Chen Pan-ling: Baguazhang comes from shaolin luohanquan

[Tom]

. . . .

Thompson lures (yin) Masvidal to jab. As Masvidal jabs, Thompson side steps and issues right cross:

I like this example. Thanks for posting it.

[johnwang]

Thanks for showing this clip. This is why when in circle walking, you always move your back foot first to line up with your opponent's feet. If your opponent doesn't turn with you, 1 step should be enough. You can then enter from there. Your footwork is exacyly a triangle.

[gerard]

Bagua has no connection with any of the Shaolin hard stuff (and Buddhism) I'm afraid. Circle walking is the root of the art and it's purely Taoist and heavily connected to ancient Chinese Medicine; eg. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (Neijing Suwen).

[Tom]

Bagua has no connection with any of the Shaolin hard stuff (and Buddhism) I'm afraid. Circle walking is the root of the art and it's purely Taoist and heavily connected to ancient Chinese Medicine; eg. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (Neijing Suwen).

Hi Gerard--

Do you have anything to add beyond your opinion/assertion here?

[Bao]

Bagua has no connection with any of the Shaolin hard stuff (and Buddhism) I'm afraid.

That is the common "understanding"....

Circle walking is ... heavily connected to ancient Chinese Medicine; eg. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (Neijing Suwen).[/quote]

Where is your source for the connection between circle walking and the medical classic?

[johnwang]

Circle walking is the root of the art and it's purely Taoist and heavily connected to ancient Chinese Medicine;

The circle walking/running is not unique in Bagua.

[GrahamB]

Circle walking is in everything:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqeqZ6d8GaQ

1.55 here.

[gerard]

Hi Tom,

I pointed out the basic yet deep stuff. It's the practitioner's task to find out how deep you are willing to go and with this art there are certainly NO LIMITS.

Hi Bao,

My personal practice. I remember having a forum discussion on the deceased Emptyflower forum with Michael Guen about this art and back then I didn't quite grasp what he meant. This was in 2012. I started this journey in 2008, but back then I was very focused on forms and loved the Wushu aspect of it. Performing rather than exploring. It took me several years more to find out the following:

1. The deep connection with the internal organs that deep practice will take you to.
2. What if rather than forms you focus on circle waking holding one Palm only for the entire session for a period of time. It's entirely up to you how long you practice this way.

Well I stuck to these two points and oh boy! the profound transformation that followed after 4 years of focusing on simplicity over form was staggering.

Bagua has a very deep connection with ancient Chinese Medicine, this is why I made that comment. Only when practiced that way.

Hi johnwang,

The similarities between the video you linked and Ba Gua Quan are nil. The Taoist art will transform you into a new human being, if practised with depth in mind.

[D_Glenn]

So there are a myriad list of physical enhancements that come about from Circle Walking (in the the practice specific to Baguazhang). Even 10 minutes a day will derive some physical enhancements. Agility, balance, overcoming the vertigo that happens when someone first starts practicing, forearm strength and resilience to impact (which is crucial because 95% of BGZ is using the forearms to strike and defense against an opponent striking you.), strengthening the knees when doing ‘Scissor Thigh Stepping’ along with Bai and Kou because you’re putting the knees through their full range of motion (caveat- sliding the foot on the ground can damage the patellar tendon in the knees which could end up being net negative and end someone’s circle walking career.), strengthening of the legs from continually walking at a lower than normal height, strengthening and stretching the muscles and fascia of the abdomen/ waist, the list goes on… but all things that will benefit the individual as a martial artist.

There are times when a kind of circling around someone during throwing applications can happen, and with great effect (I’ve been on the receiving end of one application where I was being spun around on my central axis so fast that both my legs were flung out, I spun 360 and dropped straight down on my behind and kept spinning a little bit more.) But that is an application and the manner of stepping used to achieve it is similar, but only works because there was no way I could affect him or unbalance his stepping.

We say Circle Walking, in and of itself, is not really martial because if someone attacked you while in the midst of practicing it (using ‘Scissor Thigh Stepping’) you would have to take at least one decent sized step outside, or to the inside of the circle in order to defend yourself.

But the real benefits of Circle Walking come from an hour or hours a day practicing it. These are the mental benefits. Without any knowledge of the inner workings of cells and molecules inside the human body. Practitioners of old had to just completely rely on feelings and changes in their mental and physical State (Zhuangtai, which is a term often found in Daoist texts). So terminology was made up to label these changes. The Micro and Macrocosmic Orbit was chosen to describe one of the primary changes that one can hope to bring about during a practice session. With the advances in Medical Technologies and in particular MRI’s used in conjunction with injected dyes, they discovered a function of sacrum, spinal column and brain, where there is a sudden increase in Cerebral Spinal Fluid CSF, when a certain brainwave frequency is reached, which can trigger the Glial cells in the brain, to release their Intracellular Fluids which increases the whole volume of total CSF. Which circulates around the brain and eventually drains down the front into the cervical lymphatics into the spleen. Normally this only happens during the first few hours of sleep in mammals. But getting this process to happen an extra time, or two, during the day can explain nearly all the mental benefits that one sees in individuals who become “Enlightened”, or described as “True People” (Zhen Ren) in Daoism.

So it’s a practice that can derive both martial and mental benefits. And for the active martial artist who is fighting and doing sparring, and throwing exercises, then the increase in CSF during the change, can help to alleviate the inflammation and causes of concussions that occur during the training sessions.

So it’s a win win. Two birds are killed with one stone.

.

[Quigga]

Nice explanation D_Glenn

[Quigga]

But can we please stop deavaluing people like Mr. Wang with legit accomplishments?

The only difference between internal / external circle walking is that internal uses awareness (the same as in Vippassana practice) to become more conscious of the body and to allow for super-charged change on all levels to occur. It helps you become aware of your bladder, liver, how the moving diaphragm (like moving dia picture? idk lol) is massaging the Ming Men and kidneys, how your food effects you,...

The two don't need to be mutually exclusive.

[greytowhite]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKk6q3JiATw

[Formosa Neijia]

So there are a myriad list of physical enhancements that come about from Circle Walking (in the the practice specific to Baguazhang). Even 10 minutes a day will derive some physical enhancements. Agility, balance, overcoming the vertigo that happens when someone first starts practicing, forearm strength and resilience to impact (which is crucial because 95% of BGZ is using the forearms to strike and defense against an opponent striking you.), strengthening the knees when doing ‘Scissor Thigh Stepping’ along with Bai and Kou because you’re putting the knees through their full range of motion (caveat- sliding the foot on the ground can damage the patellar tendon in the knees which could end up being net negative and end someone’s circle walking career.), strengthening of the legs from continually walking at a lower than normal height, strengthening and stretching the muscles and fascia of the abdomen/ waist, the list goes on… but all things that will benefit the individual as a martial artist. ...

But the real benefits of Circle Walking come from an hour or hours a day practicing it. ...

So it’s a practice that can derive both martial and mental benefits. And for the active martial artist who is fighting and doing sparring, and throwing exercises, then the increase in CSF during the change, can help to alleviate the inflammation and causes of concussions that occur during the training sessions.

So it’s a win win. Two birds are killed with one stone.

That's a nice writeup and thanks for providing it. Based on my experience I'd like to give another side. Forearm strength and resilience is best done in iron palm and iron arm exercises because circle walking barely scratches the surface of that training. Walking a circle with only air as the resistance doesn't do nearly enough as dummy training, for example.

The supposed strengthening of the legs IME almost never happens. There are many reasons for this but the biggest is the lack of basic training. Few people IME are taught how to open the legs, pelvis, and torso because the training doesn't "look like bagua" and frankly it's both painful and boring yet necessary. This is especially true for students over the age of 25 -- they almost never receive a proper foundation training as in Asia such a thing is only given to kids. Without the proper foundation, when people try to walk the circle, they step too low, stride too long, and walk too narrowly with an inward twisting focus -- all of this places extreme stress on the knees. In many of the bagua classes I've taken nearly all the students complained about this but the teachers rarely have an explanation. You're just supposed to press on through and then the damage is done. Doing squats, lunges, deadlifts, etc. at least with body weight would be 10x more effective in less than 10:00 than an hour of circle walking for strengthening the legs with less risk of knee damage.

Third is the amount of low back pain circle walking causes. In one style i practiced in Taipei, I had an older kungfu brother that ran a chinese medicine clinic and when I visited him once, i was surprised to see 4 people from our bagua class come in for treatment. Everyone complained of knee and back pain -- but remember all that supposed wonderful connection to TCM that circle walking has? I guess they mean you'll be going for treatment. The problem is twisting towards the center, which again without a proper foundation or teaching means most people will twist from the lower back. Twisting from the lower back while also having weak glutes and hamstrings is a recipe for disaster. Couple this with excessive palm changes on the circle and the problem is worsened. And the longer you circle walk in this compromised position the worse your back and knees will get. Once tendons and soft tissue have been damaged, it takes a long time for that to heal.

Finally is circle walking killing two birds or no birds? The taoist view is to somehow do neigong while walking but as I've pointed out above, there are serious issues just with the walking. How will students be able to stack any kind of internal practice on top of that? doing two things at once complicates the practice. The shaolin path is to practice the neigong at first in seated or standing sets without incorporating it at first into forms work. This allows bodybuilding via forms to take place and/or keeping a martial intent in the forms. It also allows the neigong to be more fully developed without having to worry about stepping, stances, techniques, etc. Only later when the two halves have been developed separately are they united into one practice.

I found this shaolin approach to vastly superior and after talking with some others associated with Cheng style as done outside the mainstream, my views were corroborated. Not everyone makes circle walking the centerpiece of their practice and some take a more shaolin approach by emphasizing sets like the eight brocades and doing straightline bagua.
So their is some variety in the approach that can be taken, what I was trying to get at with this thread.

[wayne hansen]

What about Tien Gan
I know 6 levels that will test anyone and stop the problems you discuss
It seems that many just go to forms too soon
It is all noi gung when done well

[Appledog]

The supposed strengthening of the legs IME almost never happens. There are many reasons for this but the biggest is the lack of basic training. Few people IME are taught how to open the legs, pelvis, and torso because the training doesn't "look like bagua" and frankly it's both painful and boring yet necessary. This is especially true for students over the age of 25 -- they almost never receive a proper foundation training as in Asia such a thing is only given to kids.

I also have some knee problems but it might be because of other factors (previous injuries). Do you think tantui or xingyi would be good enough to patch up a foundation or are special exercises required (like yoga for example)? My teacher teaches me that exercise where you put your foot on one knee and sink down a bit. A monk's pose (and I hate it, because it's hard to do for me). Is that what you're talking about?