, the bitter work, pays off and opens new realms of exploration and development.
I've been chewing a lot on this question lately, as we all should if we're presuming to teach.
We can agree that what's needed for self defense and even sport is a fairly limited range of exercises, particularly forms. Even the basic forms can be worked in a way to support tactical conflict resolution effectively.
Likewise for health, you don't need much. You can throw together a qigong set that would handle most of the health needs.
I will say this categorically and challenge any of you to prove me wrong: We are fooling ourselves if we think that the systems we practice are in any way the most efficient and practical way to prepare anyone for fighting.
Not saying they aren't effective, just saying if you want to get out there and kick as much ass as possible, you're wasting your time here, it's not what they do.
How often are any of us even fighting? Sparring? Pushing hands? Working with a partner, even? I know I don't get enough of it. I'm going to avoid a fight by any means necessary and when I can't end it as quickly as possible by whatever means are at hand up to an including ICBM.
Sparring, calisthenics, meditation, leave the Chinese in the orient.
So then what is the point, fetishization of the exotic? Cultivation of subtle energy? Perfecting the operation of the human machine? Curiosity?
I know I feel a lot like this stuff is my "realm" the way Star Wars or The Lord of The Rings or Marvel are some people's "realm" it's that special interest with an unending amount of information available to discover and discuss with others interested in the topic.
The practices themselves likewise continuously reveal more about themselves and about my own human machine and the taiji creature it's becoming.
So more forms, give em to me, if I like em I'll keep em if not I'll abandon them. More weapons, let's have em. They provide a framework for working the skills and energies cultivated in the standing and qigong, as well as conditioning of muscles and neurons that provide access to greater degrees of freedom in my movement.
So they are very practical. They are totally practical and ONLY practical, they aren't just fun.... they're so NOT fun... they're just misery... they just eat up time...
I hope the sarcasm is evident there.
We're creatures of movement. We're built to do more than stand, we do more than fight, we walk and run and jump and dance and SOAR, not just root to the ground like a tree and stay there forever.
I'm so tired of having to justify my practice, aren't you? Above all else, it's FUN, it's SATISFYING, it's rewarding in it's own right.
The flip side of the confusion is the taste of perfection that awaits on the other side. Alex writes about it in workshop notes. Those fleeting moments where it's just so smooth and silky and effortless and you're just in that zone, flowing.
But I got a little off track.
When we're talking about an individual's practice, yes I agree there comes a point in time where the actual cultivation occurs in a limited set of exercises. The others just lose their potency and therefore their point, the time is better spent elsewhere.
However, one very important part of an individual's practice is teaching. Communicating those skills to a new generation to carry it further. A collection of purpose built forms is a great help for getting there.
I mentioned this briefly earlier, but why not be loquacious.
You have forms that target specific levels of development and purpose of cultivation and introduce them to the class and guide them through the exercises in a disciplined manner. This is a stylistic pedagogy.
One approach is, "here's this exercise. Sifu told us sometimes we can do it this way, sometimes we can do it this way, sometimes we can do it this way, so yeah, why don't you guys practice"
Such a shitty class IMHO. Better like "Here is the exercise, one side does this, the other side does this, practice, switch sides, practice." Later, "Here is the exercise again, and a variation" then we can practice them with specific variations in a systematic fashion to be sure we hit each point we want to develop.
Forms are the same way, really, we can do each one in several ways and that can look like different forms, we can also take a different approach to the ideas in the form and wind up with something that looks VERY different.
Then, of course, you can have those little divergences and ornamentations and signatures.
In a way, learning a form is like reading a book with your body, and like a book our relationship to the story can change with time, and like a story there's really only a handful of plots and tropes and character archetypes.
That doesn't mean we should only read one book and consider the matter covered.
So bringing it back to the point, the different forms are like different instructional modules in modern terms. Additive learning to build upon the skills achieved in each level with the demonstration of form competence being the measurement for receiving additional blocks of instruction.
This isn't just an a priori natural phenomenon, it's a systematically constructed curriculum designed to help bring a student from 0 to Hero in no time flat. Your Mileage May Vary. (YMMV)