How to Interpose

I got to weighting my swords last night to get a better understanding of what I'm working with since I want to add an edged sword to my "armory" to eventually practice test cutting. I was pretty surprised by the results. My wooden practice sword weighs just under one pound. My Paul Chen practical sword weighs 1lb, 6oz, and my old display sword weighs 1lb, 10oz. Thing is, my wooden sword feels as heavy or heavier than my Paul Chen, and my display sword feels like it weighs a lot more than my Paul Chen, not just four ounces! Upon further examination, the balance is much further away from the hand in my wooden sword, as is the balance in my display sword. This apparently makes a huge difference in the maneuverability in your hand! Therefore, weight is not the only factor in deciding the speed of the sword, but the balance as well. Huh.

 

So, I said I've been thinking a lot about Ge lately. The character for Ge literally translates to "to block by interposing an object." One might think of it in this sense: if someone is giving you the evil eye from across the room and you bring up your newspaper to block their gaze, you have used Ge on them.

 

Here's how I've been practicing it: Hold the sword with two hands, in front of your body, with the point facing straight up. The height of your hands is up to you, but start about navel level. Now stand square in front of a partner and have that partner slowly thrust and cut horizontally at you. Block by rotating at your hips, causing the sword to pivot and be interposed between you and the attack. When you are done with the block, a line drawn from your nose through your sword should be perpendicular to the line of your partner's blade. This will also train yielding and body alignment.

The Foundational Defense of Tai Chi Sword

As much as I was encouraged last week by the problematic content of Stuart Olsen and Scott Rodell's books, I was discouraged this week when I picked up the translated "Taiji Sword" by Chen Weiming and " Classical T'ai Chi Sword" by Petra and Toyo Kobayashi. These books are really, really good. They're clearly written, well organized, and well researched. They have footnotes. FOOTNOTES full of references to source material and clarifying statements. Wow. I felt sad flipping through them on the way home from the store, as if this research project of mine was pointless because there wouldn't be anything for me to add to the community of thought. Still, these two books are so well done that it's ennobling to read them. To learn from and aspire to stand with works of such quality really made me feel privileged.

 

And there is hope: in spite of how well these books are done, they are primarily guides on doing the form, and their discussion of application is slight. In "Classical T'ai Chi Sword" there are also some descriptions of moves that I disagree with where I feel I might be able to contribute some value.

 

Back on the ground, I've come to feel over the past week that what I keep reading about Dai being the most-used block in Tai Chi Sword is only a half-truth. If you look at the motion of Dai, which they say is equivalent to Roll Back in empty hands, then it seems to me that Dai is inappropriate for defending against cuts. I think people who use Dai a lot are probably using it in sword sticking practice, and have overlooked that in a duel that starts out of contact and out of range, thrusts and cuts are equally likely attacks.

 

Therefore, it seems appropriate that Ge be considered the foundational technique for defense in Tai Chi Sword that students should learn before all others.

Dai: Setting up the Counter

In my mind I am building a pedagogical framework for teaching fighting dynamics. We've begun with a basic block to learn how to make contact between blades and knock a thrust attack off line. From there we learned to refine that contact, allowing us to yield and control the attack with the Dai parry.

 

Now, let's think about expanding that yield into actual movement. Picture this: you've picked up and deflected the oncoming attack with a Dai parry, smoothly redirecting the attack into a harmess empty space of your choosing. If you're clever, you rotate your body to face toward the blade, which causes the shoulder closest to the tip to spin away from the point like a Matador evading a charging bull. As you become comfortable with this motion, begin adding a little step away from the blade to make space between you and it. Either foot will do to start the step, and you should practice both ways just in case. This will soon allow you to fluidly make space to return your counterattack.

 

In Yin-Yang, when one force is at it's apex, you find a little nucleus of it's opposite energy forming. What we are on the cusp of when we step out is the emergence of the nucleus of an attack; the beginning of the flip from defense to offense.

The many faces of Dai

I'm frustrated and encouraged by the source material I find in my research. For instance, I have a book and DVD by Scott Rodell, and a book by Stuart Olsen. Both men were students of TT Liang, and both men are determined enough in their studies to have published multiple guides on Tai Chi Sword. Thing is, if you compare the descriptions of the 13 cuts in both book, many of the techniques are wildly different from eachother! It's possible that there's some subtle link between the techniques that I don't understand as a novice, but I think it's just more likely that there's little if any concensus on what the 13 cuts are and how they're used. Therefore I can march ahead with the (possibly naive) confidence that my interpretations are about as worthy as those that precede me.

 

Take Dai for instance. If you take it as simply a funny-shaped high parry, even if you combine it with Ge and Ya, you end up with a system that appears very limited in options. Even foil fencing, which is pretty simplified as martial arts go, has nine parries, semi-circular and circular variants of those parries, yielding and pressing variants, and transfers. That means there's explicitly much more than thirty expressions of defense without including footwork and voids.

 

If you take Dai as high left and high right, you find yourself in a strangely limited space. If you take Dai as the act of drawing out your opponent's blade, guiding it to fuller extension in order to maximize the space in which you can move as well as enlarging the areas you can attack, that presents a more reassuring and satisfying set of possibilities, doesn't it?

Beginning to Dai

We scrounged some time from the Wing Chun class we do Friday nights to work on a drill I'd been cooking up for the Dai parry. Begin in guard across from your partner, and have your partner Dian at the center of your chest. You should probably wear a protective mask and your partner should aim to stop short six inches from you for safety.

 

Begin by slapping the attack at 90 degrees to the blade from a variety of angles. Practice until you can parry without panicking, and block the blade just enough so that it would miss you only be a few inches instead of a few feet.

 

Once you are comfortable with this, try to match the entry speed of the attack and bring (Dai) the parry back toward you. Imagine that you are gently touching and guiding the tip of their blade into and empty and harmless space of your choosing, such as the space next to your ear above your shoulder. Practice until the motion is supple and gentle, and no longer a smashing of blades together but so gentle you could imagine yourself conducting the Dai with just a rolled up newspaper.

 

Finally, add a gentle step in with your Dai parry. 90 degrees away from the attack at first, and then smaller distances and more toward your opponent as you gain confidence.

 

If you become smooth at linking your Dai to a counterattack with smooth footwork, you will be able to move with harmony around your opponent, effortlessly evading their attack while maneuvering to attack.

Tuesday

I saw "Snakes on a Plane," and it's more of a social experience than a cinematic one. You go to be part of the audience and to take in the rush of mutual fandom rather than watch a story of quality. It's actually lower than a B grade movie and would probably be something you'd skip over if you came across it on cable. Going to see this movie was like trying to avoid the event horizon of a black hole. I was safe for a while, but as more and more of my friends added their mass to the opening night wave, eventually no amount of resistance could help me escape.

Learning martial arts can be like this too. People fall into a kind of group-think about how things work, and they march ahead confident that the dogma they subscribe to is the correct answer. Take the sword fingers in Gim for example. Text after text and teacher after teacher will tell you that the postures are for balancing out your chi. Since your sword hand is manifesting all of the chi when you fight, your empty hand needs something to do to even out the flow of chi. Maybe this is true, yet it seems few people seem to ask if this is just mumbo jumbo to explain something that never really existed?

[insert more sword stuff here :)]

Monday (Identity Crisis)

It's funny how something you have taken for granted as true all your life can suddenly turn out differently than you expected. Growing up, I used to think all Chinese in the world spoke Cantonese since every Chinese person I'd ever known spoke that. I was shocked to find out that most of the Chinese in the world speak the Mandarin dialect and that we Cantonese speakers were just the fringe emigrant community that had collected in communities in other countries.

I was also shocked to find out last week that my name isn't Charlie Wing Hing Wong. Not legally at least. Even though I have a drivers license, a US passport, and a mortgage in that name. Tighter national security rules recently triggered an audit at the RMV and they sent me a polite letter saying I had to get my Social Security card (Wing Hing Wong) to match my drivers license before they'd renew it when it expires this fall. I figured it'd be simple to do, but I soon found myself jumping through bureaucratic hoops only to be faced by a clerk at the Probate office determined to treat me like an illegal immigrant criminal for having mismatched identification. "This is the problem with You People..." he lectures me while looking over my birth certificate and name change form. "You think you can do whatever you want and it's okay..." he says. You People? I used that birth certificate to get my drivers license. I used that birth certificate to get my US passport. If there's some problem with having it not match my passport, why is it my fault? I showed ID, they gave me a passport. The war on terror claims strange casualties.

[more sword stuff later]

...

What is the most critical consideration when making your entry?

Not letting them hit you, of course.

Beng: Getting In

One of the problems with striking martial arts such as boxing or swordfighting is that it is easy to get results without a lot of skill. If I walk over and punch you in the face or hit you with a chair, you'll be hurt without my demonstrating any advanced fighting ability. What's more, if I'm just really strong and tough, I can probably blunder my way over to you, taking some hurtful hits along the way if you're a good martial artist, and then knock you out with one meaty punch. Take Bob Sapp for instance. He's beaten some really excellent mixed martial arts fighters simply because his opponents could not imagine how tough and strong he was, even though he's not that great a fighter. Ernesto Hoost lost to him because he thought he could go toe to toe with the monster. Hoost is a great fighter, but just just not built like Bob.

Given that, we must learn to fight in a way that takes advantage of physical superiority when we have it, but is ready to change the game when the opponent has it.

Therefore, since we're still on basic offense, let's talk about Beng. We've covered our two long range attacks, Pi and Dian, so now we want to get a little deeper into the hostile territory around our opposite. Beng is one way we can do that. Experiment with giving your opposite's blade a good slap with the flat of your blade from as many angles as you can think of, and learn how to launch an attack from wherever your sword is after you've executed the Beng. I propose that once you get good at it, your sword should move like you're skipping a stone or bouncing a ball at your target.

What is the first target you should consider?
Clearly the most devastating targets would be the heart or brain, but to get to those targets, you must pass your opposite's guard first. If they are sensible, their guard will be between you and their brain or heart, which means you must break through that defense and possibly survive an attack going in to reach your goal. Remember what I said about "To Live"? Your goal is not to slay your enemy. It is to survive the fight in as close to one piece as possible. What you've got going for you is that their guard isn't a spiky or electrified shield. It's a hand holding a weapon. If you can hit that hand, you can force them to drop their weapon. If you can even just knock the weapon out of the way, it might open the way for you to hit that brain or heart you had on your wish list. Therefore, I think hand is the first target you should consider.

Given 1000 hours of practice to perfect one attack and no other, what would be the deadliest attack of the eight attacks?
This was kind of a trick question. Clearly Ji and Ci are the most capable of lopping off or puncturing something vitally important to your opposite. However, what if they're at least pretty good at moving and parrying? Ji and Ci are bigger moves and therefore give your opposite more time to escape. If I saw someone cutting down trees with their Ji, I'd certainly opt to get outta Dodge rather than fight them. Chou also requires you to get in deep and risk getting hit. Jiao and Ti are kind of special purpose. Jie, is a fantastic move from the defensive side because it means you could hurt them as they attack. Pi and Dian are fast and allow you to attack from relative safety. Pi might be easier to apply since it sweeps a plane instead of attacking on a line. Therefore, if you're a defensive player, Jie might be the best move for you. If you're offensive, Pi might be the best since it would allow you to strike to disarm and immobilize, giving you a clear and easy way to finish your opposite.

There is also the versatility to consider. Pi is not great for finishing your opposite, but that might not be your first choice of results. You may be able to settle things just by winging them and giving them a stern glare afterwards.

Quiz:
What is the most critical consideration when making your entry?

Fighting Dimensions: Adding Y and Z to X

Here's a little lingo from western swordsmanship that might be useful. True edge and false edge. The edge isn't something you have to think much about when you have a sabre or katana in your hand because there's only one to talk about. With the Gim, there are two edges, so one needs to be able to clearly describe in words which of the two we're writing or talking about so others can recreate the described moves. When holding the blade, think of the true edge as the edge that faces your opponent. With a katana, the true edge is obvious. The false edge is the edge that faces you. With a katana, that's the blunt backside of the sword. In the Gim though, it's sharp and should be thought of as another possibility during the fight.

Once you have grasped the Pi and Dian in basic practice, add another dimension to your training. Instead of using the Dian and Pi from directly in front of your opposite, try adding these variations: with the Dian, attempt hitting your opponent's hand from different angles. Try sidestepping and hitting the back of the hand or the inside of the wrist. Try squatting and hitting from below or jumping and hitting from above. (I don't recomment jumping in a fight, but try it out just to see it and feel it.) For Pi, try attacking from the sides and from above and below as with the Dian, but also try cutting with the false side of the blade.

What are desirable targets?
Pi and Dian are surface attacks, using speed and the accuracy of the tip of the sword to deal damage rather than massive kinetic energy. Therefore we must look at targets that would suffer greatly from a half-inch deep cut that might be no wider than two or three inches. While the whole body could be a target, a cut to the chest or even cutting off a nose or ear would be far from debilitating for our opposite, so we would prioritize for targets that would greatly reduce our opposite's effectiveness. Fingers are a good start. In fact, any small bones such as fingers, wrists and collar bones would impair them. Toes too. Arteries? The neck and the inner thigh contain massive, vulnerable arteries. Ligaments? The inner wrist and achilles tendon would be devestating. Organs? Possibly the eye or even around the eye.

What is the appropriate distance between you and your opponent?
There are two sides to consider. You want to be as close as you can be so as to deliver your attacks in the minimum amount of time, and far enough away so that your opposite cannot hit you without some kind of telling movement. Therefore, if you and your opposite have equivalent reach, start at a distance where you opposite could not hit you with a Dian or Pi without at least taking a step to reveal their intent. When you are faster, you can start closer. If you are slower or shoter, start farther away. We're talking life and death (theoretically) so don't give your opposite an free hits.

Quiz:
What is the first target you should consider?
Given 1000 hours of practice to perfect one attack and no other, what would be the deadliest attack of the eight attacks?

Fighting Tai Chi: On Distance

I used to teach this self-defense class I called "Fighting Concepts." I'd been asked to teach martial arts in a one-hour a week format, and I'd wondered how could someone possibly teach martial arts in only an hour a week? What I did was throw out the traditional training and drilling that I had learned with, and came up with a series of games that would teach students to appreciate different aspects of the fight and think creatively. I reasoned that if I couldn't give them discipline and skill (not enough time) that I would give them cleverness and adaptability.

The first thing I taught my students (after I showed them the basics of punching and kicking) was how to appreciate range. Know the limit of your reach and the limit of your opponent. How far can you punch? How can you contort your body to extend that reach? How can you streamline your movements to reduce "tells" that will alert your opponent to the oncoming attack? How can you add footwork to increase your range?

In Tai Chi Sword, I've broken down the 13 techniques into multiple sub groups. Of these, I consider two moves, Pi and Dian to be long-range attacks, so let's start with those. Take your fighting stance across from your opposite and slowly play tag using gentle Pi and Dian attacks. I recommend using wooden swords and wearing heavy, protective gloves like lacrosse or street hockey gloves--a Dian to the front of the hand can be painful and destructive even at fairly low speeds. Go back and forth attacking each other. As an attacker, aim and anything you like. As a defender, do not parry but simply try to move out of the way.

Quiz:
What are desirable targets?
What is the appropriate distance between you and your opponent?

Xi: The Final Technique of 13

I think to understand a martial art you have to grasp what the secret sauce of that martial art is. What is the concept or technique that makes that martial art different from others, and what is the unique way that martial art exploits that difference to gain a fighting advantage? For example, many would say the strength of Wing Chun kung fu is in it's sticky hands techniques that allow the WC practitioner to fight almost completely by touch at close range. I like to think that the secret sauce of Hung Gar lies in it's 12 Bridges: techniques designed to give the HG practitioner a leverage advantage against a foe nearly instantaneously in almost any situation.

I think Xi, or Washing, is one of those special techniques of Tai Chi Sword. When researching how this move is done, I was flummoxed by how every source showed a different application of the move. How could they all be so divergent, I wondered. I've come to think that Xi is what in sport fencing would be called "taking the steel" and "transfers." The idea is fairly general: any time your blade contacts your opposite's blade, you may have an opportunity ti Xi. Keep contact with the opposite's blade and control it so that it cannot hit you while you hit them.

A simple example might be if your opposite is standing in guard, touch the right or outside of your blade to their blade (assuming you're both right handed). Now keep the point of your blade on the centerline, but push your sword at the guard toward your opposite's left shoulder. The wedge shape you make with your sword will brush their blade aside like you were a snowplow while your point moves unopposed toward your opposite's neck. The key is to control your opposite's blade even as you attack.

Beng: The Explosive Technique

A friend suggested over the weekend that there is a certain kind of strength and peace you receive from training within a group. He said it helps you realize part of your path and your place in the world by learning to work with, and having the support of others with similar goals. I empathize. I certainly miss the time when I attended a regular martial arts school, and much of my training and learning, this blog included, goes toward recreating and possibly even improving upon those nostalgic memories.

 

In particular, there are some things that are better learned in groups. Some techniques require the context of the dynamics of person to person interaction to understand adequately. You can see them, sure, but to properly learn and appreciate the move, you must feel them. The last two techniques we'll cover in our research fall into that category. They are so subtle, so structurally and mechanically complex and variable, that one must practice with a partner to learn them. It is also why we have saved them for last.

 

The first of the two is called Beng, or exploding. Very much like the Beat in fencing, it is simply when your sword snaps out with a burst of energy, often striking the opponent's blade and then bouncing or skipping onward to attack. If fencing, the Beat is usually only used to knock the opponent's blade aside to the left or right, but what if we could use that energy fully in three dimensions? Imagine if you could paralyze your opposite's blade with a sharp, forward Beng against their blade, collapsing their defense and preventing them from extending? What if you could pull your opposite's blade out straight by sharply hooking the back of their blade, causing them to become overextended and off balance? What about Beng up or down, or multiple Bengs in succession?

 

Begin practice by standing in guard against your opposite. With a quick squeeze of the hand or a flick of the wrist, bounce your blade off your opposite's blade. Your goal is to knock their guard off line while the bounce of your blade conveniently causes your blade to come to rest exactly where it started--on line, ready to attack, and now totally unobstructed! Once you've mastered this basic Beng, try variations with all the different directions: up, down, left, right, forward, and back. Then try multiple Beng combinations: forward-down, left-right, back-up, etc.

Posts delayed this week

I'll be at a trade show, so posting will be delayed until Friday. I'll try to retroactively catch up in my spare moments.

Another Take on the Parries

I'm thinking of buying a fish. Betas seem like low maintenence creatures, and it pleases me to think I could name it some rough and tough name like Knuckles, Lefty, or Enzo. I've already staked out a space on my desk with a little sign that says " Reserved for Knuckles the Fish."

 

Over the weekend, before I came up with this fish plan, I got to practice fundamental cuts with my friend Alex. She doesn't know anything about swords, but she does have an active curiosity about all things martial. While I was showing her the eight attacks, she showed me some really interesting variant angles for Jiao (Wrapping) that I hadn't considered. This just goes to show that all sources are potentially valuable for insights.

 

Before we move on to the last two techniques, I want to offer an alternate view on the three parries. While talking to my buddy Robin who is from Singapore, he offered a different translation of the word Dai. He said it might be more appropriate to translate Dai as " to bring to or with you." If this is the case, then the idea that Dai pulls your opposite's attack toward you and deflects them just enough to miss fits well with some descriptions I've read that Dai is analogous to Roll-Back in Tai Chi. This suggests that we might be able to think of Dai as yielding and deflecting, Ge as blocking with neutral energy (without forward or backwards movement) and Ya as pressing or pushing energy.

 

Dai is commonly depicted for high attacks, but if you think of it as bringing and receiving at attack, you should be able to use the same blade energy for middle and low attacks. Same would hold true for Ge and Ya I think. These additional applications may not be commonly taught, or over time the level and the energy may have become confused and connected with eachother.

Ti: The Eighth Deadly Technique

I know only a handful of moves in kendo. I'm an anime fan, I love samurai movies, ninjas have their moments for me, but kendo and kenjitsu have never held much pull for me. I did have the opportunity while at Guard Up to learn a thing here an there though, and one of them I think was called nuki. It was a neat move, where you kind of raise your sword and skip back when an opponent is swinging at you, but pretty much that was all it was until one day when I had to substitute for a sick instructor in a class called Sport Armor.

 

Sport Armor was this class where all the students wore hard plastic motocross armor and helmets. Even though the class was taught with padded swords, the idea was that the armor would allow you to fight at close to full speed and power with less fear of injury. Well, there I was, and while sparring I was holding off the brutal cuts of my opponent, and then it occurred to me to try nuki. I waited for the swing, lifted my sword up and out of the way as the cut swished by me, and found that I could swiftly step forward and chop my opponent cleanly on the forehead. It worked like magic, as if I'd practiced hours and hours and waited insidiously for my chance to strike!

 

I'm proposing that Ti, our eighth deadly technique is similar to nuki. Ti means to "lift" and I have come to think that it is used much like Jiao as a compound attack. When an opponent cuts for your hand and you are not in a position to use Jiao to wrap them, lift the hand out of the way, let the attack pass, then bring the blade down on their arm or head or wherever with a Pi cut. The lifting of the hands sets you up for the cut, and if timed right, your opponent may still be finishing their first move when you bring the sword back down.

 

Let's take stock: we have five attacks, three parries, and three counters. Of the three counters, we have one basic counter, and two compound counters. That gives us eleven moves. The final two are special blade controlling techniques which we'll examine next week! Have a great weekend!

Jiao: Compound Defense and Attack

Eureka! That move I said was confounding me? I've figured out a place for it in my map of the 13 cuts! The final two deadly techniques will be considered compound actions in my theory of Tai Chi. That is, they are not a single move, but they are a couple moves strung together that may be so common in use that they are considered core techniques in Tai Chi. Hopefully my explanations will support the theory.

 

There's a creative pleasure that comes from deciphering martial arts. It might be similar to what sleuths feel when they're closing in on the perpetrator of a crime or what a scientist feels like when they are unravelling a technical conundrum. Is it a mental analog for hunting? For me it feels like when you get a case of the giggles when you're in the library; you're trying to keep your composure, but the idea is bubbling up from inside you and you are fighting the impulse to overflow into the quiet civility around you.

 

The first of the two moves is Jiao, or "wrapping." Earlier, I talked about Dian and Pi as long-ranged attacks. I propose that when you're using the long ranged attacks, a very desirable target is your opposite's sword hand. It's probably the part of their body that's closest to you, and if you deliver a good hit to their hand, you'll probably seriously impair their ability to fight.

 

So you're minding your own business and your opposite goes for your hand. First, get your hand out of the way. Move your hand six inches to the right or left so their blade just misses. As you move your hand, set up your counterattack by dropping your blade tip down to the level of your opposite's wrist. Now, with a small turn and arc of the hand, draw the tip of your blade across the hand or wrist of your opposite. The motion you trace in the air with your hand for the whole move might look like a letter D on it's flat side if you cut by going over their hand. If you went under, it would be a D on it's round side like a bowl.

Jie: Way of the Intercepting Sword

I tend to be very reductionist in my learning. I try to figure out that the smallest reasonable unit of knowledge is for a subject I'm studying and then try to group things into small, conceptual sets. For example, of the 13 cuts of Tai Chi Sword, I've broken them down into eight attacks, three parries, and two add-on or miscellaneous techniques. Yet of the eight attacks, I tend to think of five of them as useful core techniques. Of those five, two are first-choice long range techniques, and three are middle range techniques. See if you can sort them out based on what you've read about them.

When I get beyond the core ideas, I tend to ask myself why bother expanding? Every additional idea should add value to the whole, and we should resist adding things indiscriminately.

Now we're getting into the reeds a bit with the next three attacks. I left these out when I was describing the other attacks because they're a little more special purpose and they're also a little harder to use. You might call them advanced attacks. One of them, which I will describe last of these three, is particularly weird and I'm still not sure how it fits into the pantheon of moves we're learning.

So you have some attacks and some defenses. You can move on your feet and you're developing a good feel for position, distance and timing. Time to pull out the gutsy moves that get you bonus points during the battle. Next time your opposite winds up for a swing, either because they're slower than you or they're wasting energy on a big windup, hit them with Jie. Jie means to "intercept."

Imagine if you will a baseball player ready to take a swing at a fastball. Now imagine that the fastball is you and your organs are the strike zone. Now imagine that the bat is sharp. As the player takes his swing, what if you could just put out your sword so that as he moves his wrist crashes into the front edge of your blade? You wouldn't have to do very much work and the player would probably be handless, putting him at a distinct disadvantage against your next move. This move may exemplify the saying "the kung fu man does not strike first, but hits first."

You missed me ya, ya, ya!

Alright. Bad joke.

 

Here we are at the third and final block of Tai Chi Sword. This might feel weird to you who know martial arts or fencing. In Wing Chun, there's probably six core blocks and then a dozen additional ones. In foil fencing there are nine parries. How can Tai Chi get away with just three? I think other systems are more mechanistic about they way they define their defenses. In fencing, you have high inside parry with palm up (Parry 4), high inside parry with palm down (Parry 3), high ourside parry with palm up (Parry 6), etc. In Tai Chi, I've approached each of the techniques in a more generalized sense. Instead of high block left, high block right, high block with drooping wrist, high block with point toward the sky, etc., we have one energy concept: carry their attack high enough to miss.

 

Let me remind you that I'm aiming to get to a place where I can use the gim and the general methods of the Tai Chi Sword. My interpretations may be totally non-cannonical or just plain wrong. However, if it helps us get some useful perspective on the weapon and fighting style for our own training, I think that's valuable.

 

My thinking on Dai (Carrying) is that it represents a preference for the energy of the parry while disregarding the actual move used. This might be appropriate for a style that focuses on sensitivity and harmonization. The different shapes and positions you might get yourself into during an engagment might be so numerous that it's impractical to try to name them all. Therefore, think of the idea of guiding your opposite's blade into a harmless empty space, or carrying it to where you want it to go with a smooth, gentle contact not a harsh block or bounce between blades.

 

Ya is the opposite of Dai. Ya means to "press." It exploits the low bridge the same way the Dai exploits the high bridge to make your opposite's blade too short to hit you. When executing the basic Ya, rotate your sword so that the front edge is facing away from you and the back edge (thumb side) is facing toward you an the blade is parallel to the floow as if you were going to put it on a table. Then simply press down. I prefer not to press beyond the level of my belt. If the attack is particularly low, I will bend at my knees to lower my blade and maintain balance rather than bending over. Execute to your preference.

The Geometry of Bridging

Back when I took Wing Chun with Stanley Jue and Jerome Majeed, Stanley brought his wife to the school because he was instructing her on Wing Chun at home. Amy was a fiesty fighter, and I discovered one day while sparring against her that while I was more than a foot taller than her, she was definitely landing more hits on me than I expected. What's more, I found that I was having a really hard time blocking her attacks! What turns out to have been my disadvantage was geometry. While Amy could punch straight across at my stomach, I actually had to reach down to block her, causing my arms to be shorter and throwing off my timing against her.

Let's put it another way. You're standing opposite someone of equal height and reach to you. If you reach out and just touch them with the tip of your fingers on the collar bone and they reach out for your belt, because of the angle they must cross, they will actually not be able to touch you. This is the bridging geometry principle we will use to our advantage with the high bridge parry called Dai.

Dai means "carry" and we're going to use it to carry high bridge attacks up and away from us. If your opposite thrusts for your face, they are probably attacking over your sword and raising their attack to form a high bridge. Let the tip of your sword drop and lift your hand so that the handle moves up and the blade of the sword kind of drags behind lazily. Meet your opposite's blade with the flat of your blade and carry it into a higher bridge just over the top of your head. Adjust the angle so you don't just slip past them and still get stabbed in the face. I like about 45 degrees. You might also rock back a little as you do this. The shortening caused by the rising angle and you slight rock back will cause them to fall short! When you become more practiced, try lifting their blade into the space next to your head and above your shoulders. You are now able to protect yourself from high bridge attacks with Dai!