The Joy Of Doing Form

Today my teacher teaching us a couple techniques from the Wu taichi form. He used to tell us not to pay attention too much to the form, but now he said we are getting better, stronger with our chi so it is time to do form. He took a couple techniques and break it down. He said external kung fu styles like Shaolin use forms to learn the body motions. However Taichi we use forms to learn about our own body. A simple movement like wuji or holding the pi pa is not so simple. Each movement is now broken down to many sub moves. We move, listen, move again, listen, adjust, feel the change in our body. This is very different than how I used to do forms. I used to use muscle to move the arms, the legs, trying to complete the motion and move on to the next one. Now each movement is deliberate. Arms float up by itself without using much if any muscular strength. Feel like floating on air. We were working on "Slant Flying Posture" and he told us to put one hand under the other arm's elbow, the other over your chest, let them float up and cross each other, spread them out like an eagle spreading its wing. When I put my hands in the under elbow position, I suddenly feel like I was holding a small balloon full of air on each hand. When I moved my hands and they were crossing each other, the balloons seems to interact, like there are some atraction forces between them. It seems to me each posture was created to stimulate a certain chi channels, certain chi flow in some part of your body. Some movement we run the hand over the arm channels. Some movement we collect the chi in the kidneys. It reminds me of Hatha Yoga posses and how each posse suppose to stimulate some prana (life) forces in your body.

I was so joyful, keep on smiling. I now can feel something when I do form. Form now has life. There is an essence into it, not just empty flowering movement. It has a purpose. Joy oh joy, the joy of doing form.