Tai Chi. Mlong Kuen, Two Kung Fu forms I am learning. Lots of similarities, lots of differences. I hadn't realized that one was trying to impose itself on the other. Thanks to a little question here, a little self reflection there, and some expert advice, AHA, now I can see and feel the separation I need to make both achieve their intended purpose (I still have years/decades of practice to do though!!).
At the beginning of Mlong Kuen, we do a double arm "uppercut" with an "stretched" stance. In Tai Chi part 3 near the end, we do a hop/turn double arm temple punch. Similar but very different. In Wednesday's Tai Chi class, this move felt too aggressive to me, to "shouldery", for some reason. Thanks to an insight by Sihing Burke, a bulb came to life in my noggin. She mentioned the whole Mlong Kuen move thing. And then I saw it. I was doing the Mlong Kuen stance with the Tai Chi double arm temple punch. And I was aggressively snapping my wrists, over-reaching my center, trying to compensate/correct for the incorrect stance. While the combination of the two felt powerful, I knew it was out of place in my Tai Chi. By correcting this grievous error I was making, the move fell back into place, making the next moves reconnect with the intent and flow that thousands of years of design was meant to be there. Then Sifu Dennis confirmed this, cementing it in my mind.
And now I am looking at other forms, to see if this is isolated (not!) or a reoccurring theme. I am hoping for the best but planning for an awful lot of work, cause I suspect I know the answer already.
P.S. hopefully I spelled Mlong Kuen correctly, I forgot that messages disappeared after seven days since the last time I had asked. My bad.
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