Sloppy Zhang

And that's fine, but in that situation, you aren't practicing the martial art of bagua. You are practicing bagua meditation, you are practicing bagua circle walking, bagua energetics, bagua whatever. But you are no longer practicing the MARTIAL art of bagua. Internal martial arts are still martial arts. If you decide to cut out the martial aspects of the art (even if they still maintain lots of spiritual components), then it's not a martial art. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Just don't try to fool yourself or try to fool others by saying stuff like, "well it's a superior martial art, it'll work when I need it to", because, well, a LOT of people think that about their art, and if they are lucky, they only get the crap beat out of them. Martial training involves martial training. Even if you have the most spiritual martial art in the world, if it's a martial art, it deserves to be treated as such. If you choose not to do so, you choose not to practice the martial arts. Which, again, is fine.

Again, you cannot appraise an internal martial art by what it looks like externally. There are more forces at work. It's not just "stepping with toes first", or something like that. A lot more forces at work. Frantzis on bagua stepping He also teaches walking method in "The Great Stillness".

I'd say most of the styles that can trace their lineage back to one of the originators/higher practitioners can be pretty credible. So Chen style, Yang Style, Wu style (both), and Sun style would be safest bets. However, further down the line than that, probably iffy, unless you can trace the lineage back to another legitimate source. I know that some style say they can trace their stuff to Wudang and the like, but I haven't really looked into that kind of stuff. My initial feeling is that there could be a lot more fake stuff than in other places, since it's such a big name, so a lot of people could be trying to cash in on just that. Also, look at how long the instructor trained with, and with whom. Learning the form itself isn't that hard. Learning how to apply it in combat, or learning the qigong/neigong aspects? Much, MUCH more difficult, subtle, and specific. Credible teachers are usually pretty open about who they studied with, for how long, what they know, and to some extent, what they don't know. They can list pretty clearly what you can expect to learn in your study with them. It's a little iffy when prospective teachers don't really tell you specifically what they learned, and what they teach. If they stick with vague, sweeping categories.... be cautious. So unless a teacher says specifically, "I can train you in the martial/qigong/neigong aspects of tai chi", then they probably can't. I know B.K. Frantzis says that, and I think he probably means it. Though you'll notice there aren't a lot of people who are even making that claim. It's pretty high level stuff.

Does the school have a website? Maybe some of us here can take a look. Though I don't know much about the subject myself, I'm sure plenty of people around here do

Hey Jess O, thanks for adding some perspective! I certainly agree with the point that most people, at best, are just going to become mediocre fighters. And seeing as how lots of people don't live in situations were violence is common, even a mediocre level is probably far above what you'd need in your entire life! It's fine if you say you don't want to fight, you don't train to fight, and you don't know, or care, what the martial applications are or if they are effective. But for me, that's no longer a MARTIAL art. That's just a meditative/energy art. B.K. Frantzis mentions (from my recollection) that there are monastic traditions of bagua that do not come in contact with martial arts at all. They are no doubt valuable and have contributed to the advancement of humans. But that's still not fighting. Just be honest. With others, and especially with yourself. Know what you are studying for, and know your own limitations. And tell people what the boundaries are. Make sure YOU know what your boundaries are. Otherwise you might think, "ah, I will flow with the tao and persevere!" and you instead wind up with a knife in your gut. For me, fighting is valuable. Not in a sense of, "hey I'm going to go out and look for a fight", but, more like, "fighting has occurred throughout the history of civilization, and occurs on a daily basis in the present, I am going to be prepared." It's a precaution. I'd like to know that in certain situations, I'd be able to protect myself and possibly others, even if it doesn't happen, just as I'd like to know that in the event that the power goes out, I'll have a flashlight with full batteries.

Yes, but how do they work? If they work because some dude has more muscles than you and beats the shit out of you, well.... I don't really consider that to be in the same classification of internal martial arts!

Mind sharing? Or did he put it in his book? And my question is: where did he learn these palm changes? Did he just make them up because he saw them somewhere, and decided to make some of his own? What experience did he have to do that? What did he train prior to bagua? The bio on his site said he learned since he was a boy, well who did he learn from? Looking for evidence of his lineage turns up, well, nothing! Different sects do have internal processes, but they share a common focus on the focus of the structures of the body, focusing on stretching or working with certain body parts in different ways than other arts. Kinda like how karate develops you in a certain way, boxing develops you in a certain way, the internal martial arts develop you in a certain way. They claim to focus on working the tendons, sinews, and other stuff. He Jinbao talks about developing muscle in a stretching, twisting way, rather than a contracting sort of way. These kinds of things (but I don't study anatomy so I don't know how much is real and how much is bullshit I just know that doing internal structure work taught by Frantzis and other internal methods feels VERY different than just hitting the gym). This would be a great time to say where you got this from. I'm as anti-traditionalist as you get, I hate the way that people use tradition to lord over people. HOWEVER, I cannot deny the fact that through traditional systems, a coherent body of work, research, application, and revision has allowed methods to develop and be refined to the point that they are today. I don't look to tradition because they are the "authority", but because tradition has given the study of a certain art for GENERATIONS, as opposed to the single lifetime that someone who just develops an art from scratch has (though perhaps that one person has had exposure to lineages themselves!)

I suppose you don't keep a flash light on hand with a fresh pair of batteries, because you don't put out the energy that the lights are going to go out, or there is going to be a storm. I suppose you don't lock your door at night, because you don't put out the energy that someone is going to break into your house, and do who knows what? I suppose you don't have a fire escape plan, because you don't put out the energy that the building you're in is going to burn down? I suppose you don't check both ways before you cross the street, because you don't put out the energy to get hit by a car? The view you are putting forward is short sighted and rather naive. Just because you learn how to fight and defend yourself, and you make sure that what you are doing works, does NOT mean you are "looking for a fight". In fact, many systems of self defense teach conflict avoidance and de-escalation techniques. Actually getting into a fight is the absolute LAST resort, and should be avoided at ALL costs. But sometimes it just happens. That's good. And if you live in a developed country, use some common sense, and avoid risk areas, it's very likely that you can go your entire life without even being in a fight (well, at least one you don't put yourself in) trained or untrained. Yet as the saying goes, chance favors the prepared mind. I'd rather think ahead, and prepare adequately for an encounter that might happen, though I know that it very well may not ever happen. Better to have, and not need, than need, and not have. If you think that is inviting danger upon myself, well... You better take the batteries out of your emergency flashlight, unlock your door, forget your fire escape plan, and quit looking both ways before you cross the street, because guess what? You are inviting natural disaster, burglary, fire, and motor vehicle accidents to you and those around you!

Thanks! It is subtle, but it is NOT mystical. Look at the videos I linked about the Yin style bagua daoyin. Look specifically at the standing postures. The lion posture, for example, looks the same whether you do "lion opens mouth" or "lion holds ball". But the internal actions are drastically different. In one you are stretching the arms so they extend out. In the other, you are tightening the arms so they pull in. Both look the same, and the differences are in what you are doing with small amounts of musculature and structure. Now if you don't know this, and just stand there, then you aren't doing either, and are accomplishing nothing other than getting your arms tired. These are subtle, but very REAL aspects of training that occur on a PHYSICAL level. It has taken years, possibly generations, to discover, develop, and refine these techniques. You might be able to discover it yourself, but it is VERY unlikely. Best way to learn this is to discover a lineage that HAS come up with these techniques, find the people teaching, and practice your ass off. Or, do lots of more conventional training- weight lifting, other conditioning, find more conventional fighting methods- karate, boxing, judo, muay thai, brazilian jujutsu, etc, become a good as hell fighter, and then start walking in circles. You'll be a damn good fighter, can talk about links to symbolism all you want. Will that make your art bagua? Will it have the subtleties of internal martial arts? I would say no, personally. But see that's the thing, the high level internal arts are not internal just because they use a certain symbolism, philosophy, or principles, but they have very REAL training methods that are very specific, subtle, hard to distinguish from the untrained eye, but very different than anything else out there. The only way it seems "esoteric" is because not many people know about it, and even people who know OF it do not KNOW it. It's more than symbolism. It is the entire way of training mentally and physically. If I just wanted something that used symbols that I liked, and all the right keywords, but used training methods I'm already familiar with, well, learning this shit wouldn't be so hard! I'd hit the gym, chug some protein shakes, walk in a circle, learn some BJJ, judo, and muay thai, and beat probably 90% of the people in many "traditional" martial arts communities. But that's ignoring the less than 1% that have such a highly refined skill, which is what I'm truly looking for.

Sometimes fighting is necessary. Sometimes people will come in, and pick a fight, even if there is none. Sometimes they will hurt, or at least attempt to hurt, those you care about, or even people you don't know but otherwise have nothing to do in that situation. Sometimes they will come for you, by virtue of the fact that you do nothing other than exist in their line of sight. When that happens, I for one want a martial art that can actually DO something. Because flowery words, good intention, and a superior attitude isn't going to get you out of trouble once the shit hits the fan. And nobody come up with some crap about "oh well in the modern days, combat is fought with guns and rockets, hand to hand fighting is outdated." BULLSHIT! TONS of fights occur on a hand to hand, or small weapons scale (close range knives, blunt objects, etc etc). There are a lot of street smart people out there. They aren't going to run around shooting people up. Guns make noise, bring attention, are traceable, etc etc. Fists aren't so much. Plenty of guys out there who will hurt you, or kill you, bare handed. If an art like bagua, or other internal MARTIAL arts, not only can bring health, but bring superior fighting prowess, well, shouldn't that be tested as rigorously as possible? I feel it should. Otherwise you are doing yourself and others a grave disservice.

Looking at nature, there's about as much variety in it as there is between humans.... maybe so much so that it's hard to draw a one to one comparison?

Mind saying why? I respect you too I don't actually practice any of the yin style traditions, but the yin style system seems to be a very broad, yet detailed system, and it's a great resource for martial, meditative, and healing techniques. As a side note, they do say that if you want to start out in Yin style, they normally suggest starting with the lion system. Then learning the unicorn system (though that's not on DVD to my knowledge). Lion represents the pure yang trigram, unicorn represents pure yin, so once you get a feel for both of those, you can combine the two and easily pick up the other animal systems. Although each animal system contains aspects of every other system, since the entire animal system encompasses each of the 64 hexagrams in the I Ching. But even that's not the full extent of the yin style that He Jinbao teaches. I practice most of B.K. Frantzis' material that he's put out. Mostly just working on basic circle walking right now. I was really torn for the entire week that his bagua mastery program was launching. It was such a great chance to get access to that material, but at the same time, it was VERY expensive, something I just can't afford right now. Though I still have a bit of stuff to work on that he's already produced, I feel like I'm starting to get to the end of the published material. hopefully missing the bagua mastery program launch was not a bad decision

I remember pre-moderator days, and there was some pretty lol-worthy stuff posted here! Sure, a lot of it was probably personal attacks and highly offensive stuff but.... still..... some pretty interesting and creative stringing together of various offensive language But I guess if you cut that out you can, in a way, make sure the "quality" stuff is the stuff that sticks around. But you never know, there are some gems mixed in every once in a while! Crazy wisdom is still wisdom.

Ah, thanks for filling in the background... I'll have to think that over, as I'm not initially sure how I feel about it...

It's not the principles you use- it's HOW you use the principles. Running backwards is yielding. You are yielding to the opponent's strength. But that type of yielding usually makes you lose. Is that the yielding of tai chi? No, it is not. You have to know the methods of tai chi which allow you to yield and still win! These are specific, and have been refined for generations. If you do not know them, you do not know tai chi. You can do the form, you can repeat the principles. But if you don't know HOW to apply them, you aren't doing tai chi. If you do kick boxing as soon as you get into a fight, you aren't doing tai chi, even if you do solo form practice your entire life. That was my point. This jiulong bagua guy might know how to fight. He might be trained in fighting. He might have a lot of students who can kick the crap out of a lot of other styles' students. They might walk in a circle, and apply circular techniques when they are fighting. They can dress up in robes and carry around the I Ching. They can say, "we have no forms, you need to flow with the ever changing energy of the situation". But that doesn't mean they know, or are practicing, bagua. That was my point. Glad to hear you're looking into the phoenix system Apparently that was the favored system of the late Dr. Xie Peiqi, who was the lineage holder prior to the current one, He Jinbao.

Because there are various methods of INTERNAL training that compose internal martial arts. Methods of conditioning the body, both through standing and moving methods. Look at some of these videos: here, I suggest watching the second one, because he dives right into some standing exercises. He does a great job of illustrating, right off the bat, how two postures that look the same externally can be doing two radically different things. Also, there are processes going on inside the body which are nearly impossible to see (such as how the ribs/side are being stretched in a posture). There are processes of training the body which are quite subtle and hard to see unless you know they are there. Even if you copy the movement, you might not even been engaging in the processes that the movement is doing. The website he provides does not give enough evidence that he knows any sort of internal processes, knows any methods of training specific internal processes, or has ever had a teacher which knows them. Again, this does not mean that he is incompetent, that he can't fight, that he can't teach, or that he is inexperienced. It just does not necessarily mean he is the inheritor of some bagua lineage. Because it's not just principles that determine the art! A principle of tai chi, for example, is yielding. But if you watch a fighter who is scared, and backs up into a corner, and gets the crap beat out of him, you'd say he just got run over. But you could also say he yielded. Does that mean the art of tai chi is running backwards into a corner and getting the crap beat out of you? NO! There are SPECIFIC methods of tai chi which teach techniques, and training to build your body to carry out those techniques. If you do not know these techniques, you do not know tai chi. You just can't know the form and say, "yield, remember, yield!" You are either going to get the crap beat out of you, OR, if you are trained in other styles (karate, boxing, judo, etc etc) you may revert to using those techniques with the "flavor" of tai chi (as in, it looks like you are doing tai chi just before, and just after, the fight, but not during). But those do not mean you are doing tai chi!

Ramon, you can believe what you want. But just because you believe something is a certain thing, does not make it so. As I have said, the guy looks like he's trained and experienced. Is he experienced in the martial art of bagua? Did the people he says teach him actually teach him? Did they even exist? Were they where he said they were when he said they were? The details surrounding his story seem to be suspect. What he teaches seems to be suspect. A boxer can step into a tournament and beat the crap out of a lot of people. He can even beat the crap out of a lot of traditional and internal arts practitioners. But if he says he teaches bagua, and walks in a circle, is he really practicing bagua? Even if he says, "I channel the energy of the trigrams into spontaneous, circular movement", is that really bagua? This guy is suspicious to me because I can't find any real content on HIS style, just a bunch of generic keywords and phrases that can be found anywhere. When I was a kid I got suckered by a lot of teachers that looked, acted, and quacked like a duck, but didn't have the goods. So I'm fairly critical and intensive when looking at new people. And this guy.... is not promising in my humble opinion. That's not to say he's not a healthy, effective fighter. I just don't know that he teaches bagua. Unless you have some evidence to the contrary, that isn't just copied and pasted from wikipedia or generic enough to fit EVERY style of bagua.

First of all, I'm unfamiliar with the cheerleader remark, and I'm unfamiliar with the circumstances leading up to your own temporary banishment, so I can't speak to that. Second of all, and please don't take this the wrong way, Ralis.... you are a very direct person, and sometimes that rubs people the wrong way! There may be a few instances in which you could re-craft your manner of speaking in a more diplomatic way, if you take my meaning That said, the only instances I have seen evidence of moderator activity (and I say "evidence" because usually I stumble into a thread after something has happened, so I don't know what was removed and/or why), they seem to be where a thread has started to go off in personal attacks, rather than debating/arguing a particular point or stance. So there's a shift from, "this idea is lacking in...." to "you believe this idea so you are lacking in..." I don't know that it is an encroachment on free speech. Perhaps their usage of the phrase, "shaping the discussion to add content" is their own diplomatic way of saying, "we're cutting out members who post personal attacks, or are hounding another member simply because of a personal disagreement". I'm an advocate of free speech. To some extent, I don't like censorship of any kind. I am perfectly fine with seeing comments that involve lots of swearing and otherwise unseemly language. However, I know that many others are offended by this. I also know that our forum is in a particularly interesting situation- we occasionally are visited by well known members of the spiritual/martial community, some of whom are well known teachers and authors, and we've even conducted interviews with some of these people! So there is a distinctly professional image that has become associated (whether accidentally or intentionally) with our little corner of the internet. Perhaps the moderator attempts to moderate conversation and cut out any.... rough edges, are an attempt to clean the place up in case someone respectable happens by and does not understand our unique way of communicating with one another?

EXTERNAL qualities are not enough to appraise the INTERNAL qualities of INTERNAL martial arts. You can't judge a teacher's knowledge or ability, or the art itself, based on how it LOOKS, ACTS, or even the SOUNDS it's making. Just because a teacher knows how to dress, knows how to act, and knows what to say, does not mean that their art is a true internal art! Just because you walk in a circle, beat up some students in front of a camera, and spout a bunch of internal principles, does NOT mean you are doing bagua!

The problem is that, when it comes to internal martial arts, looks CANNOT be deciding factor for what it is.

I, for one, did give a suggestion for how to "not think about it"- do something else. What happens if you sit down and say, "I'm not going to think about sex." What is the keyword that you keep repeating? Let's look at it again... "I'm not going to think about sex". That's right- SEX! It'll be on your mind even if you try to not think about it. Do something else. Find your passion, and do it. Learn to play the guitar, for example. Learn some cords, play away. One of the reasons the same thoughts keep popping up, even when you try to meditate, is because those thoughts are probably the only ones you have in your free time. When you broaden the scope of what it is you do during the day, you stop being so focused on just one thing. Now there are ways of dealing with this through meditation and/or willpower, but I highly suggest you do what I've already suggested. It's easier, and most likely will take care of the problem. I find that most people don't have a problem with sex or anything until they are told (usually by whatever spiritual tradition they are following) that it is a problem and they need to stop. Suddenly, they become more focused on sex than they've ever been simply because they have been told to stop!

I think this thread is in response to thelearner pointing out that shaolin has said that certain texts say a certain thing when, in fact, they do not. So in referencing a well respected text, it initially seems to give credibility to his argument, but in actuality, when someone investigates the source, it doesn't support the position at all. And since we aren't really big on enforcing the citing of sources, people can come in and say pretty much whatever they want about anything, and the only way we can verify it is if someone else is familiar with the thing they are talking about.

Seems kind of gimmicky. He uses all the right keywords, cites the history that everybody knows, without really talking about the development of his own personal style. I have not been able to find any info on the teachers he cites. In fact, each time I search for their names, I get dozens and dozens of forums of people asking the same questions. A few people who were his students have said that he didn't really teach them much. He's a strong guy and a good fighter to begin with, so he does stuff that LOOKS like bagua, but the reason he beats people is because he's an athletic, experienced guy already, not that he uses bagua to win. I get together on a pretty regular basis (every other week, or whenever we can meet together) with guys who I've known for a while who have trained in a bunch of different systems. Me and another guy go back to my karate days, when we sparred full contact. Another guy used to train brazilian jujutsu and boxing, and another guy wrestled in high school and was on a college wrestling team. We've got a pretty eclectic background, but we also go and look out at other techniques- one of the guys had studied some aikido, I've been looking into techniques from taiji for a little while, and we basically just test them alongside our regular free fighting practice. If one guy wants to test his standing/rooting skills, we got a guy who's willing to push at varying degrees of resistance. Lowest level is just like, "hey, I'm pushing you", the highest level is, "I'm trying to throw you on your ass". For me, it's very helpful, because when you are pressure testing your techniques, the right technique comes out naturally. You don't need a teacher to tell you, "you're doing it wrong", because your body learns very quickly that if you do it wrong, you're either going to get 1) punched in the face, or 2) thrown on your ass. But that also means you have to keep the integrity of what it is you are doing. It's easy to revert back to something you already know, like karate or boxing, when trying something from aikido or tai chi. So you really gotta stick with what it is you are trying to experiment with at the time. But it also means you can find the alignments of YOUR body, and find things that work for you. Testing out your stuff against a resisting opponent is an absolute must for ANY practitioner, even if you are learning from a book/dvd.

Stop thinking about it. And by that, I mean, think about something else. The more you try *not* to think about something, the more you wind up thinking about it. But if you think of something else, and find some other hobby to take up all the time you would spend doing whatever else you want to stop doing, then, well, you wind up not thinking about the thing you want to stop doing, and it slowly detaches from your life.

I highly suggest B.K. Frantzis' books, "Relaxing Into Your Being", "The Great Stillness", and "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body." The first two give great overviews of the taoist philosophy, as well as basic introductory meditative/qigong practices. The third book is a GREAT book for learning an excellent meditative method, as well as a good qigong routine, all with principles that can help you should you decide to study other material or branch off into martial arts. Overall, lots of material that can keep your busy for a long time, as well as get you into a healthy, safe, effective practice.