by D_Glenn on Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:30 pm
Well, first off, according to what my Bagua teacher taught me and just basic common sense, a training posture is not going to be ‘held static’ at anytime during a violent assault. If somehow an assailant managed to stealthily sneak into your house and catch you unawares while circle turning or doing Zhan Zhuang, then they might see you holding the posture and, unlikely, somehow catch you off guard while holding the posture, then yes, it technically would happen in an assault.
But the real reason is 1. It’s the framework for our strategy or ideal tactics we try to employ in an assault. 2. It is the starting point for the attacking and defending methods of the animal system. 3. It develops the strengths of the limbs and hands, while ingraining new habits.
The Penetrating Palm posture is the basis for our Bagua. It has the arms in the ‘Y’ Shape, which can quickly turn into an ‘X’ Shape. The Dragon, Phoenix, and Unicorn use a variation of the this. During an assault one of the tactics is to to try and cross-up the assailants arms, or use one of their arms to block the other arm. So using a fighting method where your own arms are crossing is a gamble. But that is what Dong Haichuan designed. Both as a way to learn how to get out of that situation, if the assailant managed to get your arms crossed, and doing something unexpected. Something that a person who’s beaten up a lot of people, might not expect. It takes a modicum amount of skill, or experience rather, to do these Animal systems.
So there’s a beginner system (the Lion) that doesn’t use a ‘Y’ Shape posture. It can quickly turn into the Penetrating Palm posture, but that’s just a momentary thing. The Lion posture is LOOSELY based around the idea of a person, when being assaulted, grabbing the nearest thing they can find, which typically in a Chinese household is a meat cleaver, and then displaying it in a menacing manner, as to hopefully avoid a confrontation, and not having to actually fight, being that you may not actually have a high level of skill in fighting. If the opponent still decides to attack and get past the meat cleaver, then they might find that the bagua Lion system has methods of using both arms to attack and defend, and that the meat cleaver is almost a feint or a bluff, but obviously would be used if the opportunity presented.
So it’s not a manner of right, or wrong, in Bagua. It’s primarily tactical and strategical. As it should be.
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Last edited by
D_Glenn on Fri Nov 17, 2023 12:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.