Ma-boo

Last night in L2 Mo, Sucheela, Fu and I finished xiao hong quan! Excitement! Celebration! Now we have 2 1/2 weeks to try and clean it up for testing; sort of frightening, but definitely better than finishing it up the Friday before. Time to pound pound pound away at it.

Not minimizing the awesomeness of finishing my first L2 form, but in so doing, it brought to light how bad my mabu has gotten. (The end stance of the form is a mabu.) Now I'm the first to admit that my mabu has never been super low or very flexible; and it is not exactly my favorite move so I don't go out of my way to give it extra work. But I hadn't realized the extent of the damage. The thing is, I'm building up a lot of strength in L2, but that means the muscles around my hips are reducing my flexibility. And while I have been working on stretching my hips, (which has worked wonders for the recurring hip pain, incidentally!) I guess I'm not getting at the right muscles, because I have felt my mabu getting higher and higher. There aren't a lot of mabus in L2. You get gongbus by the truckload. Fair amount of pubus, but not a lot of ye olde horse stance.

Seeing it in the mirror last night, for the first time in awhile, I was appalled. It looked even more grotesquely off because with my unfortunate long legs everything is exaggerated. (Also, it didn't help that at this point I was next to Han who can hit the floor in mabu without breaking a sweat.) So the sum of it is, the stance needs work. Lots of it. Time to overcome my hatred of mabu and focus on ways to get lower and open my hips more. I'm going to do it untill I love it. Untill when Sifu calls out mabu, I smile instead of inwardly groan. Until when I go "Huoy!" (hui, hoy, huay, how, hue, hu-ee?) at the end of xiao hong quan, it's my celebratory shout for how good my mabu has gotten.

Noise Level

Sifu always tells us to express ourselves when training. Some people do it more audibly that others, but we all definitely have times when our grunts and pants manifest into something a little louder and more distinct of not totally intelligible. I started training in total silence, but as I've opened up more, and especially since Level 2, I've really come to appreciate the extra chi from combining an explosive noise with an explosive move, and have come to notice everyone else's unique noises. This said, I try to reign it in a little, and so have been looking forward to learning the end of xiaohongquan in Level 2 and my first "official" noises.

(Ok, that's not true, there are noises in luohan duanda which I learned in Austria, but I'm still too wimpy to do that one in class.....)

The last few L2 classes I've felt I finally found the chi for xiaohongquan, that is to say, that I've been able to alternate the times I did it slowly, trying to master the details, with doing it faster and explosive. Today, cruising on the 15 hours of sleep carrying over from Sunday, I was really pumped through the whole class, and when Hwalan told us to come over to work on xiaohongquan I was ready to make some noise. The thing was, we didn't learn the noises. We learned the movements, but Hwalan didn't mention the "mmmm -YI!" that goes with them. I figured it was probably more important to learn the move properly than get distracted by making noises. Or maybe you just don't get "taught them" per se. Turns out, after class, she told Mo she just forgot to get to that part, (clearly I'm focused on the less important though more overt parts of the form); still, it means I can go ahead and make the noises without feeling surreptitious about it. :P so everyone get ready.....

mmmmmmmmm - YI!