(Photo (c) Michael Jang)
As I've blogged lots recently, I'll teach a One-Time-Only special topic in my yearly Seattle summer seminar this year, June 15/16. Info pinned on top of this blog (cattange.typepad.com). Tai Chi sword is not so often taught. But this event will be a very unusual orientation on the subject, even for this backwater topic.
The first question should always be why. Why bother with Tai Chi sword at all. It's often justified as one or more of the following:
- Cultural artifact/heritage thing
- Some sort of residual "analogical" combative training value
- Aesthetics/dance performance
- Light exercise
All of those are totally valid answers to why! It's just that none of them are my answer.
- I love Tai Chi as a cultural artifact. But there are plenty of people will and able to teach all of Tai Chi, not only sword but lots of other weapons, drills, 2-man sets, meditations, and whatnot, on request.
- There are a number of authors, teachers and specialists who go deeply into the combative aspects and (supposed) "functional" value of the techniques, and how maybe they can be transferred over to more practical tools and applications. Check for those books on Amazon.com.
- Yes, it can look good when performed by a real master (a master of both the sword's surface AND depth!) like Ben Lo. But I'll never have that stylistic cinematic panache like him and not even trying for it. That applies to most students of Tai Chi sword.
- Any practice, including simple cheap jump rope, is fine if you seek light calisthenic benefits, no need for all this hassle.
Those things while great don't move me at all. As I've written many times, I teach one thing and one thing only - the internal energy, its cultivation, experience and deployment. I would not push this at all if it didn't have this amazing property.
From that standpoint, it's actually very surprising how great the Tai Chi sword is. I mean, ZMQ Tai Chi sword could be just the stuff above. I wasn't really expecting it to be the key to nei gong when I first learned it. But the form itself quickly and powerfully skooled me otherwise.
It's just that, once certain internal "keys" of how to engage with it have been taught to you, it's like a curtain rising or a light flipped on in a dark room. Your interest becomes something totally different from those usual 4 motivations.
There's another type of audience interested in this: people who just love stuff. Material things. Again I'm not throwing shade on them, it's fine, that's just how some people are built, to geek out on equipment, sword as object: what style, how long, when made, what materials, what provenance, etc. Collector's mindset. Ever since I read about how Musashi killed his most ferocious dueling opponent with a fricking boat oar, I've left that behind. There won't be any of that in my event, except if you have a decent instrument, "fit for purpose" is all you need, you'll get faster results. No broomsticks please.
Key thing is I'll go through the sequence as far as we can, and probably jump to the most important stuff out of sequence - and I'll be giving out the internal configurations (of mind and energy) that parallel the external dynamics. So, the internal dynamics that are rarely if ever mentioned explicity, drowned out as they are in the rush to those 4 externalities listed above.
Nor am I much of a stickler for very exacting comparisons and analysis of those physical dynamics, like "this other guy does it this other way, his hand is higher or his foot is lower on that technique". For the most part none of that matters. Once you understand and experience the internal dynamics you'll leave all that far behind in your rearview mirror.
Among other things, I'll teach how most of the sword moves have an inherent quality that allows you to radically activate your torso, soak and imbue it with this vibratory mass of elastic yet somehow substantive power, and how to project that from torso into your arms. Once we've covered that and everybody gets the 'point' in terms of this relatively easy sword activation, I'll cover how to transfer that learning and activation into your Tai Chi and other practices (like Xingyi), where its much harder to get from those other practices directly. Yet it transfers very straightforwardly once you've grokked it from the sword work. Strange yet true! If it weren't so I myself would have little interest in sword.
These internal 'pointers' are easy in a way and yet they have that character of Yang Chengfu's immortal quote: "If I don't tell you this, you'd never come to understand it in a hundred years". I'm no master at all, but I know enough to pass these things along.
Tolstoy wrote a great story The Three Hermits. It tells of a priest passing a small island on a boat. From the island he hears people doing the prayer chant "wrong" - messing up the words, sequence and cadence. Scandalized but sympathetic, he alights on the island and teach the three scruffy hermits there how to say it properly.
'You have evidently heard something about the Holy Trinity,' said he. 'But you do not pray aright. You have won my affection, godly men. I see you wish to please the Lord, but you do not know how to serve Him. That is not the way to pray; but listen to me, and I will teach you. I will teach you, not a way of my own, but the way in which God in the Holy Scriptures has commanded all men to pray to Him.'
He gets back on the boat and sails way, happy to have been helpful. After all, it's said that those who repeat the prayers sincerely and correctly come to the state of being able to walk on water. But when they've been under way a while, he sees the three hermits walking swifly over the sea towards the boat. When they get near they implore him:
'We have forgotten your teaching, servant of God. As long as we kept repeating it we remembered, but when we stopped saying it for a time, a word dropped out, and now it has all gone to pieces. We can remember nothing of it. Teach us again.'
Please don't misunderstand. First, I'm not religious (except maybe as a yogi I'm a Shivabhakta lol). Second, of course I can't walk on water or do anything else miraculous or even impressive. I'm just making the point that the externalities aren't the thing, at least not my teaching. That's all. But it's a cute story which makes that 'point' very forcefully. Tai Chi sword is the same.
Very few slots left, join us if interested.