Am I a lefty or righty? Apparently the line between the two has become very thin. I found this out this week when we were doing a portion of Da Mu Hsing. We were working on the knife hand near the beginning of DMH two and the trajectory needed to engage it properly. Most (myself primarily) were misdirecting our release on this move causing our following punch to swing slightly in an arc sideways before release.
Enter the ball.
It was put to us like this. Throw a ball. You can't throw a ball with a straight locked arm/wrist/shoulder and expect it to have any reasonable trajectory, it will be a dud, splat.. Now release the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist, allow the natural movements and rotations of your arm to guide the ball to your intended target. Now we are talking. Zip, right on target (ish). Now for the rub, use the other arm, you know, your NON-THROWING arm. So rightys must try being a lefty and vise versa.
At first I thought, uh oh, this is going to be a train wreck. But to my absolute surprise, it wasn't that bad. The first couple throws weren't pretty, but that was more mental than anything else, I expected to fail, so I did, that was on me. I adjusted my thinking to trust my instructors teachings and low and behold, suddenly after 50+ years of being a strict Lefthandarian (?), I was now feeling an awaking in my right that I hadn't noticed till exactly that moment. Wow, I love Kung Fu!
Without me even realizing it, a balance was exerting itself within my body, left or right were becoming less separated by my arbitrary mental division. Allowing my body to move without prejudice gave me a new doorway to go through, one I didn't even know I wasn't seeing. Mind officially blown. 💣
So now I am trying different things with my right side that I would normally do with my left, and you know what, it feels much less wrong than I thought it would. Now I am not saying I am abandoning my leftyness, I love my leftyness, but now using scissors just became so much easier.
"Allowing my body to move without prejudice" is why intent is so important. Moving without prejudice is almost impossible because we almost always have our egos interfering with our movements and our decisions. If you start with intent, those movement prejudices become based upon context. Intent IS context.
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