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This is a follow up to a post on mixing the SPC and DPC. I used to think that the SPC was yang and DPC was yin, but now I’m not so sure.
I’m guessing the SPC change can be done in both a yang and a yin fashion and this is where you progress to the sixteen. Basically, I think you revisit all eight palm changes and instead of performing them from an expansive yang energy, you perform them from the absorbing yin energy. I’m suggesting that all of the eight palm changes are supposed to be done by producing the expansive energy first learned in the Heaven Palm change. In this sense, all of the palm changes contain the single palm change (a phrase that Bruce uses). You could also argue that there is only the single palm change.
Take the Wind Palm Change, WPC, for example, it could be performed with a closing action on the lower tan tien or into the central channel. But I’m saying that you are supposed to keep expanding, you expand toward the lower tan tien. You never stop expanding. The lower tan tien will naturally allow the energy to flow into it and out to the external field (if you have those channels open). In like manner, the expansive energy around you will flow into points outside your body (in the etheric field) and back into the lower tan tien where it will pop out the lower tan tien and continue to expand out. The inside and outside are connected like two sides of a Mobius strip or a science fiction worm hole. Notice there are ins and outs but they are all occurring because you choose to expand your energy. Also note that as described, energy is traveling both directions within the same channels.
Now go back and create the WPC starting with an absorption. You might start by absorbing into all of the points in the field outside your body as well as into the lower tan tien. This will feel very different, but if you take this all the way, the flows will be in both directions flowing within the same channels.
It becomes really important to understand how to create the energies of the trigrams. These aren’t vague feelings. They are precise, systematic flows. It also complicates the idea of mixing or the smooth palm changes because if you aren’t completely clear about what’s going on, you’ll be mixing ideas from both the SPC/DPC and yang/yin methodologies. In other words you’ll be mixing ideas from the sixteen into the eight.
Yin and Yang movement in the body has many layers to it. I find doing the palm changes a definite discipline in the combination of both Yin and Yang instead of one palm change being more yin than yang etc. I feel the structural integrity of the body determines the manifestation of Yin and/or Yang and the degree to which the opening and closings of the body can be felt and engaged.
The single palm change is so important to understand because of the way it concretely opens and closes the whole body while one is moving and wrapping and/or coiling all at the same time as being rooted and the spine is being woken up through the mud stepping.
I do agree that the SPC is supremely important to understanding ALL of the movements in any internal system. The degree to which the body opens and closes all the joints and wraps all the layers of fascia in the body simultaneously during the SPC means that you have a never ending learning of deeper and deeper reference points for how the deeper levels of energy actually do move in the body.
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for adding to the discussion. I agree with everything you said.
I’d add that what you are describing is Stage II of Bagua’s Eight Stages of Practice for Developing Fighting Skills as described in Bruce’s book, The Power of Internal Martial Arts and Chi.
The yin that I’m referring to is the yin that Bruce describes in Stage VI on page 90. My current opinion is that you don’t train this until you’ve understood the eight ways of doing the SPC (the eight trigram energies) as described in Stage V.
I’d also add a comment about the transition from stage V to VI: it literally occurs when you understand the Lake palm change. In the eighth palm, everything flips.
For the first time you glimpse consciousness from the opposite point of view. Expansion changes to absorption. Yang to yin. Instead of expanding, aren’t you just absorbing the energy of heaven? You can look back and interpret all of the trigrams as simply mixing heaven and earth. Up until the Mountain palm change, you were either expanding or condensing. In the Lake palm, you transition to stage VI and you find yin.
I’m planning to explore stage VI using the yin phase of Bagua and the 8 palm changes. The lines will be instructions for connecting the tan tiens to heaven and earth as learned in stage V but everything will be done from a yin perspective.
The flip is also stability changing to chaos. Ultimately chaos is the lack of control. I suspect that the first 7 are all performed from our common perception of the world; we are doing something. The flip to chaos is simply seeing the same event from the opposite point of view, from the point of view of everything else. To do this completely is to lose all sense of control.
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