Master Adams taught fundamentals of Snake on 4/3. Both I and one of the CIT students felt it was the best we had felt about our Snake movements, ever.

We've long practiced stomach circles as part of Snake, but the details of how to apply those circles has been somewhat vague, especially as it applies to compound movements like Snake Pierces the Sky and Snake Pierces the Eyes.

This lesson detailed those compound movements, then drilled the movements, both individually and with partner-provided resistance. Of course, much of the learning here is through doing, so words hardly suffice. But a few pointers:

Rootedness - Snake is the Earth animal. The Five Animals style is the Earth style. Thus Snake is "Earth of Earth" in the Daoist worldview--the purest and "most earthy" style. Connection to the ground is key, and gives the foundation to push off from in moving forward. The feet stay low to the ground--sliding even, especially the front foot.

Move from the Center - As the Earth animal, Snake is associated with the stomach. (For purists, it's actually even more strongly associated with the spleen, its Yin organ. The stomach is its Yang organ, but the one that is most often cited in the simplified animal-to-organ mapping used in kung fu.) Moving "from the stomach" is key. Your stomach cannot literally move you, of course, but the abdominal muscles in your stomach area can. The circling movements of the form should be powered by those.

Don't Move "From the Arms" - It's tempting to move the arms to express the form, but that's a weak approach. One way to practice moving from the center is to pull the arm into your body, with the elbow touching or almost touching your torso, then do the movements. You'll have to exaggerate the role of the abdominal muscles and body core to make this work--and that's the point. (This need to move from the body core, rather than the extremities, is one key way to develop kung fu power, and it's utterly essential to performing good Tai Chi.)

Strike Carefully - Snakes strike precisely, and often to the soft tissues. Be careful of your fingers. Keep them together, and the hand slightly bowed, to prevent injury on impact. Even better, when you strike up on hard surfaces such as rib cages, you may want to use fists rather than the flat hand of the form. When you strike to the eyes, throat, or other soft tissues, even then you will probably want to move forward with the fingers pointing up ("toward heaven"), then push them forward when your palm senses that you have touched the opponent. (This also gives you a little extra terminal motion--something always desirable in martial applications.)