BaGuaZhang as Taught by Bruce Frantzis

[Dorje Boleskine]

I found this video of one of Bruce Frantzis’ top instructors teaching BaGua. This guy seems to be pretty good. His name is Paul Cavel has anybody here heard of him?

 

[Sloppy Zhang]

One of BKF's senior students. 'Nuff said.

 

If you live near him and can train with him, I'd definitely go for it.

[baiqi]

Not close enough! But yeah, BKF's bagua is great. I was trained by another senior instructor, and that was the first time I could see how deep bagua is.

[Aetherous]

I'm severely impressed by that clip.

[JessOBrien]

Yeah, Kumar's ba gua system is pretty awesome, I've enjoyed training in it.

He's had many students since he started teaching it in the 90's.

 

We have a class here in Berkeley:

http://www.watertradition.net

 

Come get with us and check it out some time.

 

Jess O

[Dorje Boleskine]

Yeah, Kumar's ba gua system is pretty awesome, I've enjoyed training in it.

He's had many students since he started teaching it in the 90's.

 

We have a class here in Berkeley:

http://www.watertradition.net

 

Come get with us and check it out some time.

 

Jess O

 

Berkley is where Bruce Frantzis filmed his Bagua Mastery Program right?

[Dorje Boleskine]

[JessOBrien]

Hi Djore,

 

YEah many of the latest vids he put out were from the event's we've hosted him for in the east bay.

 

His Ba Gua has some differences from other schools. He said his teacher learned 64 palms at the school of Cheng You Lung but that he boiled it down to 8. Each corresponds to one of the Trigrams of the I Ching quite closely.

 

The first Palm Change is Heaven, and contains much of the work on alignments, weight shifting, walking and basic gong fu that will then lead you to success with the other palms. He spends a HUGE amount of time on the most minute details of Single Palm Change because if you can get it there, the other palms come more quickly. I've never seen anyone spend so much time on Single Palm, we learned it for years before he was willing to move on to the later ones. It's frustrating, but I have found that slow walking, kwa stretching, and all of the details of alignments have helped me a lot in making my practice more rewarding, and less prone to injury.

 

We had a class with him last weekend and he talk a bit about how each of the eight palm changes contains the information and building blocks to move on to the next palm in the sequence. Unlike other styles where each palm is an independent technique, his palms are in order and one doesn't tend to learn them out of order.

 

For instance the "heaven" energy of Single Palm Change means stretching, expanding, lengthening and twisting your body to the maximum. This gives you strength and power that you'll use as the basis for transmuting and changing with later palms. Without the yang power of the first palm, the others have no raw material to work with.

 

Again, the process is lengthy, but the first palm is the hardest and most difficult one to learn. ONce you have that, you don't have to relearn knee alignments, structure, concentration, etc.

 

Another aspect of his system is the speed walking, particularly in the meditation. The faster you walk the deeper your mind is driven into your body, it's very strange and extremely demanding to do. But I really found it a powerful way to get all your cards on the table, so to speak, and see what starts coming up in both physical and spiritual terms. At a certain point you are going so fast and you hit a sweet spot where you seem to stop and the room keeps going. Thats when you can almost hear yourself think all the things your unconscious mind is always chattering about. And there is a silence there too.

 

Anyways, I spend most of my time messing with the HSing-I and Ba Gua forms and fighting applications. That's the most fun, the meditative side is way too hardcore. I hear guys talking about the distant planes of awareness they are reaching but when I push they fall right over. That's not cool. If your physical body isn't resiliant, your mind isn't either and without structure you are deluding yourself to think you are flying thru some astral plane. Maybe you are, but how productive could it be if you have no vibrancy, no chi, no connection in your body.

 

He describes Ba Gua as a three step process:

1. Connect every physical part and energy path inside your entire body into one cohesive whole, becoming totally unified.

2. Link your mind into the Xin "heart mind" within your deepest core called the Central Channel.

3. Manifest the energies of internal alchemy, the Eight Trigrams.

 

I met some cats last weekend who seemed to be skipping step 1 and that's a shame, self-delusion is not the path of meditation and Taoism. Being yourself, seeing yourself clearly and really being who you are counts more in my mind.

 

Anyways, Kumar's system has a lot to offer and I've had a lot of fun doing it.

 

Jess O

[Dorje Boleskine]

[Dorje Boleskine]

[Dorje Boleskine]

[Dorje Boleskine]

I dont know why that last post is there three times! Is there a way I can delete two of them?

[JessOBrien]

Hi Djore,

 

Yes, I've practiced with Kumar quite a few times and his Ba Gua is pretty cool stuff. When he demonstrates like that he goes totally freestyle with full power and speed, so it looks pretty crazy. Regular practice seems less wild and much more focused.

 

In his system you train with very slow straight line walking, and later get going faster and faster on the circle. Often you will double your speed repeatedly, while trying to maintain some nei gung skill like abdominal breathing, or dissolving tension or feeling some part of your body, or bringing specific thoughts or emotions to mind, or seeking some specific spiritual aspect, and so on. And for each one your work on, you can then add more and more layers to your practice, and speed up the walking to get it deeper and more profoundly "wired in".

 

To me you need chi gung first to build your system up and make it healthy. Martial arts then takes you from normal to strong and fully integrated. Then more spiritual pursuits open up, as you are now strong and resilient enough physically, and have faced all your fears and hang ups during martial arts sparring and fighting. Meditation is the step that comes after the first two. If you skip right into delving into your minds deepest corners, you won't have the strength and calmness that chi gung and martial arts provide. They are the bulwark you need to keep you grounded when working within yourself.

 

His system has three steps:

1. Learn the 5 chi gung sets

2. Learn IMA for health: tai chi short form, hsing-i san ti, and ba gua circle walking

3. Pursue a specialization: chi gung tui na healing, Taoist meditation, or one of the three internal martial arts in full.

 

Step 3 can take your whole lifetime, to master only one of the specializations.

 

Jess O

[Dorje Boleskine]

Hi Djore,

 

Yes, I've practiced with Kumar quite a few times and his Ba Gua is pretty cool stuff. When he demonstrates like that he goes totally freestyle with full power and speed, so it looks pretty crazy. Regular practice seems less wild and much more focused.

 

In his system you train with very slow straight line walking, and later get going faster and faster on the circle. Often you will double your speed repeatedly, while trying to maintain some nei gung skill like abdominal breathing, or dissolving tension or feeling some part of your body, or bringing specific thoughts or emotions to mind, or seeking some specific spiritual aspect, and so on. And for each one your work on, you can then add more and more layers to your practice, and speed up the walking to get it deeper and more profoundly "wired in".

 

To me you need chi gung first to build your system up and make it healthy. Martial arts then takes you from normal to strong and fully integrated. Then more spiritual pursuits open up, as you are now strong and resilient enough physically, and have faced all your fears and hang ups during martial arts sparring and fighting. Meditation is the step that comes after the first two. If you skip right into delving into your minds deepest corners, you won't have the strength and calmness that chi gung and martial arts provide. They are the bulwark you need to keep you grounded when working within yourself.

 

His system has three steps:

1. Learn the 5 chi gung sets

2. Learn IMA for health: tai chi short form, hsing-i san ti, and ba gua circle walking

3. Pursue a specialization: chi gung tui na healing, Taoist meditation, or one of the three internal martial arts in full.

 

Step 3 can take your whole lifetime, to master only one of the specializations.

 

Jess O

 

Yeah that freestyle bagua looks amazing!