- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Step #5 of Liu’s overview is find the one change. My current interpretation of this comes from the Lake Palm Change. Bruce taught how to bring the left and the right into the center but there is a lot more going on. If I understand correctly, the procedure that Bruce detailed actually includes all directions being balanced simultaneously. So the left and right are balancing the left and right directions, the up and down, the front and back, and the in and the out. What’s really hard to pull off is that the extremities are independently balanced as well as counter balancing the other side. This is only possible when you are able to work with both yin and yang. This is crazy complex.
So, prior to this phase we would work on yang then yin then yang then yin. At some point you can work with both yin and yang simultaneously – but only in one direction. Then you start getting it in a circular plane (two dimensions). The Lake Palm Change starts balancing two directions in two limbs, then starts targeting the center and getting all of the directions to balance from all of the limbs (head included) plus the in and out.
Because you are integrating the body, you can target any place on the central channel and balance the eight directions like a sphere. This is quite a bit more intricate than step # 4 of Liu’s overview and it is why you find the one change. Everything is connected to every part of every other thing and each is balancing the other.
The yin and yang balances flip just as they do in the early stages when you are working on a single limb in one direction. Now, when one side flips there is a simultaneous flip of the balancing components. Its all connected. Its all one thing. Its all one change.
Robert, This is where the balance that Tai Chi develops is taken to the next level by Bagua. Tai Chi’s method is a much simpler version of this and it is much easier to find and use. It’s Bagua’s organization of hand and foot as well as its ability to cross the center that makes the one change I described possible.
If you’ve got the balance that Tai Chi can produce at a high level, I doubt you would care about the distinction unless you want to do Tai Chi as meditation. One way to understand the difference is that Tai Chi’s balance is more concerned with balancing the lower tan tien in 8 directions. Ba Gau is using the upper and lower to open the middle, and then integrating all of them.
If you really want to move on to step # 6 in Liu’s overview, the one change is important. Step #5 seems to be the culmination of stillness.
In step #4 (understand and embody how every square inch of your body can rotate like a sphere), you are working all of the pieces that will eventually integrate. In step #5, they become completely integrated.
One final note, remember this is the Taoist Water method. It is a methodical way to find emptiness through the “water” of the body.
Release.
One of my teachers has a saying,
“The GREASE is in the RELEASE.”To me this is the magic moment in Tai Chi.
(I’ve experienced it and am trying to develop it.
But I can hardly apply it in a martial art situation.)I have not discovered it in bagua.
(Because of my elbow injury I’ve stopped trying–temporarily, I hope.)However, I sense that the power of the RELEASE is also part of bagua.
And it looks like your analysis is the place where the RELEASE (balance) operates. The central channel is certainly a good place for the RELEASE to operate.But I don’t think that it makes a difference where the process develops.
Maybe it starts in the Mind? the feet and legs? the kwa? the waist? the diaphragm? the breath? the lower dantien? the etheric field? the earth’s magnetic field in the center iron core of the earth?Is the RELEASE the one change, the Holy Grail we are all searching for?
Sometimes Bruce connects it with “opening” and “closing.”
External and Internal. Outer and Inner. Yang and Yin.
Blood vessels Dilating and Constricting.
Each Palm Change operating a bit differently to accomplish the same process.The RELEASE may even be synonymous with STILLNESS.
Lately I’ve been using the breath to guide the energy produced in the RELEASE. The Water Palm Change is a neat way to employ the breath guiding Qi along each of the physical layers of the body, even through and along and in the very marrow of one’s bone.
Great stuff you’re dealing with.
cheers,
Bob
I don’t know if anyone has ever noticed that when I have a burst of posts, they are usually related. So, for example, this post is directly related to my post “Bagua Symbol and the Trigrams”.
That post was a description of the same thing as this post. It was just coming at it from a more theoretical angle. Here I’m relating it to Liu’s overview to put it into perspective: where does it fit in the big picture?
So, take this post as an example and understand the balance and counter-balances that I’m describing are the same balances in the Bagua symbol. Each side is the opposite (balance) of the other. All eight directions are represented. The one change is saying what happens when you change one of those lines. How do the diagram re-balance itself?
Later you start discovering how the empty center can absorb and manifest any of the trigrams. That’s the goal of step #6. How do I take something and dissolve it back into the middle empty space. You can’t force this. You just have to keep practicing the balancing act of step #5 until you start to stumble onto it.
Later in step #7 I suspect that you start paying attention to how the outside emptiness (everything outside the trigrams) is impacting what we consider “us”, and understand the force that furthers everything.
But before that pie in the sky stuff can start happening, you’ve got to train the living beep out of what you can control at this point. So, back to training steps #4 and #5 better.
I think it is working the spinal cord physically to ultimately gain direct access to the central nervous system, CNS. I’m thinking the Taoist Water Method starts with the blood, then includes all the fluids, then it the focuses on the cerebrospinal fluid in particular. The CNS is necessary because it drives everything. This is the middle ground of “chi”. A vague term that encompasses a whole bunch of physiological processes ultimately directed by the mind.
This is the setup for emptiness. It isn’t emptiness. You’ve literally just set the stage for it.
Stillness for me (at the moment, because my understanding can change on a dime), is about balance using the fluids to connect everything in the body. All this is jing. The nervous system controlling all this stuff that is happening simultaneously in the body is part of the “chi”.
The processes of “chi” have to get stronger and more complete to fuel shen.
Shen is next but I suspect that the real meaning of it isn’t understood until emptiness is experienced more deeply. The little glimpses don’t really count. You need the great stillness coming from deep experiences of emptiness.
This is an archived forum (read only). Go to our active forum where you can post and discuss in real time.