A recent photo in Hutong Park, Beijing – Demonstrating the Bagua Single Palm Change

Hi folks,

A short post to say we are relaunching the Bagua Mastery Program for a limited time. We have printed an initial 100 units. We are closing the program before the New Year and will not reopen until 2013. Here is the link:

Bagua Mastery Program Launch

Everything furthers,

Bruce

Bruce with Gao Ji Wu – Current President of the Beijing Bagua AssociationIn Beijing last week I awoke super early and had the feeling I should go to the park to meet someone. I know not who! It is important to follow you hunches in life.

After rousing my wife, off we went to Tien Tan (Temple of Heaven) Park, where I used to learn and practice with Feng Zher Chiang over 25 years ago. I also spent a lot of time in the park practicing a rare form of Northern Preying Mantis which I did with Li Jing Ru who is also known for bagua.

Back then, Tien Tan Park was one of the largest and most important parks for martial artists to practice. Don’t ask me how but I have always had a knack for finding masters in the oddest ways.  Today it was extremely cold, but when you have a intuition you have to see where it leads you.

When we got there we asked and were directed towards where people are practicing some martial arts.  The energy didn’t feel right. We then met an elder man who pointed us in a different direction.  As we walked down the road through the park, we saw people practicing with steel whips, a traditional Chinese weapon. We were definitely getting closer.

Li and Bruce in Bagua Single Palm Change

Meeting a Fellow Bagua Practitioner

After a while in this area of the park we started talking to a gentleman named Li. His energy felt like a player in the scene.  I asked him where in the park the traditional bagua and tai chi people practice.  Li says Feng’s Chen style group is over there somewhere, but that Feng now has his own school and no longer comes to the park. Next it turns out Li does bagua.  He and his partner do two types of Shaolin practices – the Muslim one of Cha Chuan, and Pi Kua, brought to Taiwan by Liu Wen Chiao and taught in the U.S.

Li and I then engaged in a lively conversation about bagua’s technical points and then exchange hands with the single palm change for a bit.  Then he says, “You should really see my bagua brother who is much better than me.”

He makes a phone call to his bagua brother, Gao, who agrees to meet me.  The theoretical 30-minute trip to meet Gao takes over an hour, due to a comedy of errors typical of Beijing but we eventually arrive near his home in a small park.

Meeting Gao Ji Wu – President of the Beijing Bagua Association

As it turned out his ‘kung fu’ brother is Gao Ji Wu, the 5^th and current president of the Beijing Bagua Association. The Beijing Bagua Association was begun by his father’s close kung fu friend Li Zi Ming in the 1980s.  Not only that but when my first bagua teacher Wang Shu Jin came to Beijing to pay respects at Dong Hai Chuan’s grave (founder of the modern martial art of bagua), Gao was actually his host!  That really broke the ice.

Gao's Student Demonstrating a Tai Chi form

Gao asked me to demonstrate some bagua. Then his two female students did the same; one with the circular walking form, the other in a 64-hand linear form.  The former had just won a national tai chi competition in the 42 national wu shu style.  Then in the traditional manner, he emphasized to her the importance of intent or mind over the movements.

Quite unexpectedly, Gao then invited us to his home for lunch.  His wife prepared a wonderful meal.  While eating I interviewed him for a new tai chi website, which we are currently developing.  In the middle of our conversation, while sitting down, we crossed hands lightly as he emphasized intent and the switching hand changes of ba gua’s single palm change.

Gao and Bruce talking Bagua

Preserving Bagua for Future Generations

Gao explained that his grandfather was a close disciple of the Yin Fu style of bagua.  Likewise, his father was also an expert in hsing-i, Yang Style tai chi and the Da Cheng Chuan (I-Chuan) of Wang Xian Zai, who created the eight standing postures sytem.

Gao’s family’s Gao Style Bagua combines all four forms.  It emphasizes standing postures, forms and fighting applications, especially the switching hands of the single palm change, which I Chuan also favors.

Gao considers his prime responsibility is to help preserve this aspect of Chinese culture, bagua and the internal martial arts,  for future generations.  This is a personal perspective I also share and the primary reason I created the Bagua Mastery Program over the past decade.  Bagua is a unique cultural treasure of China, spanning thousands of years in development that has tremendous health, martial and meditation applications.

Gao is a very kind and gracious 70 year-old individual.  He showed us his photo collections, including a rare picture of his father as a youth with a muscle pose, and another with five of the greats of the Beijing internal martial arts scene, including Feng Zhi Qiang of the Chen style and Sun Lu Tang’s daughter.

There were also photos of three of Gao’s foreign students in Beiing. This included the time he was invited to New York and Thailand to teach Tom Bisio and Vince Black of the American Tang Shou Dao Association.  On his bookshelf were two books in English on Gao’s circular and linear ba gua, with wonderful photographs.  The books were published by Tom Bisio in New York.

The third student was Nigel Sutton, the well-known martial artist from England, who was first Gao’s student when he attended a University in Beijing.  He currently lives in Malaysia and has invited Gao to teach there.

5th Generation Lineage Holders from Dong Hai Chuan

Gao repeated three times that he felt it important I understood that both of us are in a direct line from bagua’s founder Dong Hai Chuan, 5th bagua generation.  In my case, the lineage derives from Wang Shu Jin and Liu Hung Chieh.

In Beijing and throughout the traditional bagua world, it is very important as to which Bei Fen or generation you belong.  The lower the generation, the greater the chance that your bagua art is pure, and the higher degree of respect to which you are naturally entitled.

As with his student in the park, Gao constantly emphasized to me the importance of intent rather than forceful muscular movement or movement alone in the internal martial arts.  This is the perspective of the traditional internal martial arts of China and we both agreed.

Both Gao and his wife look very young for their ages.  After about three hours, we finally took pictures of the four of us and went on our way. This was a really fortunate event and was great to spend time with Gao.

From China,

Bruce

P.S. I appreciate those who help by clicking the Facebook Like button and or even better Facebook Share button because it helps spread the news.

2011 Tai Chi Instructor Training Group

Hi folks,

I am still traveling and currently in Beijing where I am getting ready for an interview with China Radio International. They will be filming me in the park doing tai chi. I have been making short posts about my trip on Facebook if you are interested.

Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in China but tonight we are thinking of going out for a Peking duck as the closest substitute. If you celebrate the holiday wherever you are located, I hope you enjoy your turkey rather than the dish we saw on the menu yesterday in a restaurant across from our hotel, Student Addicted to Bullfrog. I am not sure what that is but we decided to give it a pass.

Today I wanted to share my gratitude for a few things.

We just shipped the last module of the Bagua Mastery Program. I would like to thank all those who purchased the program and support the continuation of this amazing art.  This Bagua Program took over 3+ years to produce and to my knowledge is the most extensive material ever compiled for the art of bagua. The program has over 35 DVDs, 15 Audio CDs, a book that was published through North Atlantic/Random House and four manuals with over 1,200+ pages of detailed text.

I want to send a special thanks to those who helped produce the Bagua Mastery Program including: Bill Walters (for filming and production), Heather Hale (for editing the main text), Bill Ryan (for editing and making sure every detail was correct), Thomas Herington (for design and post-production of the 100+ hours of video), Mountain Livingston (for his diligent efforts in project management and editing), Richard Taubinger (for concept and strategy), the EA film crew Patrick Hewlett, Joe Markendale, Gee Loose and Chris Redmond, and to all the instructors who participated at the bagua events including but not limited to Paul Cavel, Craig Barnes, Jess OBrien, Eric Peters, Isaac Kamins, Jamie Dibden and Lee Burkins and to my wife Caroline for her endless dedication.

I also want to offer deep gratitude to all my students for practicing and especially those who are teaching to make the world a better place. Those who make teaching a full-time or even part-time profession mainly do it because of the joy of helping others. This is a powerful way to live your life.

Lastly, I am forever grateful to all those teachers who shared their knowledge with me especially my last teacher, Taoist Master Liu Hung Chieh.

I want to mention that we have just posted the teaching schedule through July of next year. I will be teaching fewer events but have a Dragon and Tiger Qigong Retreat/Instructor Training in the US-Maui (first time in many years) and am offering a 3-week Taoist Meditation Retreat,  the most extensive training I have ever offered on the topic of meditation in England.

You can view the 2012 events by clicking here.

In gratitude,

Bruce

- Please make a comment to share what you are grateful for today?

Energy Arts Instructor Lee Burkins demonstrating bagua with motion capture monitor

The internal martial art of Bagua Zhang and the highest levels of Tai Chi are ultimately based on the sphere.

If you look at a circle, you will see it is two dimensional. This circle effectively moves on one plane. A sphere infinitely combines circles, moving on three primary planes — allowing for movement up, down, forward, back, left and right.

In bagua zhang, anytime you move your arm or leg, take a step or turn your waist, there should always be a sense that you’re not only moving in front of you, but simultaneously to the side of you, and to the back of you.

All these motions of front, back, and side, are a slightly more advanced level of bagua zhang, but are ultimately what you’re aiming for. So when your hand goes forward, something is also happening in back of you, and something is also happening to your left and your right side.

This eventually creates a sphere, which is the strong point of many tai chi styles, such as Wu Style tai chi.

Essential in this spherical motion is keeping your arms and the area between your legs from collapsing, while also paying attention to your thighs and your pelvis, and all the upper parts of your body. Be sure that they are always expanding equally in all directions, and that you become very conscious of what your back is doing, as well as what your ribs and your sides are doing.

In this motion, your arm or your leg is moving on a sphere; going from the edge of the sphere into the center of the sphere, and out to periphery of the sphere again. In and out, in and out. This is very different in many ways than the circular movement found in some larger styles of tai chi, such as Yang style.

Spherical Motion in Bagua ultimately does have to be taught by a teacher because although you might comprehend it intellectually, you must get these movements into your body. It’s a bit like someone explaining how to play a complex piece of music, and attempting to play that piece without sheet music simply based on their explanation. There is more to this motion than can be explained in intellectual terms.

The  important thing about all Spherical Motion, which is primary to both Bagua and Tai Chi, is that every motion you do emanates equally in all directions – front, back and sidewards. You won’t feel just one arm moving spherically, rather you will feel both your arms, your legs and every part of your body, emanating in all directions.

As you practice Spherical Motion, it will begin to stretch every part of your body equally. In the commonly practiced circular motion, one part of your body may have a circular feeling such as your arm, however, that may not encompass your legs, it may not encompass your weight.

Even if only your arms and your weight have a spherical sense, this will stretch everything from your spine and your internal organs equally in all directions – forward, back, and sidewards, as well as up and down. It is critical that the pressures from your arm should always be going up, down, forward, back, left, and right.

A radically different and incredibly positive effect is created when all this is combined. However, with this said, it’s usually required that people practice circular motion, because very circular motions must be experienced before spherical ones are possible. For example, spherical motions in Bagua are primarily done by intermediate practitioners and not by beginning practitioners.

If you are practicing Tai Chi or Bagua, the first step is to start to make everything more smooth and circular. Once that is done the real game begins as you move from the circle to the sphere. The level of experience to pull this off varies and the way that you get there can be many, which is why both bagua and tai chi are called ‘arts’ rather than sciences. This is also why they are lifetime practices that get deeper and deeper according to your own level of passion, enthusiasm and commitment.

Stay good,

Bruce

Everything changes. Every moment in time is unique unto itself. Every moment in time carries a shadow of the past and in many ways the future is nothing more than a projection of the past. What happened before is going to happen again, although in exactly what way is hard to predict.

The nature of change is that you must have the capacity for it.

Whether you’re trying to go from one qigong movement to the next, from walking the bagua circle to changing directions, going from one meditative state to another or going from one event in life to another, you develop the ability to change.

Some people are afraid of change. Why? They are afraid because they’re fixated on something. They’re stuck in what happened in their childhood; they’re stuck in good or bad experiences they had; they’re stuck because they read something in a book and somehow created a mental picture in their mind that this or that should be a particular way; or perhaps they’re stuck because they have been influenced and captured by psychic forces that exist. People can get stuck and become fixated for 10,000 reasons.

Since for many people the biggest fear they have in life is change—they can’t or won’t—the primary focus of living the I Ching is the consideration of change. First and foremost is that you have to somehow arrive at the ability to move past being stuck so you can “flow.”

Second is that most of us take all appearances as reality; we see an object and we think it’s solid, although physicists tell us that this is not the case, that matter is actually nothing more than a bunch of fluxing quantum particles. Yet we take everything we see as solid. We take the idea that I’m here as solid. We take the idea that you’re here as solid, what we did as solid—as if it all exists. Well, wait a second—what is here is just coming together because of a specific mix of times, places and conditions.

Oh, so you think you’ve seen the most beautiful man/woman in the world. Excuse me, have a look at him/her 75 years later and see if you still think so. He/she didn’t go anywhere but changed occurred, his/her body and face changed. Take a person who you consider as the sweetest person in the world, and put him/her under the most horrific circumstances and he/she might turn into the nastiest individual you’re ever going to meet. Change happens. Equally take a person who’s the nastiest person in the world, let him/her engage in enough meditation, for example, and he/she can turn into the nicest person in the world.

So, what ultimately allows this change to happen, stabilize and become somewhat continuous? Somewhere amongst all this change there is something that doesn’t change, there is permanence—a permanence that carries no shadow.

The ability to let go of where you’re fixated and be able to be present to what is always there is what allows change. To understand the flow between what changes and the permanence is the first real big step to dealing with change.

Photo by belindah of Maui Jaws 2010

A popular statement is that life is a living I Ching, but what does that mean? Simply that everything is constantly changing. A conservative may have a fear of change, a liberal may have a fear that things aren’t going to change the way they want. Everybody’s got a fear of change.

To get past that fear you have to somehow move into the realm of emptiness, otherwise you can’t stop resisting change and you will continue to become stuck in various ways time and again. If you think something is you’re going to have a really hard time flowing through it. You get stuck on what you think or feel about it.

The next step in truly living the I Ching is the capacity to recognize the energies that are at play in a situation. Sometimes the energies at play allow everything to go incredibly well. Sometimes the energies at play don’t care what you do because no matter what you do it’s going to be a mess.

In my last post I talked about the fact that the warrior spirit enables us to accept that a certain amount of luck is involved in everything. In the case of a spiritual warrior, he/she neither assigns too much credit nor excessive blame to him/herself or others for successes and failures. Humility arises when we acknowledge that we do not have all of the answers. As a result two people can have the same talents and abilities, yet one will become incredibly successful while the other can never achieve anything more than a minimal life.

For fun, let’s say you had two brilliant people in the field of computers. Let’s assume the successful person is Bill Gates. Both people had the same intelligence, same talents and so on, but Bill Gates was consistently in the right place, at the right change, at the right time. Many variables had to come together in order for the changes that occurred to happen—events that were bigger than anything in Bill’s life.

Of course he’d love to take complete credit for his wild success as many in his position might. He walked in the right door at the right time and got this or that contract. He could have just as easily, at a critical juncture, had an important company refuse to buy his product, or had a boss who decided to cut everybody from their jobs leaving him unemployed for a year without any forewarning.

Then again, some of the dumbest most unintelligent people in the world have walked into gold mines and oil fields. In Bill’s case it all worked out. You could say it was the old Asian phrase that was made famous in the book Tai Pan, “His joss mighty good,” which means he was lucky.

In the midst of all the moving and changing, the question is: Can you go into that empty space in the middle of the I Ching and recognize, without getting too upset regardless of the outcome, that whatever the changes are, they’re just a play of the energies in the universe?

You must continue forward, do what you can and not allow yourself to become stuck. How it all works out is the living I Ching where you can go deeply into the energies of the trigrams that comprise it, all of which are real flows that can and do happen in life. In this way you can begin to understand how energies move and the permanence of emptiness from which everything is derived.

At the end of the road you free yourself and that’s truly the living I Ching—it’s about the way life really happens. Then the questions become: Can you recognize the subtlety of the energies? Do you have the capacity to recognize the emptiness? Do you have the perseverance, the warrior spirit, necessary to go through what it takes? If you do life is easier and if you don’t life can be harder.

Two people in the same circumstances can see things very differently. The first can respond to unexpected difficulties with “Oh well, what are you going to do?” and dust their shoulders off to give things a go again. While another person can spend the next 20 years of his life tearing himself up, hating everybody and everything because his expectations weren’t met.

He has become fixated and can’t change in the way the universe is changing, whereas the first person is able to change with the universe. This is not to say that downstream things will always go better for the first person who-he may have something even worse happen to him. However, what you can say is that he has internal freedom.

All anyone can possibly do is the best they can. You may be better at a given skill than anybody in the world at a particular moment in time. However, given the way things change, at a different moment in time you could just as easily not be the best. In the martial arts game, for example, people like to compare one opponent to another and then assume that the one that seems to have absolute confidence will beat the other.

Well, what about all the times someone had absolute confidence and lost? If everyone always hit the jackpot every time they felt they would, well, frankly speaking, a lot of people could be as rich as Bill Gates.

In fighting you might be capable of beating every person in a given competition and clearly be better than every one of them, yet at a moment in time an energy can come up and for some reason your key doesn’t fit in the lock. Whatever it is, something happens, all of a sudden the stars shine on your opponent. Something can activate inside him or her bringing things together-that person wins and you lose. Maybe it’s true that the next five million times you would beat him every single time, but not this time. And so the I Ching churns.

In the West, if things work out and everything goes well, we follow it up with “I’m the best,”—blah, blah, blah. Well, okay, but is it really true? It could be that changes having nothing to do with you led to the victory. Then again, if you take an Eastern approach of karma, you could potentially live thousands of lifetimes. Thus it might just be that in this life you have the spotlight that illuminates everything around you with easy success, but equally you can go through thousands of lives where this is just not the case.

So all you can say is that events happen in life, regardless of whether or not you stress out, flip out and obsessively try to make things happen the way you want. However, if you don’t prepare and opportunity comes along, then you probably won’t be able to use it. Then again, that doesn’t mean that if you are prepared in every way that opportunity is going to knock. In terms of the I Ching, the whole point of living life is not about wining or losing, even though a lot of people believe that’s all their lives are about.

The Chinese would call this an overemphasis on saving or having face. My teacher Liu once said something that I’ve never forgotten because it shifted my entire view of life. After something happened to me, I expressed to him that it would have been better if I had won. He advised me to make a choice right at that moment between one of two things. He said: “You can have face or you can be happy.” He explained that I was going to make this choice millions of times in my life, so I had better know which I wanted.

You might have heard the phrase “Be careful what you wish for because you just might just get it.” When most think “I want this,” it usually is in terms of one single point, but what about the 10,000 things that are connected to it? It’s equally possible that getting what you thought you had wanted might make your life completely miserable. So there are these different shades of grey that come in different directions around these subjects. The living I Ching is simply to learn to first become comfortable with change and later to learn how the energies are evolving so you optimize your ability to flow with them.

It’s also to recognize what matters and what doesn’t. The Chinese have two great phrases: one is called wu suo wei, meaning it’s neither here nor there; the other is yo suo wei, meaning it’s important. Not too many things in life are important. So maybe you don’t get what you wanted, but then again so what? The sky didn’t fall, the earthquake didn’t shake down your house, Martians didn’t land and eat everybody. Now we begin to see the many ways people get fixated. Ultimately there is no freedom, no genuine happiness while there is fixation.

As you rid yourself of fixations and begin seeing the nature of how fixations work, you can surf the tides of change to the best of your ability. Sometimes a situation can be surfed well, equally, at other times there may no way to do so. We simply have to accept that the best we can hope to do is try to surf with the least amount of grief. This is the living I Ching.

At the end of the day, who has anything besides their life? Are your possessions your life? Is your bank account your life? Is your life the praise everybody does or does not give you? There is something inside you that is free, that is not dependent on your external circumstances, which are nothing more than changes. Everything in the external world is about changes. A rock in a sandstorm turns to dust; the dust moves around and turns into dirt; a tree springs from the dirt; the wood from the tree goes away and turns into water.

Everything is constantly one thing morphing into another. You might only see what it is at one point in time rather than all its changes in the grand scheme of things. If you look at the nature of change, which causes a lot of people’s fears—whatever they may be—you reach a point where you can flow through all the changes of life. You begin to recognize the space that’s free in the middle. Most fears simply vanish.

So, you do the best you can and you can’t ask more of yourself, and that’s all there is to it. What you will find is a sense of the universality that pervades everything—something which is ultimately and absolutely critical for a genuine sense of compassion to arise. Real compassion is not dependent on any circumstance. Christians say, “Jesus and everything is love,” Buddhists say, “Compassion and wisdom are one” and Taoists say, “Everything furthers.”

This is a very fundamental point in terms of the I Ching, for truly living and experiencing your life. It all boils down to this: How much do you want to learn and how skilled do you want to become?

Bruce with Taoist Master Liu Hung Chieh

The most important thing in any martial arts is not what style you study, or the brand name, but rather the level of fighting skill of the individual.

A world-class racing driver in a so-so car will beat a poor driver in the world’s best car. Only when two drivers are of equal skill will the technology of the car be the determining factor in who wins the race.

Each martial arts school has its special kung fu or “skill technology.” For example, the lineage of Tung Hai-Ch’uan became famous for its special kung fu techniques. All students could learn the movements, but only a few learned the kung fu techniques that had bagua zhang’s unique flavor and power. This kung fu is genuinely internal and is a subject of doing, not talking.

Many people today, even so-called famous teachers in China and the U.S., cannot apply traditional bagua zhang techniques to unrehearsed fighting. Either they perform movement arts or they do bagua zhang movements using the power, flavor and kung fu techniques of Shaolin. An excellent external martial artist will always beat a poor or so-so bagua zhang practitioner.

There are monastic forms of bagua that are purely about chi cultivation and meditation, making no claims to be martial arts, although some also make those claims.

Even within the internal martial arts family, it takes years of training to clearly separate bagua, tai chi and hsing-i in a manner that each retains its own separate characteristics.

Each of my three bagua teachers was always after me to separate the three, and it took me almost 20 years of study and practice to do so. Learning the movements alone took two to three years and when I finally got to the stage of learning the kung fu techniques, it always became much more difficult and satisfying.

However, fighting is only one part of the art. Bagua is also a purely Taoist art. Tai chi is different–it may or may not be Taoist, but its movements without question came from Buddhist Shaolin. Tai chi, as it descended from the Chen Village, was not used as a meditation technique; it was simply a method of destroying your opponent with extreme efficiency. Only at higher levels could it become meditation.

Most people aren’t capable of practicing tai chi as meditation at the beginning or intermediate levels. Chen Style Tai Chi was more the equivalent of an AK-47; it was essentially a military weapon.

Bagua zhang is a different matter; it is completely Taoist. The whole method of bagua zhang is manifesting the Eight Energies of the I Ching inside your body and finding that still place that does not change. It is about meditation, but Tung Hai-Ch’uan didn’t teach it to everyone because not all of his students had the capacity to understand it. From this meditation base, the real function of bagua zhang is to make Heaven and Earth actually reside inside your own body. Eventually what is inside of you and what is outside of you will come together, and that is when you have joined with nature–the TAO.

A picture of a tree is not a tree. The I Ching represents in written form the energies from which the Universe is constructed. However, bagua zhang practitioners are not concerned with these intellectual or symbolic representations.

They are concerned with directly experiencing these Universal Energies within their own bodies and minds. If you establish these energies inside your own body and mind, you will personally understand the realities behind these symbols. The goal of the pre-birth physical exercises and sitting meditations of bagua zhang is to directly experience the energies of the eight trigrams.

One of the things that makes bagua zhang unique is the fact that it starts off from that meditation basis. Fighting is nothing more than manipulating those energies for a purpose. Using bagua zhang to develop the practitioner’s capacity for meditation–to develop the ability to be simultaneously multi-dimensional, to be able to simultaneously manipulate things inside your body and inside your mind as you are practicing–these are things the average human being doesn’t even know exists.

For millennia only formal disciples were taught inner meditation aspects of bagua zhang.  My teacher, Liu Hung Chieh, learned it from Ma Shih-Ching (also known as Ma Kuei) who learned it from Tung Hai-Ch’uan, and Liu taught them to me. When I was studying in Taiwan and Hong Kong I did all kinds of energy practices, but I never really learned the real meditation art of bagua zhang. In fact, I never thought I would because it is a very challenging subject and few teachers will share it.

I’m open with my teaching because the healing aspect of bagua zhang is incredibly valuable and I want to make it widely available to help counteract the looming healthcare tsunami. It is a real problem that few acknowledge even as there are shortages of doctors, nurses and other professionals, and services are denied due to lack of resources for some of those with the greatest need.

Bagua Zhang is in the throes of death and future generations are in danger of losing the powerful benefits offered by this unique art form–not to mention aspects of their cultural heritage. Universal peace and brotherhood will ultimately be found through spiritual means like meditation and not through war.

We are going to offer a few more copies and reopen the Program until these copies sell out. You can learn more at the page here and pre-order one of the remaining copies here:  http://www.energyarts.com/offer/bagua-mastery-program-launch

This is a great video clip. In my book The Power of Internal Martial Arts and Chi on page 242 I tell the story about when I first meet my main teacher and Taoist Master Liu Hung Chieh:

“On one of my first days with Liu, he asked about my martial arts background. Liu said that I looked big and strong, which I was, being over 200 pounds. As a small test, he got up and put his hand in the Bagua Single Palm Change posture and asked me to move it. I could not. I couldn’t even move one of his fingers. This man never weighed more than 110 pounds and I could not move his finger with my entire bulk despite all the skill and power I had developed over twenty years of training. Like Wang Shu Jin, Liu said that having chi was more important than having size, youth or strength.”

Liu taught me his system for bagua which I have just released with the Bagua Mastery Program.

*To view clips in high quality, start playing the video and then change the 360p setting in the bottom right to 720p*

Taoist Lineage Holder Bruce Frantzis demonstrates the energies of the single, double, and smooth palm changes and how they are used in martial arts fighting applications.

This footage was taken from Bruce’s Bagua Double Palm Change event in Atherton, California.

The full course will be available for purchase after editing.
Find out more at http://www.EnergyArts.com

During the summer, in early June, I’m going to be teaching the baguazhang double palm change in California at Menlo College.

We will cover how to do the Bagua Double Palm Change and we’ll also be covering some of the baguazhang single palm change  because the single palm change is also part of double palm change.

At the end of every one of the eight main baguazhang palm changes you’re always reverting back to single palm change. You do it differently depending upon which of the eight palm changes you’re dealing with because each one of them relates to the energy of the trigram of the I Ching.

Earth and Heaven Trigrams

The baguazhang double palm change is related to the I Ching trigrams of Earth and Heaven. Whereas the single palm change is a very bright yang energy, or a pure light, the double palm change is about the sinking of energy into the Earth from Heaven.

The bagua double palm change brings this energy from heaven down in an extremely heavy fashion especially from a martial art perspective for fighting applications.  It’s this heavy smothering energy as well as the ability to drop down to the ground to move towards the Earth that make this such an important energy to manifest while fighting.

Whereas the bagua single palm change is very yang, the double palm change is very yin. It’s the beginning of the four palm changes which have to do with mixing both yin and yang, but primarily yin and with a small part yang.

With the single palm change you go to the third, fifth and seventh palm changes.  They’re also mixed palms however they are more about the primarily yang energy with some ying.

Bagua for Health, Meditation and Martial Arts

I will teach this course from three perspectives. As in most courses there will be a group there who will focus just on the health aspects. From another perspective I’ll also be showing the martial art applications. Lastly I’ll also be trying to show how some of this would have some relevance to meditation.

This summer there’s definitely a larger emphasis on the martial arts than there is on the meditation because of the nature of this specific palm change. So if you are into martial arts then this would be a great course for you.

Also some people have asked that I show some of the stuff about the third baguazhang palm change and the wind trigram. The third palm change is very much about playing with the energy and riding the waves of the energy around the etheric body. Exactly how far we’ll go with that and where it will go will depend upon the group and what people are up for and where they want to happen.

If you’re interested in marital arts then both the Bagua double palm change and the wind palm change are important. I have not taught these palm changes for many years.

Course Information

Whatever your interest, this course is going to have lots of new material. We have a few slots open and if you want to find out more and register learn more  online at:   Bagua Double Palm Change or you can call our office at 415 454-5243

Look forward to seeing those who are able to make it!