is there something inherently superior about walking in circles?
Yup.
Circle walking is not just walking in a circle. It's about all kinds of small variations of posture that are the part of the style they're in. In the bagua I do we do pretty extreme twisting at the begining, and it's more like holding a yoga posture than the repetitive quality garnered by pounding on a heavy bag...even if you can get all zen wit it . The long term posture holding and deep twisting focus the mind in the areas of tension in the body and hold them there. Then you get to figure out how to release that. In the process you have to modify the way you think and react to movement in the interior of the body. Since a lot of your thought processes are feedback loops telling you about danger in the environment and whether or not you are going to fall down (basic balance) you have to work through how to not react to those stimuli in the same way so that your body can relax (be sung) enough to start utilizing the fluid dynamics of the body and tendonous strength over brute muscular force (as awesome as that is for pounding someone when it's appropriate).
Anyhoo, there's only two ways to do that to the body...stretch it or twist it, and forcing spiral shapes (twisting) into your nervous system over a long period of time via walkikng in a circle changes both the way you think and the way you move as well as your ability have a much higher level of control of movement throughout the totality of the body based on the way the mind has to become intimate with the body by the spiral postural distinctions.
Does that make sense?
Best,
S- king of the runon sentence