Friday, March 9, 2007

Twisting and Turning

My right knee has been hurting. I came up with all kinds of reasons for it:

  • Doing Tenkong Fanyao only on one side

  • Trying to lock my knees doing Gongbu

  • High heel shoes

  • Slippery winter sidewalk

  • Old age

  • etc...

I think I just figured the true reason out yesterday during the class. It's that move that you stand on the right leg - lifting your left leg - and strike up in the air twice while turning left with your right leg... [Illustration to come when I get home...]



I think I twisted my right knee trying to turn...

How should I correct this? Or do I just keep doing it and my knee will get stronger?

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Leg Sweep!

I'm about to do the leg sweep, and I'm finding it intimidating. Must get over the mental block. Also, I find it frustrating being at the end of the line during the basic moves because people accumulate necessarily, and eliminate space available to train. That's a good lesson for paying attention when we start!

On another note, I gave the baby turtles a new toy-- it's a hollow floating log! They totally love it.
I also got them some plants, but I won't install them till I receive the big rocks for the bottom to anchor them in. Yay Beautiful New Temple!

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

How do you start Erluquan?

Last week Shifu corrected how I started Erluquan. You know - that move right at the beginning after you swing your right arm to the side and swing it back to the front as if you're hitting somebody's throat while doing kind of side Gongbu.

So I think Shifu told me to do this....



...because he told me to do the move like what we do at the end of Yiluqan where you hold your two palms up while doing the side Gongbu - he told me to do that and then chamber my left hand and flip my right hand. So the end result is the picture above.

But now I'm not sure that I understood him correctly because I looked at everybody else doing the form today. They all did this...



I think I'm going to keep doing the Fig. 1 and I'll be different... :) But how were you taught to do this particular move?

(I'm stealing Ellen's idea doing the stick figures. I'm too lazy to draw faces though so I'm drawing them from the back...)

Sarah and Jasmine

Learned two new names from two pretty ladies today.

Sarah is the very tall skinny girl with dark hair who has been training for a while and who can kick very very high. Esther and I stretched her today.

And Jasmine or Heng Zu (or something like that) is the dark skin, very pretty, level 2 student who has been training with us since after Shifu's birthday party. She always pulls her straight hair back while training.

*Correction*
Her name is spelled YASMIN.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Meet Ra!

After class on Saturday, Ji introduced me to Ra. He is of Persian descent, he has short dark hair and has interesting tattoos on his forearms and neck, and he painted the westernmost (golden) dragon column at the new temple. His name means "sun."

Also, on Saturday, I got to work on my little bit of erluquan with Tiao. It is good having her chi back at Temple!

Amituofo!