Balance Challenges~Gene Burnett

This is a video of one of my partner work classes. What we're working on at first is having two people work on a partner drill that they know pretty well, in this case the "Da Lu" from T'ai-Chi and then a Chen style 8-Energies partner work form. While they do the drill, the third person is pushing and pulling and generally trying to upset the balance of one or both partners. This adds another level of challenge to the drill. You not only have to do the drill and stay attentive to it, but also maintain balance, responsiveness and attentiveness while being pushed or pulled in odd directions. In the following segments we move to doing this with one person doing a form they know well, while the other two push and pull and try to throw that person off balance. I start with doing the T'ai-Chi "Simplified Form", then my student Neil Buettner does the solo version of one of our partner T'ai-Chi forms, then my wife Samarra does a section from our T'ai-Chi Long Form, then my other student, who wishes to remain anonymous, did some free form randori type stuff because she is essentially an Aikidoist and doesn't have any set forms. None of the balance challenges are done full-on at our level. The "pushers" are not blasting away full contact, just pushing and shoving enough that the person or persons doing the form, partner or solo, has something they have to deal with in addition to the form they are doing. My teacher Andy Dale would always say to us that "The form is not the T'ai-Chi, only its container." This exercise is a great way to experience this. You can maintain your T'ai-Chi while being pushed, but there's no way to maintain the form exactly by the book. The form is necessarily distorted by dealing with the pushes, but the T'ai-Chi, the inner Unforced Balance, can remain active and present. If you want to try this, go slow and build up to more and more challenging pushes. The idea is to challenge the people doing the drill, not overwhelm them.

Taken January 27th, 2012. Lithia Park, Ashland Oregon

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[MegaRucker]

nice to see people learning and happy at the same time, you must be a popular teacher!