Shifu:
Here I am practicing in the harsh HK winter, a whole 22 degrees – eat your heart out, Canada! – the air is much dryer due to the winds, and the marble floor in my house is now nearly a skating rink. Here I am looking for some breakthrough, insight in my practice, and I am presented with a skating rink to step gingerly on. And in light of the “Knee Pain” post, I seem to have developed some pain in the kua as a result. I thought to myself, surely, Shifu surely wouldn’t slide around like I do; or having trouble opening the kua because the heels keep giving out. I mean, there is that video of you on the carpet, and you stay the same as you would on any other surface.
I figured that there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. Here is the adjustment I have made, and it seems to work well: I imagine that I am practicing inside a very narrow box, and my job is to try best to keep my shoulders (by pulling them down and in towards the diantian, and imagine that there is a big vice squeezing my shoulders in and down); or when the move needs me expand, I push my shoulders against the sides; only as far as the sides, no more, no less; and pull them down towards the ground joining the heels like you would leaning against a wall. The result: I no longer need to step as gingerly, or slide around as much, and seems like the sliding is replaced by the movements, or adjustments inside the body. That is, the sliding seems to have displaced by the movement within.
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I remembered there was a time during my regular wednesday practice at the same facility, I felt the floor all of a sudden became very slippery. I tried to figure out what happened afterwards, and I then realized that I was pushing my feet sideways, and so the distance between them kept getting bigger and bigger. I then intentionally pushed down instead of sideways, and the slippery feeling stopped.