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Well, I’m obsessing about the Thunder Palm again. I was hoping at least one student of Bruce’s that had attended the Thunder Palm Change seminar, his weekly Bagua classes, or learned privately with Bruce – would contribute to the forum and add some insight. But, lacking insight I’ll move onto speculation.
I know that the thunder palm builds on everything before it (Heaven, Earth, and Wind). It will also go further. I expect it to open the central channel more than the previous palm changes have. I expect it to focus in some way on the mind(not thinking). The trigram’s lines tell me it will mix SPC and DPC ideas/energies. I expect that the interaction of the field to be a dominate theme based on the ratio of two yin lines to one yang line. I expect to use all of the winds and move them very strongly. Based on other feedback I’m expecting to switch or change very rapidly. I expect that rapid change to produce shaking and vibration. I expect it be useful for producing multiple strikes in rapid succession. That rapid change could mean either a switch between SPC and DPC concepts and or rapid change from yin to yang to yin.
when I train like this. I rely heavily on my intuition and I just start playing. Generally the beginning of the next piece naturally follows some mastery of the previous material. I’m always trying to build on what I know. I don’t like building speculation upon speculation. Although this happens when you are wrong about the previous step. This “thinking” phase is like writing a design spec. Once you have the spec, you start trying to find a way to express it. After all, Bagua is an experiential art. So, this is an example of what you might come up with.
I start Thunder at the end of Wind. I’m using the ability to expand my entire field as though that is a given. This learned in the Heaven Palm and significantly upgraded by the Earth and Wind Palm changes. So, the instant my hands start moving to express Thunder…boom!…my field is fully expanded in all directions and it is instantly interacting in lots of ways. It is also expanding back into central channel and waking up the my core. What differentiates this from the Heaven and Wind Palms is what comes next. I’ve basically opened all of my channels. Now the mind enters the equation; it decides which part of the flow to emphasize. The flow is complete, but I’m playing with which “side” of the flow I want to use. All of the expansiveness is continuing and it is also flowing back into itself, back into your central channel and core. Your field is open in all directions including the interaction of the inside with the outside. Now, you switch your focus from the expansion out and away to in and toward. Note: I’m being purposely vague about “out from what and in toward what” because it is happening in both directions simultaneously (this is learned in more fully in the Fire and Water Palms, particularly the Water Palm). There is a lot happening at once.
That’s it. Now I play. I switch back and forth from emphasizing the expansiveness to the flows that are coming in. I try to gain the ability to feel everything without gaps particularly at the moment of the switch. The practice is about finding where you have those gaps and dissolving whatever is blocking you from being totally aware and conscious. The better you get, the closer you get to “seeing” the flow, the whole cycle.
After playing around, you start refining your ideas. I follow directions that match phrases and descriptions that Bruce has used over the years.
So, a thread I might follow is something like making the winds very strong. At the end of the Wind Palm training, I found that I could open the energy out the arm and leg like a matched set. I now setup Thunder using that ability. I open both sides (both sets of limbs) and once the energy passes beyond the hands and feet, I start to curl the fingers so the expanding energy loops back on itself until the fist closes. The winds are suddenly contained. It is like suddenly close a valve on a hose but the water inside slams on the valve and bounces back. Since this is happening both in the hand and the foot, the energy starts bouncing around inside. The reflected waves cause interference. That’s where the shaking comes from. You don’t try to shake.
You train this over and over. It wakes up the central channel as you practice and eventually you notice that you can influence the flow in the central channel. So instead of just using the side channels to initiate Thunder, you start playing with the central channel as well.
You can perform the exact same expansion that occurred between the hands and feet between bai hui and the perineum in the torso. The tuck that Bruce has always taught can be used to loop the expansive energy back onto itself and now you can produce the energy of Thunder significantly stronger and clearer. The core channel starts activating in the arms and legs as well as the torso. You can choose which to use at will: the side channels or the central channel or both.
The stronger you can expand (move the internal winds) the stronger the shaking will be when the fists and feet close in coordination with the tucking of the tailbone.
As you practice, other variations start to emerge. For example you might expand both sides on the first gesture crossing the left and right channels simultaneously to the opposite sides. Instead of spiraling into the central channel you might spiral back through the opposite side channel through the central channel condensing into the originating side channel. I describe the movement this way because both sides are simultaneously doing the same movement. Most importantly they are both continuously expanding. Once the expansive energy starts condensing in the side channel, you open the central channel using the tuck. This is when the explosiveness of the palm change is felt.
Its important to realize that I’ve never closed. This is just another variation of the heaven palm even done in a way that emphasizes the side and center channels. This is working on fulfilling step two of Liu’s overview. I’m trying to open the channels.
If you look at the picture of Bruce doing the Thunder Palm with Liu next to him, you’ll notice the peculiar position of Bruce’s left fist. I use visual queues like this to better understand what’s happening internally.
I think there are several things going on. The roundedness of the arm down through the wrist and fist is created by the opening. It is hard to do this without contracting the left side of the body. But, this isn’t Beng Chuan. There isn’t a projecting side of the body and a retracting side of the body. Both sides are expanding. If you twist out through the forearm and eac of th fingers while forming the fist it helps keep the opening expansiveness going.
This palm condenses the side channels around the central channel. It is like sqeezing a fire cracker in a closed fist. The containment makes the yang opening more explosive. To use another metaphor, it is like placing your thumb over a running garden hose. The flow of the chi in the central channel is squeezed through a smaller aperture causing it to flow faster and with greater pressure.
The side channels are closing in (not because of a yin action, but because of the opening in all directions) and they are narrowing/focusing the stream of chi flowing in the central channel.
This opens your central channel and gives you tremendous access to it. You can literally grab any section and move the flow of chi like you are grabbing and moving a physical object. The flow is that concrete.
Weird.
At the end of the day, I’ve at least got a distinct way to open the central channel significantly better than any of the previous palm changes. And I can go back and use that skill to make all of the previous palm changes better.
The cross currents are enhanced as well and they make the Wind palm far more accessible while setting the stage for the next palm, the Fire palm.
The fist actually helps get the central channel opening out each finger and toe. Something that Bruce has talked about often, but I’ve never been able to do. In the Thunder palm it becomes easy and the whole body responds like a single unit.
BTW, I’ve just described working directly with the jeng chi and chi chu dzuo. By connecting all of this back to the lower tan tien, you begin to be able to use all of the 16 part neigung. Opening and closing takes on new meaning and ultimately is connected to every part of your physical and etheric bodies.
You still need to work the expansive energy further, In the 7th palm change you have to be able to evenly (balancing all sides of the body) open while lifting one leg. This is significantly more difficult than any of the previous palm changes. Like in the I Ching, the cycle culminates in the 7th. And in the 8th palm change, a new cycle begins – you start working on the 16 and revisit all of the palm changes from a yin perspective.
By the end of this work, you’ll know something about the first two hexagrams of the I Ching. And then you’ll Begin- hexagram # 3, Zhun.
The variations and interpretations can go on and on. Another example would be opening the extremities (hands, feet, and head) while closing the lower tan tien and then reversing these back and forth trying to get an oscillation going very rapidly. I abandoned this because the central channel wants to do the same thing everywhere at the same time.
So, you might try rapid reversals using figure eights that twist and untwist from side to side in rapid succession. This is limited unless you can contain the field; unless you condense the central channel and make the openings and closings occur in a very very tight confined space (the smaller the better). I like this one because it can’t be done without access to the central channel and still contains an opening inside the contained field.
You can condense the field in two distinct ways: 1) you can shrink it like a contraction or 2) you can expand the outside so it pushes in toward the center. I like the latter because it is essentially a continuation of the Wind palm.
In the Wind palm your field expands outward from the center. In this way of performing the Thunder palm, the field outside begins to expand from every point. It opens more. It opens from every direction. You pay attention to all of the expansions coming toward the central channel, allow them to condense the field, and then bomb! open from the central allowing all of the energy to rattle around inside the contained field.
From this point of view, Thunder is the complimentary opposite of Wind. Like the Earth palm change, the sides are both doing something and you open more than the previous palm.
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