Even more ancient than Tai Chi, the circle walking techniques of Ba Gua were developed over four thousand years ago in Taoist monasteries as a health and meditation art. The techniques open up the possibilities of the mind to achieve stillness and clarity; generate a strong, healthly, disease-free body; and, perhaps more importantly, maintain internal balance while either your inner world or the events of the external world of the external world are rapidly changing. It is also known as ba gua chang, ba gua zhang or pakua chang.

As a Lineage master, I teach ba gua not only as a healing, and martial art but also as a form of Moving meditation. Ba gua is sometimes transliterated as pakua.

Ba Gua as a Healing Art

Even more ancient than tai chi, the circle walking techniques of ba gua were developed over four thousand years ago in Taoist monasteries as a health and meditation art. Circle walking is the forerunner of ba gua as a martial art.

The Nature of Change

The techniques are based on the I Ching, a 5000-year-old book that is considered to be the classic Taoist text about the nature of change and how change occurs. The circle walking techniques of ba gua help train the mind and body to accept change, a useful skill, sincethe speed of the changes in our society are causing so much stress and tension.

Benefits of Circle Walking

Like the ancient monks that developed ba gua, people today practice circle walking to achieve three intertwined goals:

• Open up the possibilities of the mind to achieve calmness, stillness and clarity
• Generate a strong, healthy, disease-free body, with relaxed nerves and great stamina, which you need for normal daily work and or to help you meditate for prolonged periods of time
• Develop balance and, perhaps more importantly, the ability to maintain balance internally while either your inner world or the events of the external world are changing, often too fast for you to keep up with.

Good for All Ages

Ba gua's basic technique, circle walking, can be learned by people of any age. Though best done outside, the circle walking techniques of ba gua will satisfy the physical need for exercise even if done indoors in a small apartment. You can walk for a few minutes or more than an hour if you so desire.

Ba gua was designed to fight up to eight opponents at once. Many legends tell of its effectiveness as a fighting art. One is how just a single bodyguard was able to protect the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, when she fled Beijing after the collapse of China’s Boxer Rebellion in 1908. Virtually no other martial art system or style, internal or external, has combined and seamlessly integrated into one package the whole pantheon of Martial Arts fighting techniques as effectively as ba gua.

A Meditation Art Based on the I Ching

Ba gua is first and foremost an art of internal energy movement that embodies the eight primal energies that are encompassed by the eight trigrams of the I Ching. According to Taoist thought, the eight energies correspond to the eight bodies of man: the physical body, etheric/chi body, emotional body, mental body, psychic energy body, causal body, body of individuality and body of the TAO. Each of these has a different energetic level of vibration.

Internal Power Training

The basic internal power training consists of learning eight palm changes and combining them with walking, spinning and twisting arm movements and constant changes of direction. Over time, these movements turn you into a swirling tornado with extremely rapid spiraling of the body and instantaneous changes of direction.

Transformational Energy Work

In keeping with the I Ching, ba gua continuously combines and transforms these eight primary energies. In the beginning of training, metaphors that point toward the eight energies are translated into body and chi movement. The purpose of this early stage of training is to have the body become coordinated, the mind to become still, and the Taoist meditation state of 'no mind' (Wu wei) to appear. Once you have reached the 'no-mind' state, your consciousness and then your body begins to glimpse, experience, and integrate into your being, one by one, the actual living reality of the eight energies. This understanding of the eight energies is experiential and impossible to portray accurately in words.

Mind-to-Mind Transmissions

The most advanced work of ba gua is taught by direct mind-to-mind transmissions. These are essential for you to perceive how these eight energies combine with each other at ever-increasing levels of complexity both internally and in the continually manifesting world outside the body. In my book, The Power of Internal Martial Arts, you can read more about ba gua's history and find out about some remarkable teachers in China with whom I studied.

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The Power of Internal Martial Arts and Chi[Book]

Bruce Frantzis shows his encyclopedic knowledge of the martial arts of tai chi, Hsing-I and ba gua. He tells fascinating stories about his remarkable teachers and the rigors of training with them. Product Details...