KUNG FU NOTES 11/30/2009 PART 1

I’ve been spending a lot of time feeling the ground with the bottom of my foot.
I noticed a while ago that whenever I’m doing chisao with Will and working on “being connected”, I always get a “fail”, I feel stable and at rest.
My weight falls on both feet.
Whenever I sometimes don't get a “pass”, I feel mildly unstable, like I’m in mid-air.
My weight is only on one foot at a time.
I’ve heard the term “third leg” around somewhere in wing chun talk, and when I’m connected to the other person all the way down to the ground, it feels like I’m using them as a third leg.
When I’m “in mid-air”, there’s a pressure on the bottom of one foot pressing against the ground.
When that pressure disappears, I’m disconnected and my kung fu stops working.

Recently, I read Chen Man Ching’s book Tai Ch’i Chuan.
He talks about tai chi “coming from the bottom of the foot” and “springing from the legs”.
That exactly describes what I’ve been feeling in the last few months.
I play around with constantly with the feeling of pushing against the ground
Being on one foot at a time but never resting on one foot.
Always moving in a direction while my body weight is in mid-air, always falling in one direction or another.
And constantly changing direction.
Sometimes it feels like a slow form of tap dancing, hip-hop, or doing an Irish jig.
Sometimes it feels like playing basketball.
I play around with switching my weight from one foot to the other foot.
Sometimes as quickly and lightly as I can, sometimes as slowly and gently as I can, but always as delicate and gentle as I can.

Chen Man Ching writes that “the weight is never on both feet at the same time.”
Does that mean that, practicing the tai chi form, the weight is always rocking from foot to foot but never resting on either foot, like I’ve been feeling? Since I don’t do taichi, I’m going to watch some Youtube videos of tai chi to see if that’s how they do the form.

So, after all this playing around with developing sensitivity and awareness in the bottom of my feet, I felt something very clearly for the first time – I could feel when my foot pressed against the ground, taking out the slack between us, and making a connection all the way down to Will’s feet. Will’s talked about it lots of times, but it was the first time that I had really felt the ground under my feet connected to the ground under Will’s feet. That’s what I believe “making a bridge” means. Our bodies meet together and make a bridge, connecting the piece of land under my feet with the piece of land under Will’s.

All this time I’ve been training wing chun, I’ve never had any awareness in my feet. That was a big break in the chain.