3 External Combinations

I’ve been working on liu he, the six combinations, lately. In particular, I’ve been working on the 3 external combinations: the hands and feet, the elbows and knees, the shoulders and hips. I’m struck by how intricately related these are. I think there is much, much more to their relationships than we realize. The more I learn and understand, the more connected and detailed it becomes. I also think this simple phrase implies a whole lot more than just the hands, feet, elbows, knees, and the shoulders and hips.

The way the foot works has a direct relationship to the hand, but it also has a direct relationship to the knee which has a direct replationship to the kwa/hip. If you understand one, you understand them all. One of the certificates that Liu Hung Chieh gave Bruce has a phrase that sums this up. It translates something like he knows one thing and infers many. All of the 3 external combinations and 3 internal combinations work together. If you study the similarities between the foot and hand, you should understand the knee and the elbow. You should also understand something about the kwa/hip and shoulder. Practice each individually and then integrate them, seperate and combine.

You might be thinking that you’ve heard all of this before but do you understand the actual mechanics of how it works?

Since this is a Bagau forum, let’s consider the foot. One of the liftings in the ankle is behind the achilles tendon. There is a corresponding sinking in two points in front of the ankle. Once you understand how these work, you’ll need to find the same structures in the wrist. The same sinkings and liftings are mirrored in the knee and the kwa. Every time you manipulate one of the liftings or sinkings in the foot, you need to have an a consonant lifting or sinking in the wrist. Similarly, when we project the knees away from the hips, the elbows need to perform the same extension in exactly the same proportion.

I don’t think I can describe all of the liftings and sinkings accurately enough to help you get them, but I think it is important to realize that you need to learn them and coordinate them thoughout the entire body. Getting these right opens the door to the energetics. But, before you go there, you should consider how the foot, knee, and hip combine. When we step, we are activating all of them from the foot up through the knee into the kwa and out the shoulder, through the elbow, to the hand.

For example the lifting in the achilles tendon corresponds to the lifting in the back of the knee which corresponds to a lifting in the kwa. But where is that mechanism in the hand, the elbow, and the shoulder? If you don’t know the answer, you’ve got a lot more to learn about the 3 external combinations and you should also be asking yourself where are the corresponding sinkings for all of these?

This is an important subject and there is a lot more to it. Consider that in Bruce’s Bagua book he lists five energetic practice elements and the six combinations is one of them. You need to get all the physical connections so the energetic connections have a strong foundation. First work out the body mechanics and then work out the energetics.