roll the ball

Another day out at the event, worked on more aspects of Double Palm Change and Smooth Palm Change aka Wind Palm.

Worked on a lot of solo and partner drills to rotate and spiral the elbows and shoulders.

Reverse breathing while walking the circle, opening and closing the belly.

We did the "roll the ball" exercise that he likes to pair with Double Palm.

We worked on the twisting of the waist as you turn back the way you came in Double Palm. This is an extreme and intense way to bend and fold the kwa. Feels great once you get into it but it can be painful along the way.

The combat techniques today left behind all the multiple attacker stuff we'd been doing the last few days, and moved into back and neck breaking with Double Palm. He showed many, many, many different ways to capture the spine and break it with either throw, strikes, crushing locks or a bearhug.

We also spent some time invesitgating the fine art of reversing a back break, and finding a way to twist out of it. Again he showed about twenty different ways to go with it and escape, or reverse the lock and break your spine in return. These are pretty rough techniques, but they very much help one get into the spirit of the Earth Palm!

He did more of the applications for Wind Palm, battering me around from many odd angles.

The Wind Palm training we did was about trying to awaken and sensitize the back of the hands and forearms, which are usually less sensitive than the yin insides of the arms. This gives Wind Palm a very magnetic feeling, like you are feeling the air around you with your arm hairs. This makes my arms feel heavier and more mobile at the same time.

It's been a fun few days working on these two palms, each really has a distinct feel in terms of external form movement, fighting applications and also the "energy" or "vibration" or whatever it's called when you grab his arm and it changes from one trigram energy to the next. It's subtle but quite palpable.

He spoke of how Ba Gua is moving alchemy, not in a theoretical sense, but in a felt, obvious, alive sense. You can change from expansive and open Heaven Palm, to the dense, sinking, heavy feeling of Earth Palm, to the erratic, light, loose Wind Palm.

Another thing he taught was how low stances and squats are important to train not only the leg and waist strength but the inner sense of energy and intention moving through your body. Each time you move your energy up and down it helps unify and connect various aspects of your body. He mentioned Hsing-I Dragon as a great way to do this, with the jump kick, but we didn't work on it.