the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Recently I took on two students for baguazhang. I'm just teaching them informally on Saturday mornings and going through the basics and some mild application with them.
One of the two is interested in bagua as a martial art, the other is interested more in the capacity of self discovery and health.
I have focused the majority of my practice up to now on martial arts and fight oriented stuff. I have made a lot of personal discoveries and improved my physical and mental well being, but I'm not sure how to convey those kinds of lessons to people.
I don't practice any specific qi gongs that go along with the bagua and we don't really focus on meditation. What kind of tips can I give people who are practicing bagua to gain somatic and emotional understanding?
I do a lot of awareness work, but its outside of the paradigm of bagua. I only have 1.5 hours every Saturday and I want to make sure to give both students what they want.
what do you think would be the most advisable accommodation to reach?

Thanks

J

I think focusing on correct form work, making it a little more challenging athletically (ie. lower stances, lots of twisting) and emphasizing the Mother Palms, including treating them as a standing post exercise, is the way to go. Pretty much the same as the fighting emphasis, but more so...I think..?

You should at least look the "health" part before teaching someone how to be healthy.

strawdog wrote:You should at least look the "health" part before teaching someone how to be healthy.

bro

I feel a little this way at the mo, too much good food and wine, need to shed off some freaking weight. Try and see if I can find some time to go back to BJJ, that stuff keeps you fit and mean.

JB.

rofl!

Hey Meynard, I actually lost quite a bit of weight.

Also health includes many different facets of life, for instance being flexible (bagua has given me much more flexibility than I had before practicing), being able to move better, not being in physical pain from old injuries, or sedentary lifestyle, being mentally healthy. Fat people can be healthy too. I think its misguided to assume that since someone is overweight they are automatically unhealthy. I have met fat people who I would consider to be in much better health than skinny people I have met (including some who have extremely good physical conditioning).
Health is not only decided by the shape of your body.

Some people take health advice from Richard Simmons. Anything can be justified if you believe it enough.

I'm not going to let this turn into a flame war.

Anyone else have anything worthwhile to contribute towards the study of bagua with teaching with health practice in mind?

I figure that if the combat oriented person keeps coming out, I'll keep the class combat oriented and just teach health as circle walking with mother palms as tendon and muscle lengthening and single movements as cardiovascular exercise.
If we move indoors, maybe we could do weapons work as muscle strengthening exercise.
I think I'll also delve into intent as a way of keeping the mind calm and giving more clarity in day to day life.

You can tell you students that martial arts are for combat. And staying alive is generally considered to be healthier than being dead.

Darthwing Teorist wrote:You can tell you students that martial arts are for combat. And staying alive is generally considered to be healthier than being dead.

That is teh AWESOME!!!!!
thats actually a good strategy.

I like.

Depends on how you define health.

My definition is different from others- based on my experience with different martial arts schools, here is how i define if your Healthy enough to do training beyond the point of health.

how I measure health-

-How much do they weigh? Does the person look over or under weight?
-Can they touch their toes?
-how many situps can they do in 30 sec.?
-how many push ups can they do in 30 sec.?
-can they hold a horse stance 1 min.?
-Mental health- do they seem intelligent enough to take on pakua? pakua requires deep thinking and dedication.
-what kind of attitude, appearance, and character does the person have and are they willing to be humble and work hard?
-age, medical, and Injury history

My personal definition of health attributes:
1. normal function of the internal organs and meridians ( circulatory, digestive, respiratory, skeletal, muscular, ect),
2. good body weight,
3. good flexibility,
4. able to hold firm stances and not strain.
5. focused mind

If they dont have these things- then i focus their training on-

1. flexibility and ability to do good stances (which require flexibility)
2. weight loss/weight gain via diet and nutrition based on TCM- avoidance of fire and cold foods to nourish qi.
3. introduction to simple upper body, abdominal, and lower body exercises for strength.
4. intro to simple qigong, breathing and meditation work
5. philosophy and principles- primarily yin/yang and 5 element and relation to internal organs and emotions.
6. balance: basic hand and stepping coordination drills with flow.

but then again i really dont teach anymore and havent in over 10 years, but thats my standard. Its hard to get the ones who get tired fast and need to lose weight to do so, even the ones at a young age. they might have better knees if they would shed the weight.

I believe the biggest misconception is the difference between "fit" and "healthy". Healthy being the more important. Bagua in a sence of health is built into the system. The mother form of bagua "8 old palms" is in short, circle walking chi kung. We do this in three stages. 1st. 8 circles are walked in one direction with one palm for each circle, ours starting "earth" palm. after completing one circle we hook step, as in hidding flower, crouch to a low stance and twisting out into the next palm until all eight plams are complete in that direction. change direction same eight palms. Next eight circles no crouching, so a continuous walk, slightly faster. and last a free flowing movement from one palm to the next without stoping. Kind of like in Lin Zi Chi kung where you have three stages of palm....Pulsing, moving, and still. Chi kung being the movement, circle walking being the meditation.

though he came off sounding rude, theres a bit of truth in what straw said.

there are a lot of cma and bagua teachers out there and they are not all qualified to be teaching. before you take on students you should really evaluate your own ability and ask two questions. am i capable of teaching anything? and what exactly am i able to teach well? in the process of self evalutation, if you do think that your health has changed for the better, then you can see what exactly about your health has changed and you can think of what youve done to change it. then you can match up your ideas of what you bagua practice has done for you to the expectations of health change that your student has. then, if you think things match up well, you can begin to teach to your students specific goals. the same thing of course could be said for your martial student as well.

for example (keeping in mind that i practice tongbei). if someone came to me and said "i have tight shoulders and a bad back. id like to loosen up the muscles of my upper body learn how to relax better." then id say... lucky you, i think i can help. if someone said "i want to put on a lot of muscle and explore my mind through deep meditation" then id say "go to a strength training coach and then hit up a zen temple"

As Jose said, I think that focusing on the stationary palms (on the circle) would be best for those interested in health/self discovery. Each palm has its own specific characteristics regarding such (you can ask your teacher if he didn't teach you yet).

There are some interesting health effects as well - for example, in my case, as a severe hay fever sufferer, I find that certain palms reduce or even completely alleviate symptoms for a while (on a good day, for a few hours after practice I am actually a normal person).

Help people as best you can. Be clear about what you can and can't help them with. Don't be a dick to them. Etc.

Not much more to it. If you know some stuff why not teach it to others? As long as you aren't misrepresenting it or yourself, it's a good thing to help people.

Probably very few of us consider ourselves masters, worthy to pass on great lineages. But teaching the basics as you were taught is a good thing for most of us to do. It's a learning experience and lots of fun to see someone get excited about these new and interesting ways of movement.

-Jess O

Jesse O'Brien summed it up very well.

I'd add that teaching "bagua for health" is a bit of an oxymoron as a competent version of that discipline only be safely learned by those who are already in reasonable heatlh and bring some level of existing fitness to their training. Unless the forms have been simplified to death, it makes more sense to tell students who want just a new kind of moving meditation to go back to one of the other systems that they have probably already tried and gotten bored with.

In addition, I have changed my mind in recent years about the automatic value of solo forms in martial training and I would now tell someone who wants to learn bagua "just for health" without any two-person martial training that there are safer and easier ways elsewhere to ease into exercise or learn meditation. Maybe cause it's cause I am older and less patient but after 14 years of running bagua classes, I won't teach people anymore who won't open and examine the whole package instead of focusing on the package's wrapping.