Cloud Hands and Xing Yi Chuan

Creswick - Tai Chi/Kung Fu Class, Thursday 8pm, 18/10/07

Tai Chi
Tonight we introduced Cloud Hands. Cloud Hands (or Waving Hands Like Clouds) is one of those "all together moves."

Cloud Hands requires that your hands, arms, hips, legs (your whole body) all move together. Contrast this with some other moves: White Crane focuses on hip movement, Parting the Horse's Mane focuses on Ward Off, etc. You need to be thinking about a lot of principles at the same time to get the hang of Cloud Hands. But once you do, you'll forget all about them and just do it!

Kung Fu - Hsing I Chuan
In our Kung Fu component, we did some more Hsing I Chuan (or Xing Yi Quan, depending on romanisation). Hsing I means form/intention, and Chuan in this context refers to boxing/style. Hsing I Chuan is a much more aggressive internal style than Tai Chi Chuan.

Animal Forms
We reviewed Tiger and Tai. We introduced Snake in this class. Snake is about using unexpected angles for attack and defence.

Five Elements
We reviewed Drilling and introduced Splitting. Splitting has more components than the forms we have done so far. It might take a while to remember them all!