the girly who shall end all girls

somewhere i lost count. but Saturday was definitely at least 21 kung fu classes.

i lost count because i'm having a great time. i commented to mimerki that i want to keep at it at least until i get to the butterfly knives. that's years away, and right now i'm fine with that.

i appreciate the way things have cascaded from the class. the lion dance pictures led me into learning more about photoshop and about my camera. to take care of my knees i'm going to the gym regularly, used a trainer. we're talking about going to a hip opening yoga workshop (that i've looked at for years) to make wide stances and kicks easier. i'm getting to know coworker F, who i never would have encountered in my daily routine. i'm reading more about China. i'm standing up straighter. i can run to catch the bus without getting winded.

currently i'm up to "one step" sparring, which is a very controlled contact exercise that teaches distance and timing. (punch-block-punch with step to right, return to center, punch-block-punch with step to left, return to center, repeat many times, change up the block type, change who punches first.) the first time i did it i needed frequent breaks to shake out my legs. most recently we lost track of time before we had to move on to the next part of class.

"fatty necrosis" is my Achilles' heel. (not actual fatty necrosis, thank goodness. that would mean that i had ruptured fat cells in my breasts from impact. classmate M, training-to-be-a-physical-therapist-with-an-interest-in-forensics, knows how to destroy me. if you were to say "fatty necrosis" while sparring with me, i would burst into laughter and fail to block you.)



my waist is two inches smaller than when i started. my hip is larger. hung gar kuen, bringing the Oakland Booty for 3000 years.

"In martial arts, natural athletes rarely last. The martial arts are an acquired skill; they have to be learned. Some people learn things quickly and just burn out quickly. ...'No doubt, no attainment; little doubt, little attainment; big doubt, big attainment.'"
- Chu Sau Lei

which should be some lead-in to how i had a rough class tonight. i didn't, once i got past the warmup section. the first twenty minutes to half hour of class, spent mostly in horse stance, is brutal. but that's always the toughest part. the rest of the class is pleasure. exhausting pleasure, but without the feel of deathmarch that comes in that forever when we are holding sei ping ma for what i know should be the last time before the class breaks into sections.

i've been reading a collection of interviews with kung fu masters. the bit above from Chu spoke to me. i've never been able to get physical things without tremendous repetitive effort. i don't automatically think that something is impossible, but i also don't expect it to happen overnight.

as a kidlet, i was prone to explosive bouts of temper that would evaporate as soon as i acted out. i was the kid in playschool that bit the bossy girl when she told us to clean up and i had just got the legos after waiting and waiting for them.

i think this was one of the reasons that my family trained me to make a fist with my thumb on the inside. i can only assume they were setting up thumb-damage punishment for me if i ever tried to slug someone.that wasn't an issue since i was more into kicking and hair-pulling.

don't hurt anyone. how many times have i heard it in my lifetime?

never ever point a loaded gun at a human being - only the ground or a target. you don't want to hurt someone.

and that's how those conversations go. NEVER do x, because you could hurt someone.

in kung fu class last night, the people who haven't started forms yet were working on kicking basics. sifu was talking about placement, that we start with aiming for the ribs, and from there with practice we will eventually develop the control to place the kick anywhere up and down the body as needed. in the course of this little overview, he mentions that kicking the neck is usually lethal, and continues on to the next topic. we move into working on setting distance and getting individual critique as we kick a freestanding bag. lots of meaty bits about the biomechanics of delivering the most force with the least effort. ie, if i use the proper technique, i will put less stress on my body. it was really helpful to see what people were doing wrong as well as what they were doing right. it was a good class. i'm still processing all the information.

falling asleep last night, i realized that i had been told that doing x would likely kill someone. and for probably the first time, it was not followed with "never do that." i have been given this bit of information, and i am allowed to make my own value judgment. interesting.

fourteen kung fu classes down, seven to go. except for the part where i can't imagine quitting at 21 anymore. (thinks of being sidelined by injury, knocks wood.)

i have a full uniform now, and shoes. everything is super-comfy. giant clown pants, little soft elf shoes, t-shirt, tightly wrapped sash. and it's all black except for the yellow school logo on my shirt and the yellow tips on the sash. i feel fine wearing the whole thing on the bus on Saturdays.

at this point, doing horse is still rough when i have to hold it for too long. the more i read, the more i understand that everyone who comes to it as an adult has trouble. one of the translations for qi is "breath." like yoga, you hold the awful awful position and visualize sending your qi (in yoga it's breath) to the pain. and like yoga, sometimes i fall into the proper state and shunt energy to the weak places, and sometimes i'm dominated by it. i'm riding the edge of what i can do.

i have ten-sided turn down. it's like being the oblong spirograph piece. (i may need to see if i can draw the foot pattern, i think it would be pretty.) but with blocks and punches.

now i'm working on so sau/fu jau, a circular block and tiger claw combo. it's the thing that inspires the wacky swirly hands things people do when they are pretending to be someone from the movies. but in a practical sense, it's protect groin, smack opponent arm out of way, grab arm.

i'm happiest when i'm in motion. so much of what we do feels like dancing. my legs are leaf springs, and my arms are clicking into place. somehow i do better when my arms and legs are both going than i do when i focus on just arms or just footwork. i'll start to do a ten-sided turn on my own and find that i've done twenty sides or more, i just keep rotating.

( crap about my knees )

i enjoy all the different types in the class. the retired guy, the dancer, the club impresario, the teen sisters who kid around with si hing T (en español), F who also works for My Corporate Masters, the kitten-who-will-kill-you, the three daddy/daughter pairs... retired guy J also volunteers at SAM. we ran into him at the Impressionism exhibit the other night, doing his docent thing. i don't work directly with F at all, but now we always say hi if we pass in the hall. (the first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.) sometime i need to put together a happy hour expedition to sifu's restaurant.

last night makes seven kung fu classes.

( since we last left our heroine )

i'm retaining more from class to class. i feel like my arms are changing shape, even though it's only been two weeks and that's impossible. i'm just more aware of them somehow. i come out of almost every class more energized than tired. but it still means that muscle rub is the new bedtime ritual.

according to del.icio.us, i started researching martial arts classes in Seattle more than six months ago, and that was i don't know how long after C and me swore we would take a class together. it's a sign of how things go with physical fitness in my house - reading about it is much more engaging than doing, and there's always some reason we should put it off or drop it for a while and then the momentum is gone and we forget...

mimerki mentioned elsejournal that it takes 21 days to form a habit.* i've embraced it as an arbitrary measure. the plan is to go three times a week until we hit 21 classes and hope that makes it stick. so maybe i'll read this in a couple months to see where i was at the beginning, or maybe it will be another well-intentioned failure.

we settled on kung fu. we've done three classes as of yesterday. ( first impressions )

i liked my first week. quite a bit. we got massages this morning to work out the tense bits, and i feel relaxed and excited rather than scared about going back to class Monday. it's a good place to be.




*so i looked it up. it came into popular use from a book with the ridiculous-to-me title Psycho-Cybernetics.
¹research says this is from the style family attributed to Wong Fei Hung - the dude from an astonishing number of films including Drunken Master, Once Upon a Time in China, and Iron Monkey. more fangirl squee.