Final Hsing-I class last night, we had a good time with a variety of exercises.
Bruce talked a bit about the training of the elements. He said to use Metal to develop Yi and concentration. Then use Water to build up your sensations to everything outside of you, as well as inside. Wood is the element you use once you find the target, by growing, penetrating and entering into it.
We worked on a variant of the Beng Chuan follow step punch. Instead of stomping and crushing as you complete the form, your follow step pulls in and lightly sets down as you strike. This gives it a nice lifting, drifting, floating sense. The punch is as hard as ever, but it has a nuance to it that gives it some extra umph. It's ideal for when you are smothering someone with a bunch of strikes, so you are close, then you bring in the back foot and simultaneously find a nice hole in the defense to sink this soft yet dense punch right into it. Hard to describe but hard to forget once you get hit with it!
We worked on trying to recycle Beng Chuan over and over as a defense/offense, entering their space with a flurry of blows, no emotion just an overwhelming Intention to take their space. As they block and defend, more and more gaps appear.
He showed us the idea of Rending, once you make contact, twisting, crushing and dispersing the enemy's energy. When I came at him, he would contact me, then shift his body in a subtle way that would twist my attack off angle and spoil my line of force, setting up his retaliation. Not much movement required, but it doesn't work if you are scared or intimidated.
The biggest focus of the night was the Beng Chuan turn around, which is composed of a 180 turn, split in a crouched stance, then a series of Beng Chuans and forward and back cross-steps while punching. The point is to end up going the opposite direction, but it takes quite a bit of shuffling around. The turn is simple, just pivot your feet to turn 180. Then you drill up with hand and foot, take a big step and split, ending up in a forward weighted crouching stance. This is Wildcat Climbs the Tree. We worked on this for a while as a skill for chasing and running down your opponent. This step is big, long and final, your whole body weight comes into their body, hip, knee, ankle or foot as you do a big Pi Chuan. He showed us how to charge and demolish someone as they back up and try to escape. No matter how fast I ran backwards, he was all over me in a flash, he was moving really fast for a large man...
This move is followed by a series of forward and backward Beng Chuans. He showed multiple different ways of doing the turn around, and that made it pretty hard to settle on one specific way, but in the end he showed us the most regular form of doing it, which is the one we've been doing in class, and we'll stick to that.
We worked a bit on Ma Xing, the Horse Form from the 12 Animal Forms. He showed us three different ways of doing it, the first two use the zig zag stepping of Pao Chuan. One is to strike with both fists forward, elbows down as if horse hooves are chopping into the enemy. The second is the same but both hands drill out forward in upside down Tzuan Chuan strikes, he said this is like holding the reins of a horse and controlling it with the twisting of your arms. The third version is done in a straight line, striking with a front punch and high block with the back hand. This is the horse jumping over a ditch.
Spiritual martial arts was another topic of the night. He said that he hasn't really taught that, and is not sure if there will ever be a chance to. For him, this topic is like taking martial arts and combining it with Taoist meditation, so it's at least twice as hard as regular martial arts. Take all the body training, fighting, sparring, challenge matches, street fighting, etc of martial arts and then add all the hours of meditation that pursuing spirituality requires. It's not for most people, regular martial arts is hard enough. But he did feel that many principles from this can be used by us average folks who aren't pursuing it full time.
One aspect of spiritual martial arts is that of doing good by not hurting people more than they need hurting. He said it's possible to knock sense into someone, to slay the demon inside them without killing them. We started this a little by punching each other with a sense of positive, good feeling and see if we can transfer that with our strike. I couldn't but it's certainly an interesting idea!
He talked a lot about the energies of Fear and Anger as they relate to Water and Wood. Once you get the body skill of Hsing-I you can start to use the forms to draw out emotions within your body and expose them to the light of day. Then in combat your emotions arise and again, you identify them and expose them to the light. What happens then is that they naturally complete their cycle, run out of energy and evaporate. Emotions trapped and buried eventually burst out with a huge explosion, so to prevent that use Hsing-I to let them rise to the outside and return to the field, much as a bubble rises to the top of the ocean and pops at the surface, rejoining it's natural state.
We finished by practicing as a group, and he led us through some lines of Tzuan Chuan and Beng Chuan.
He gave a lecture at the end about how Liu Hung Chieh would practice the Five Elements of Hsing-I every single day of his life, Ba Gua or Tai Chi came second. He felt that Hsing-I could keep your chi strong and keep your movements robust throughout your life.
That's it for Hsing-I stay tuned for Ba Gua Shun Shi Zhang training this weekend!
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