The Goju-ryu stance has been on my mind since we first explored it in Black Belt class over a month ago. At that time, we briefly discussed the rotational energy cork screwing into the ground, as being outward. There was a conversation that followed as a couple of us, including myself who experience the energy as inward.
I've had a couple conversations since and there has been a bit of playing around with the stance to focus on stability and also to see if I can create outward energy. The closest I was able to get to outward rotational energy was if I tuck in my pelvis, straightening out my lower spine, but I found my knees wanted to pull apart and it just didn’t feel great.
Thursday night’s class this week was very helpful as we talked in depth about the Goju-ryu stance and its rotational energy. Talking about the hip width of different body types and then standing up and experimenting with a narrow stance or wider stance helped me a lot. When I stood in a wider stance, I could start to feel the outward rotation of energy. And then as we went back-and-forth from a wider stance to a narrow stance, and experimented with different blocks in both outward and inward rotations, my understanding of this particular stance began to evolve. I started to feel and understand how the rotational energy could be manipulated as needed, depending on what my intention is in that moment.
As I continued to play with the Goju-ryu stance I was able to more easily change my rotational energy from inward to outward without having to widen my stance. This came about by straightening out my lower spine with a pelvic tilt. As soon as I do that, I feel the energy rotation change naturally. I also feel a slight adjustment needed with how my feet connect to the ground due to the change in skeletal alignment. So definitely not a change happening in a split second, but something to work towards for sure.
My go to at this point in time is still an inward rotation, and despite my skeletal frame I know I can develop flexibility within my natural Goju-ryu stance without having to change the width of my stance. I now see it as a much more flexible stance than I gave a credit for.
Logan isn't able to attend because of a schedule conflict so we always talk after the Thursday class at some point to go over what was discussed and catch him up. It was during this discussion that he told me he first realized he could change his rotational energy in the Goju-ryu stance from outward to inward during Black Belt class where we first worked on and discussed the direction of the energy. He found he was able to easily change his rotational energy (without changing the width of his stance) depending on his intention at the time. Something else that was brought up during our discussion is... could a person have an outward rotational energy on one side and an inward rotational energy on the other side while corkscrewing into the ground? Something to Ponder? I know I've certainly learned there is much more to this stance than I first thought and it's interesting to think there could be more possibilities than I'm currently aware of.
Discussion, the sharing of thoughts and ideas, and asking well thought out questions all help to broaden our understanding and awareness. Every one of us has something to contribute and when we work together with an open heart sharing our experiences, thoughts or ideas we begin to build healthy and beneficial collaboration that ultimately helps us to grow collectively. Our training and our journey may be individual to each of us, but I believe there is still a bit of responsibility on each of our parts to share and explore together instead of operating in a bubble.
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