Bagua Forms and Liu’s Eighth

I don’t remember if I posted this before, but it has been on my mind lately and I thought I’d share. I was going to append this to my running request for the release of the Thunder palm DVDs or the request for the demonstration of all eight palm changes but there is no need to beat a dead horse. Anyway…

I’m only aware of two students that have been taught the eight palm changes: Frank Allan and Paul Cavel. I’ve only learned four palm changes directly from Bruce. I taught myself the other forms based on archive video footage of Frank Allan demonstrating all eight palms at Anvil Ranch and later in his martial arts studio. I used Paul’s Youtube video to understand common elements between what Frank was taught and what Paul was taught. If you haven’t downloaded Paul’s video and saved it for yourself, I’d strongly recommend you do that. If he “pulls” that video, there won’t be any record of the forms left on the internet.

Frank never published the archive video on Youtube. He only had the more recent video on Youtube for a while. It is no longer available. Frank taught Chris Chappell some of the forms and one of Chris’ friends/students posted a video of Chris performing the first six palm changes. That video is no longer on Youtube. IMO, Frank’s video was the best. He preserved the original form work over decades of practice where Chris had already started to add his own personal flair.

I also taught myself a form I call Liu’s Eighth. It is based on the video that Energy Arts posted of Liu Hung Chieh and Bruce. If you haven’t downloaded that video of Liu, I’d suggest you grab it as well. It is the only video of Liu I’ve ever seen. I may be wrong about which palm change he is executing, but it is instructional nevertheless. It would be very in keeping with Chinese culture to display it this way: There are two ways to hide something – one is out in the open right in front of everyone.

There are about 40,000 hits on the video. I’d guess that 1,000 of those are from me. If you watch Paul’s video it may be difficult to understand why I think this is the eighth palm change. When you see Frank’s version and Paul’s version, it starts to make more sense. If you can find the video of Bruce performing the same movement, you’ll understand why I think this is the way the eighth palm change should be performed. Frank and Paul both have what I call stuck points in there versions. Frank has one. Paul’s version has two stuck points. When Liu and Bruce perform the movement it is continuous (everything furthers).

IMO, no one has been taught the palm changes with the energies of the trigrams. These are all just the forms, the containers that can be used to express those energies. I like the different forms because they help sort out the expression of the 16 part neigung. Bruce has always maintained that the forms aren’t intended to be rigid and we also know that a single movement pattern can be used to express all of the energies of the palm changes.