An Energetic Interpretation of the Single Palm Change

[Anonymous]

My understanding of Bagua and its internal components is constantly evolving. It changes as I understand new elements as well as deepen my understanding of the most basic components of the 16 part neigung system that Bruce teaches. It is imporatant to get the idea that you can’t do the more advanced techniques until you have a solid foundation in the basics that are born of long hours of repetative practice and drills. It is also important to realize that the early steps setup the next step in the progression and without a strong grasp of the earlier work, you’ll build an inherent weakness into your system. It took me a long, long time to realize that I really hadn’t trained something enough until I could perform it, instantly and with the same ease as opening and closing my hand. If you are healthy and “normal”, I can’t imagine that it is a struggle for you to close your fist. In this same manner you need to be able to raise your hands into the single palm change posture and have everything connected from your toes to your finger tips to the top of your head — instantly without effort. What makes that Taoist practices so satisfying is that it doesn’t end there. You can always connect more deeply or further out to the end of your etheric body for example, and on and on. When you start engaging with the heart/mind and begin to experience how the energy of the body responds immediately to the direction of your mind, you’re finally entering the sphere that BaGau was really meant to be played in. But, long before this you go through more mundane steps and I thought I talk about one of the steps along the way by describing one way of performing the energetics of the Single Palm Change. This isn’t the end all and certainly isn’t a beginner practice. It is just one interpretation. It does require a strong foundation in basic neigung.

I’ve never been taught this and I’ve never discussed it with Bruce. So, like my other posts, you have to decide for yourself whether it makes sense or has any value.

I’m not interested in describing all of the myriad details of the body mechanics of the Single Palm Change. Bruce is doing an incredible job of that in his Bagua Mastery Program. In a small post like this I can only describe the big picture in an over simplified manner. Keep in mind this is not a full expression of the SPC. It is one of the possible steps in a long iterative progression. It assumes that you can work directly with the side channels and that they are open enough to feel the flow from your hands to your feet in an unbroken line. This isn’t imagined. It isn’t light and born of hyper-sensitivity. You’ve got to be capable of moving a lot of pressure through the side channels. Your not working with the central channel yet either. That comes later. I use the double palm change to open the central channel, but that’s another post.

So, you walk the circle and begin to change direction. You turn the foot in. This foot will be the rear leg. It is on this side of the body that you drive the energy down the side channel into the heel of the foot. I simultaneously press that same side hand down in a downward spiral. This increases the pressure in the side channel, the downward flow. The opposite side is unweighted and is the “energy” side of the body. The downward pressure goes down the side channel of the rear leg though the etheric field below the foot and comes up the unweighted leg up the opposite side channel and up and out the raised hand on that side. It is the downward flow of heaven that propels the up and out of the unweighted projecting foot and hand.

You’ve reversed direction. Now, the weight has to shift in one of a bunch of possible ways. I continue to drive the hand downward in a spiraling fashion until it basically can’t go any further. The energy side is also reaching its peak. At this point the rear leg has drawn in next to the front leg and the raised hand has to start to drop. You’re going to push down on the newly weighted leg through the side channel on that side while pushing the same side hand down. This will propel the newly unweighted leg forward and the lower hand to rise as the energy flows up and out it. In simple terms you push energy down one side channel at a time; hence, the single palm change is actively working only one channel at a time. It is working a single palm. Push down through the side channel on one side then the other. The single palm change form allows you to push energy down each side channel once and allows the energy to rise up each side channel once. You’re clearing the pipes. Notice if you practice this way, you are only working on one new thing – moving energy down one side channel at a time. The practice assumes that you’ve built a strong enough foundation to have a ton of other stuff working effortlessly without requiring your attention. For example, all of your alignments, proper weight shifting, twisting, etc. are already there and fully integrated.

The challenge is to have all of the 16 part neigung fully functioning, but this isn’t possible in the beginning. Training is about adding one more thing into your practice at a time. Good practice trains that one thing over and over until it is fully integrated before moving on to the next piece. But again, this comes in layers and you have to move on before you can cycle back and go to a deeper understanding. The art of training is about making good choices about how long to stay on a single element before moving on. When you are on your own, you have to learn to trust your intuition and just do the best you can each time you practice.

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