Thursday

Often, the obsession for being fair and objective under all circumstances transforms our mind into a tribunal. We want tangible proofs and objective evidence to believe in what we already know. Unfortunately, intuition is not objective and offers no proofs. It travels on tracks that are much too fast to wait for the painfully slow speed at which logical analysis moves. Rational understanding arrives at the finish line hours later (if it arrives at all), only to confirm what intuition has already revealed to us. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

Today's FoD is the Dance Of Life. Yesterday's was Bung Bo Kuen.

Thursday evening kung fu. While waiting for class to begin, I repped Dance Of Life.

After some hand strike drills, we did some sideways horse stance walking (twisting alternate directions into scissor stance). Then some stationary horse stance- folding all the way to the ground in scissors and back up again. I didn't do so well at that one. I got about to knee level, and then just had to drop the rest of the way and land on my butt. Had to use a hand to get myself back up the first time.... although after that, I managed to get myself up off the ground.

Kick drill- inside crescent, outside crescent, front, back, side, shovel, hook, roundhouse. Nemesis led the kick drill today.

Sticky hands. I worked with Nemesis. He was muscling some, and I had to either back up (out of my range, although of course still well within his), or endure him pressing my own wrist back against my own chest. I finally backed up and started walking around in circles- which wasn't exactly the drill we were supposed to be doing, but in that context, I could deal with him better.

Five Animals. RM knows the whole form now, and has the movements down pretty well, but he is stiff as a board. The concept of flow has no meaning for him right now. Marcie is about 2/3 of the way through learning the gross techniques, and is still focussed on "what comes next". I was told that I am having a few random flying-elbow issues in a few spots.

SK wants to encorporate some more sweat into the class- more (and harder) cardio and conditioning. He asked what we all thought of that idea, and I said fine, although I don't want to spend *too* much class time on that sort of thing at the expense of actual technique. I also mentioned that if he makes us run stairs and stand in tabletop horse stance for an hour, it's going to blast my knees to the point where I won't be able to do much for the remainder of the class (or for the following four days or so).

Individual forms time. I went over both Spear Hand fragments, the Tai Chi long form, Cannon Fist (three times), Hurricane Hands, Long Qi (half a dozen times).