Hey everyone, I've been reading posts here for the last couple of weeks so I feel like I should introduce myself.
My name is Mat, I'm 30 and currently living in London, and have been doing bagua and hsing i for about four years. I took up chi gung, taichi and bagua to sort myself out after getting a stress related repetitive strain injury from work, which worked where six months of seeing specialists had failed. I soon stopped doing taichi and concentrated on bagua, which seems to suit my personality more, and enjoyed it enough to stick with it. I took up hsing i a while afterwards, and was really taken with it's direct martial approach - It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to figure out how to apply crushing fist - And I currently regard it as the core of my martial practise, whereas bagua gives me a deeper emotional and psychological workout.
I've spent a lot of the last few years travelling which has meant a few long periods of practising by myself, but I've been fortunate to have really awesome teachers during the times I've actually been in one place! My bagua is therefore a bit of a hybrid, though my hsing i is pretty traditional. I'm not really fussed with style or lineage - just what works!
That's me - I might post once in a while, but being a relative beginner I don't feel like I have that much to contribute