Seminar Day 2

This turned out to be a real whirlwind tour......just like bagua is suppose to be..........everyday was packed with practice, meeting up with old students and friends, and lots of note taking. But I will tell it one day at a time!  Thursday morning began with an early breakfast  at May's Coffee Shop in the Japantown Mall..........it use to be a Japanese owned Coffee shop........now it's owned by some people from China...........and serves Hawaiian-Chinese Japanese American breakfast and lunch.   I had the French Toast and Ham Combination Breakfast, and I got Master Yang a Denver Omelet.....both delicious!  Master Yang also spent time swapping English and Chinese with Glenn as they both pulled out their English-Chinese phrase books............he approaches his English like bagua....start with basics and build short phrases......I would hear him during the day repeating words and asking their meaning......First, session at the YMCA was with Kumiko, he started her off with Kun Lun Fan 3...............this form has many hand exchanges and uses the fan in the left hand.....not easy to do because we are using a right handed fan in the left hand.  The original Fan of Dong Hai Chuan and the Emperor Qianlong was able to swing open from both sides....unfortunately no one makes a fan of that type now.  So the movements have to be modified so you can open it with the other hand.......it's the opposite movement with the opposite hand!  He would stress over and over during the 5 days that form means nothing without intention.....you must know how the movement is used so you can express it's intent.....and you must focus your mind on where the attack is going and then figure out the rhythm of each movement.........it may start slow and end fast. He said too many people perform the fan without any flavor....everything is slow and not applicable................the fan, and Master Zhao has said this before, it is practiced  for the purpose of developing the use of your Dan Tian.....it moves and the fan follows. The fan is a tool to help you develop your neigung not just something to look good doing!!  When Glenn and I were in China in 2007........Master Yang demonstrated the use of the Dan Tian to throw some one......Glenn placed his hand on Master Yang's Dan Tian........and Glenn was pushed out by Master Yang merely moving his Dan Tian back and forth.....you could feel a small baseball size muscle at the spot of his Dan Tian!  I can do this too but I have yet to be able to concentrate it into such a small area.  Master Yang said that the fan should sound crisp and you should not use your hand to open the fan.  The fan set is cool...but you would be good to be ambidextrous!  After Kumiko's lesson, Jan came in to have her individual Bagua Form corrected.  Originally, it was a form that Master Zhao taught the Beijing Wushu Team.....it contains the basics of Laobazhang(eight mother palms) and Yaosheng Zhang(Swimming Dragon Palm)........Master Yang had never learned the form.  His comment was that the Beijing Team may have eschewed a few movements to make it faster.....but it had lost some of its applications in the process........which he proceeded to add back in and explain their usage.  He said that too many contemporary wushu players think that the traditional wushu is very simple and not fancy enough......he said that is not true at all it's just that you have not yet seen any good traditional wushu!!  When he demonstrated the form with the correct rhythm and intent it looked as good as any Wushu Bagua..........and actually better as the usage of the movements were correct....in bagua a change of a few inches  or the incorrect position of a palm can determine whether the movement can be used or not.  After their lesson, it was off to San Francisco City College main campus.......where he gave a lecture on Bagua.  He discussed it's history , techniques, and theory.  Then we went out side to the front of the College and he had the students practice a Bagua Qigong Technique.  He explained that while this qigong was good for their health, it's other  benefit would be to make your Bagua more powerful, as you could use your Qi to power your technique and not rely on your physical strength and speed.  You cannot just practice softly and expect to have any power either........the standing  meditation ( minimum of 3 minutes per circulation...and 9 repetitions total=30 minutes!!) develops the Core and the intention practice helps you to direct the Qi.  Then he gave a short demonstration of how Bagua is used......Glenn attacked and he threw him around!!  That was just the morning!

Then we took a break and stopped in the Richmond District, to have lunch with some of my students at the Prince Cafe on 18th and Geary Blvd.  Master Yang said the Cafe reminded him of Beijing...........from the inside it looks just like a restaurant in China with a plasma TV showing Chinese programming, and everyone is speaking Chinese!  The kool thing was that this was Happy Hour....everything is $2.88 to $3.99 on the menu........good and cheap!  It was a brief rest then back to the YMCA for more seminars.  Corey came in to work on Bagua Sword...........he is one of my best students at weapons, and so this should be a piece of cake.  Lol, no way the Bagua Sword form uses a lot of body turning and hand switching......after 4-5 moves your mind turns to mush!!  He said this was a characteristic of bagua.....you use the weapon in a way no one has ever seen!  This was a tough lesson..he then also gave some more instruction on the

Fan....which I began to see that many of the same movements were used but with an entirely different weapon and adapted to take advantage of each weapons characteristics.  In the evening our next session was with my Chinatown YMCA Class.......yes it's still being used......we were reviewing the Kun Lan Fan 2 Set..........which we just finished about 2 weeks ago......overall he said they did a great job....buuuut still needed some corrections. Thanks goes to Jason for working hard with the students to get the set ready.  Everyone's hard work proved to be well worth the effort....Master Yang was quite pleased!!  OK gotta go for now.....peace!