Bagua mastery program

[Gerard]

Valuable foundation work:

 

Squat, Asian Squat

 

No. 1

 

...in other words you lose the root. In other words your entire energetic system is weak. We need to start from the scratch, the foundation of the entire house, which is located in the basement, not the roof!

 

Strong roots → solid tree.

 

No. 2

 

 

No. 3 (other useful videos of his are also available on YT). If you can;t squat down like that refer to the next video.

 

No. 4 (try as well squatting down with a normal horse stance, both legs open at shoulder width). Stay down low as long as you like and practice this exercise daily. 2, 3 times a day if you can or more if you are keen. Put it this way, our ancestors never used chairs.

 

Mike Martello has many useful foundation work videos but his level is not really suited for beginners. Let me suggest start when your level of flexibility has somewhat improved (refer to the videos above):

 

Link

 

 

Note: None of this stuff can be rushed, very slow Yin approach must be followed. Many years of undoing if blockages are deep, buried under layers of conditioning and wrong lifestyle habits (mind, karma).

Edited January 4, 2017 by Gerard

[Jox]

Gerard, are there any teachers in EU for bagua, who really know their stuff?

[Gerard]

Miroslav Bakos (one of his most senior students). He no longer lives in Taiwan, he's back to his home country, can't remember whether it is Slovakia or the Czech Rep. He has a Facebook account though.

 

Alex Kozma - UK. But he is too much of a fighter. You could ask for strictly Bagua practice.

 

Both students of He Jinghan.

 

Best!

Edited December 26, 2016 by Gerard

[Gerard]

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Edited January 4, 2017 by Gerard

[GreytoWhite]

There is no need of a complete routine if you are aiming at The Mind and complete healing of your Body and bringing Yin and Yang and 5E to a harmonious state (before the negative influence of society and your own karma).

 

All you need is the following:

 

1. Circle walking + correct stepping + body alignment. *Real life teacher. Here many make mistakes even after 10 years of practice. Easy to spot on YT, the best place to learn bad Bagua.

2. 8MP. Real life teacher.

3. Foundation work (for that master He Jinghan's is by far the most complete system available). You can get away with this learning without needing Mr He or a real life teacher that is also treading those waters.

 

Ho-lee fuck Gerard, just stop giving advice already. Dunning-Kruger syndrome seems to have gotten the best of you. The whole point of having a real life teacher is so that foundation is built correctly. You can't get away with that learning without a teacher for any art. Eating bitter should be standard, not just old school training. Without a teacher to feed you the bitter how do you expect a newbie to gain jin and eventually get to bone power? Shit man, a good teacher can accelerate these things. Also a good teacher to guide one along is important because you may be shown something as a beginner that should change considerably in focus as practice progresses. A to B, then B to A, then  A, B, C, then C, B, A, and so forth. Without someone there to say, "OK good now do it this way" then things go much slower. The foundation is exactly where it is most important for a teacher to pay attention and the rest might as well be like the famous tower in Pisa if the foundation is where you care to ignore detail.

Edited December 27, 2016 by GreytoWhite

[Gerard]

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Edited January 4, 2017 by Gerard

[Sudhamma]

Perhaps current DVDs on CMA are better controlled for better quality of instructions and beneficial to those who has good foundational training. Both Gerard and GreyToWhite are saying the same thing if the screaming is deleted. I have a student who had spent 10 years training T'an T'ui routine from a DVD before coming under my wings to relearn T'an T'ui. However, it took me quite a while and alot of cursing to get rid of his bad habits before I was satisfied (with a generous give-and-take) with him. Training CMA DVDs are never good for beginners, teachers are required. When Baquazhang was first introduced to the world by Founder Dong Hai Chuan, his first few students had prior CMA training and imparting skills to them were easier. I could appreciate this fact after learning Baquazhang for these many years. Therefore beginners without good CMA foundation wanting to learn Baquazhang from DVDs should consider what are their priorities and objective of learning the skills in the absence of face-to-face instructions. It is perfectly OK for beginners to learn the movements just to do some physical exercise without considering the minimum level of perfections demanded by the MA form.

[Gerard]

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Edited January 4, 2017 by Gerard

[Vajra Fist]

Small correction is needed. Grey to White has very kindly offered bagua and xinyi lessons online for free of charge. Some time ago (before I posted this thread), he shared several training videos with me which show a well developed and practical art. Unfortunately, me being an awful student, I haven't put my heart into learning what he shared, so we haven't been in touch since. But I am grateful nonetheless for his generosity in freely sharing his art.

 

Gérard if you call yourself a Buddhist I think you should cultivate greater forbearance and wisdom to see beyond yourself. Just my two cents.

 

Thank you both for commenting on this thread and sharing your own perspectives.

[Gerard]

“Finding a good teacher is difficult, but finding a good student is even more difficult!”

 

“You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.” (Aristophanes)

 

"The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.”

 

严师出高徒(yán shī chū gāo tú) - Good pupils are to be brought up by strict teachers.

 

十年树木,百年树人(shí nián shù mù, bǎi nián shù rén) - It takes ten years to grow trees but a hundred years to rear people.

 

读万卷书不如行万里路(dú wàn juàn shū bù rú xíng wàn lǐ lù) - It is better to travel ten thousand miles than to read ten thousand books.

 

只要功夫深，铁杵磨成针 (zhǐ yào gōng fū shēn, tiě chǔ mó chéng zhēn) - If you work hard enough at it, you can grind even an iron rod down to a needle.

 

三个和尚没水喝(sān gè héshàng méi shuǐ hē) - Three monks have no water to drink. This means ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’.

Edited January 4, 2017 by Gerard

[Sudhamma]

Hi Gerard, can explain the last quotation "Three monks have no water to drink"? How does this imply that too many cooks spoil the broth? Thank you
 

[Gerard]

Hi there, it means that too many people doing something at once will contribute too failure, which is often the case, unless selfish considerations are put aside, and this often occurs when working in a team environment unless the team members put their individual motivations aside and work for a common goal (one of the Confucian ideals).