Tai Chi Broadsword
So on Tuesday Tai Chi resumed after a two-week hiatus due to the school easter holiday. Resumed might be the wrong word actually, as the whole class schedule is organised around the school terms, so really it was a new course starting on Tuesday night. That course is Tai Chi Broadsword, and I went along with great enthusiasm.
Having done a longsword form before I am extremely interested in other weapons forms — broadsword, staff, fan etc. so this is a perfect opportunity to learn another one. It’s a class for people who’ve got some Tai Chi experience, so it doesn’t painstakingly cover all the basics repeatedly, which is really good. Of course, we do have to learn the basics of broadsword, including numerous exercises, but they’re all interesting and good. The Chinese broadsword is a wide, curved weapon sharp on the outer edge of the curve, and is also known as the sabre. This lends it to many flowing, curving movements, reinforcing the Tai Chi concepts of spiralling in to and out from the centre.
So we did lots of exercises, then a lot of partner work, which is something quite rare in Tai Chi weapons training these days, but definitely worthwhile with the broadsword, then we looked at the start of the form. What a joy it was to be able to do more than the very early moves and have everyone keep up with them!
I’m not sure if everyone will remember them by next Tuesday, but then human memory does perform badly unless refreshed often. Anyone ever see those charts they give you at school around revision time, where they show how recall is affected by periodic review of material? Quite amazing really — and from my experience, it’s true as well. So I’ve been going over the opening moves of the form in my head, and so far I can remember it. Not all the subtle details of course, because we haven’t covered all the subtle details yet.
In similar news, I also managed to remember the entire longsword form I learned at Uni after the broadsword class, which was nice because I tried it before the class and couldn’t get past the move that’s either black dragon spreads its wings, or blue dragon emerges from the water. Never did learn the move names properly for that form.
Time to go to work now.