Do you treat your circle walk as Qigong or purely physical?

[heel_no_up]

In response to Meeks...Yang Guotai's lineage: Dong Haichuan-Cheng Ting Hua-Liu Bin/Wang Wenkui-Xu Zhen Biu-Yang Guo Tai.
The way Yang Sifu explains it is...After Cheng Ting Hua died Liu Bin opened a school. Wang Wenkui and Liu Bin worked together
and Liu Bin taught him but as a friend (Wang Wenkui wasn't his "student" so to speak). Wang Wenkui became a fixture at this
school for the rest of his life. So pretty much everyone who was in the school for long enough to be considered "part of the school"
was shown stuff by Wang Wenkui. Xu Zhen Biu took over the "school" when Liu Bin died. Not to say that he was the most senior
but rather the best suited to be the head of the school. But just like any school...you might be shown huge sections by other
senior students, or taught originally by a student teacher but you identify the school by the head master. So for lineage sake the
above is accurate. We have to remember...that these "schools" ran more like a modern day running group...or more accurately
a walking group (forgive the pun). People come and go...there maybe a leader or central figure who organizes it but really it's not
a university degree in that there aren't "credits towards mastering bagua." This is why it's important to meet and learn from people
whose experience is evident and obvious. Anyone can sound good, even look good, but can they make you good? Remember...
lineage gives you an indication that the person was exposed to good info but really it's what they did with that info that matters.
For example: George W. Bush went to Yale and Harvard but I'm sure he's not the best representative of both (or either) school.

[edededed]

Hmm - are you sure? Liu Bin was born more than 30 years before Wang Wenkui, so it would seem strange that they would be considered friends... You can see both of them in an oft-shown photo commemorating Liu Bin's taking of new disciples in front of a restaurant; in the photo, Liu Bin has a gray-white beard already, while Wang Wenkui is quite a young sprocket brandishing a bagua broadsword all the way to the right...

Liu Bin's son Liu Shikui DID have a disciple named Xu Zhenbiao, however, who was pretty famous, and had several disciples... (Another of Liu Shikui's disciples, Tie Enfang, is still living in Beijing today...)

[heel_no_up]

Xu Zhenbiao and Xu Zhen Biu and Su Jenbiao etc...are all the same person. His picture is on http://www.chinabaguazhang.com/en/3-2.htm...but lineage gets messy.
Like I said a lot of factors played into who was in the spotlight in terms of calling themselves "master." I'm assuming edededed has read Liu Bin's Zhuang Gong Bagua
Zhang and looked on the web or googled names. But the problem with that is context. Liu Bin opened a school...his son could have "inherited" it...during the cultural
revolution being LIu Bin's son put him under the spotlight. So who took over as leader of the "school?" eventually Xu Zhenbiao.
But just like with Yang Sifu...he learned at the school when Xu Zhenbiao was the head...but later was shown things by Wang Wenkui (technically 2 generations above him).
Just like Liu Bin taught Wang Wenkui but "lineage" from Liu Bin to Wang Wenkui...who knows? Liu Bin died in 1930 and Yang Sifu was born 1928 all he can tell me is what
he was told. Again...it's not like Yang Sifu took "biology with ____" and "chemistry with _____" and then got a degree in science. He was not taught specific sections by
different teachers until he was a "certified master"....For example, I asked Yang Sifu for some kind of certification to say that I learned from him and have learned the basic
palms and mother palms...You know what happened? He laughed and said "Just perform the bagua and some people might like it and others might say it's wrong because
it's not like theirs. Who cares? So I asked? How can I open a school? His answer...open a school...if you lose to someone...close your school and learn from him.
That is what happened with bagua originally people lost to Dong Haichuan and then learned from him.

[Chris McKinley]

(sigh).......there's got to be a corollary to Godwin's Law whereby you can predict that RSF threads become lineage queen discussion.

[I-mon]

It's called "history", Chris.

[edededed]

It's fun to talk about history and such on discussion boards - I for one am not trying to learn techniques here (I have class for that). (Take a deep breath, Chris.)

heel_no_up: Lineage is not necessarily the same as "who learned from who" - for example, Ma Gui learned from both Dong Haichuan and Yin Fu, but his lineage is from Yin Fu. Liu Fengchun was a disciple of Dong Haichuan, but learned mainly from Cheng Tinghua. Lineage is a somewhat strange Chinese construct that often shows who learned from who, but also preserves generation "seniority" and so on, thus sort of nullifying the former meaning. The most specific definition of where lineage is defined is by the "baishi" ceremony - thus, you can even become a lineage disciple of someone after they are dead, as long as other disciples hold the ceremony for you. So, what is the point of lineage, then? Well... it is mostly just interesting for history purposes, I guess, but was also a "badge" of officially "entering the school."

(In that meaning, I have no lineage at all, for example, since I have not done any baishi ceremonies.)

[Chris McKinley]

ed,

There's a place for everything, certainly, but it'd be nice if it didn't happen so often that bringing up lineage in every other thread has become a caricature of itself.

[heel_no_up]

I'm done...if anyone wants to know anything about Yang Sifu (Yang Guotai) let's just leave it to private messages. I'll just ask him anything anyone wants to know.
I'll leave the threads for their original purposes. This is not a put down or anything...I just realized that not everyone who clicks on this thread wants to know all
this stuff...anyone who does: please feel free to send me a private message. Thanks Chris for the wake up call [I'm new to RSF and was having essentially a private
back and forth with edededed on a public thread...my bad ]

[D_Glenn]

I don't see what the big deal is. For the lineage just write something like:


Dong Haichuan --> Cheng Ting Hua --> Liu Bin --> Xu Zhen Biu --> Yang Guo Tai


Dong Haichuan --> Cheng Ting Hua --> Liu Bin --> Wang Wenkui --> Yang Guo Tai


Problem solved.


.

[meeks]

I think in Ed^4's defense, it was actually justincasea that asked about who my shifu was. It was Ed^4 simply clarifying what I've blurred over time since it's not a 'trump card' I pull out very often, therefor haven't recalled it to the surface in a long time.

And I think I-mon is right, this is just a history discussion, not a bitch fest about 'my shifu ranks higher than yours' which would be a lineage-fest that no one likes. Sorry that the thread became derailed about though.

[alexsuffolk]

It is all interesting .....technical, lineage, mindless banter.....

Meeks it is clear from the details you describe that Yang shrfu taught you the 'good stuff'....in UK you can count those kind of teachers on two fingers.

[kreese]

I started training with him back in the mid 90s after learning bagua elsewhere, and had my own school. After I met Yang Shifu I closed my school and brought all my students to him. They eventually faded away and left.

I stayed on for quite a few years before he told me to re-open my school and start teaching his bagua, which I did before eventually moving to China for work. I now live in Vancouver, BC, Canada again. wanna be facebook buddies? (just kidding)

See, this is just proper. Not many would have the humility to do that.

[edededed]

Thanks, Meeks. Sorry for the derail - but everyone agrees that Yang Guotai taught and teaches some good stuff, I'm not doubting that!

[SPJ]

Hey all,
So I was curious as to how to treat your circle walk. Do you treat it as a Qigong exercise (E.g. do it as the last part of your training, feel the Qi going into your hands as you shift into each posture), or do you simply treat it as an exercise in stability in motion, constant change, footwork, conditioning, etc.?

I always treated it as a "Lemme vary up my speed and make it interesting so I get some serious cardio out of this, while improving footwork" exercise.

Regarding the (cloudy) origins of the walk -- is it supposed to have a meta-physical component, or was it simply there to train the aforementioned physical qualities, and to encourage the practitioner to keep moving?

Interested in hearing some ideas..

at first, we practice as physical aspects, since we breathe naturally.

once we are familar with some of the moves/postures, we may focus more on qi gong practice.

[Jonny]

I have been taught that people should seperate the "health" and "martial" practices

I practice a circle walking set everyday thats based on health and considered qigong.

I also practice walking, movements and tecniques that are martially based. Yes it still provides health benefits, but the focus is on the martial. The health is just the 'side effect'.

I think practicing both separately end up complementing eachother.

My 02