2. Step Forward Together With Sword

Of course, it's not that simple, stepping forward together with sword. As with all of the taijiquan form I practice, it makes me question everything, like what stepping is, and where forward is, and why does the name include "together with sword?" We are holding the sword; how could we step forward without it? Ah, but we can. More on that later.

I remember when I first learned Repulse Monkey, my teachers described the backward stepping as stepping forward to the rear. It took several years for me to understand this and actually it was only recently at a retreat in Costa Rica led by my teachers that my understanding really blossomed. In the first week, we spent some time each day discussing the taijiquan classics, guided by one of Lee's invaluable documents. In the Taijiquan Classic attributed to Zhang Sanfeng, there is this: Upward, downward, forward, backward, left, and right are all the same. In each case, the distinction is in the yi and not in the external. Lee translated yi as directed attention, feeling awareness.

As a newbie student of taijiquan several years ago, I couldn't help but feel like I was retreating from the monkey, because I absolutely was. I even imagined the monkey advancing on me. Why else would I be backing up? Then, last fall, a piece fell into place. I knew the motion of my arms should be driven by my waist (small of the back in taijiquan), but I couldn't figure out how. As I alternately put up one hand in front of me, palm out, then the next one, I felt none of the connectedness that I felt in, for example, another move called Brush Knee, in which the final posture is preceded by a turn of the waist which drives both hands to the intended locations.

After pondering what I was missing in my Repulse Monkey last fall, I lamented to my other teacher, Beth, that it felt like I was just putting my hands up to mimic the choreography instead of being able to use the motion of my waist to drive them. She instantly saw my error. Between the raising of the hands, there is a turn of the waist to the side in order to instigate that motion. My error was that I was then returning to face front. Instead, I should have been turning only to a corner. The sequence is this: from facing front, turn the waist to start the movement of the next hand that will be rising; turn back just to the corner; step forward to the rear; shift weight to the rear leg; turn the rest of the way to face front, using that turn to drive the next hand at the monkey. You can watch Lee and Beth doing this here: Repulse Monkey.

It's a tricky thing to step forward to the rear while facing the corner. The feet are perfectly parallel, both to each other and to the imaginary shortest line connecting front and rear. Nose is over belly button, so the monkey has to be tracked with peripheral vision. While you're doing that, you have to use another type of peripheral vision, your proprioception, to sense when the rearward stepping foot is positioned correctly. I'm pretty good now at getting the ball of my foot where it needs to go. Then I rotate my heel outward until it feels a bit unnatural before lowering it the ground. That process generally results in a good forward step to the rear. Of course, the more monkeys I repulse, the more natural that turn of the heal will feel, so I may end up turning it too much unless I revise my algorithm.

I think the main benefit of Repulse Monkey is the exercising of the yi. Having to face the corner while keeping the front in view via peripheral vision while attending to the unnatural placement of the foot is a fascinating activity. I'm used to casting my attention to one part of my body after another. It's a good relaxation tool. Use the yi to seek out muscle tension and melt it. But I've never really practiced in a concerted way directing the yi to multiple places at once. In fact, I think, a long time ago, I got the wrong idea about the possibility of doing this. In my early adulthood, I got the message that, like the computers of that period, human minds can only really do one thing at a time well. They had to constantly attend to one process, then the next, then the next, in rapid succession in order to give the illusion of doing multiple things simultaneously. Even as I learned more neuroscience, I continued to believe that mono-tasking was the way to be for optimal productivity. 

The past few years of taijiquan practice have shown me another way, a soft focus kind of way, wherein awareness goes everywhere all at once. A wilderness teacher taught me this in the context of seeing. We were hiking and came to a high meadow and there were a few wildflowers here and there, but he had me relax my gaze and –– oh my –– it was amazing how many more wildflowers popped out. Everywhere. And that relaxed, diffuse seeing operates the same way inside as well. So yes, Repulse Monkey is a good place to practice this and I can keep the monkey in view peripherally while attending to foot placement, and it's not a stretch at all anymore.

Now finally I can return to the question of what it means to be stepping forward together with the sword, as if there's some risk that we might drop it. But first, I must take a short detour to my earlier martial arts training in To-Shin Do, which was developed by Stephen K. Hayes, the first American to be allowed to study the ninja arts in Japan back in the 1970's. As I progressed in my training, I learned about divided energy, which is a bad thing. Ideally, any movement, physical and otherwise, should be coherent, at least for the first few degrees of black belt. At higher degrees, the martial artist can employ divided energy as a deception, a ruse, but that's very advanced. One must first be able to detect one's own divided energy and through much practice duct it into a coherent stream.

Notice above I wrote, "any movement, physical and otherwise." At the physical level in taijiquan, it's easy for our teachers to spot divided energy. Usually the big give-away is arms being every which way instead of being connected to and driven by the waist (small of the back). Arms should not move independently of the waist; all arm movement is the result of turning, sinking, rising of the waist. Therefore, the angle the arms make with the torso is a good indicator of whether the waist is really in control or whether the arms have gone for a joy ride or are under the influence of misunderstanding, of putting arms where it seems choreography dictates. This is not taijiquan but every student needs to go through this and be corrected by observant teachers in order to understand the true essence of taijiquan.

Less easy for a teacher to detect is when our intention is not consonant with our movement. As with anything, monkey mind can go off on tangents, even during practice. There's a posture called Single Whip in our empty hand taijiquan form; it occurs five times and what movements follow it depends on which number Single Whip we're doing. Even our teachers admit that on occasion they become distracted and lose track of which Single Whip we're on. This form of divided energy happens to everyone but, fortunately, less and less the more we practice. This is where, when we're first learning the sword form, we might actually lose our (mental) grip. And I have, and do, constantly. I'm learning as a rank beginner among students who already know the form, so I'm almost always not in the moment, but always furiously trying to remember what the next move is. Even when practicing on my own, I'm struggling to remember all the little checkpoints as I watch the video provided by my teachers. It feels really good when I can marshal intention and physical movement in concert to produce that step forward together with sword, likes it's an extension of both those aspects of my being.

So that's my meditation on Step Forward Together With Sword. It's about awareness of divided energy and what it means and how it feels for mental and physical movement to be in alignment, an understanding I try to take into my wider life, especially when I'm feeling distracted, ineffective, ambivalent. Once a psychiatrist told me that good mental health comes from marshaling one's resources to meet any situation. Step Forward Together With Resources.