Bagua as Meditation:

[Anonymous]

I thought it would be interesting to post on my current understanding of Bagua as meditation. Basically answering the question: How does it all fit together?

There are a millions ways to slice this and this is just one of them. We should always defer to Bruce as he is the only one that has a true lineage connection to the tradition, but it can be instructive to hear someone else’s take and somewhat comforting to hear someone else is struggling through the material. You’re not alone. Some of what I’ll describe is based on experience and some on speculation so take it for what it is.

For me meditation started with dissolving, specifically outer dissolving. You can sum the whole game up as learning to feel or connecting your mind and body. The whole point for me is to learn how to put your attention on something and keep it there. Why? Because, observation is powerful. The simple act of putting your attention on something changes it. It starts to shift and move. I think this is the foundation of everything furthers. You are finding something that is stuck (meet one of the 4 criteria) and putting your attention on it until it starts to change and using your intent to make it disperse out past the skin to the end of your etheric field.

This process “opens” your channels, relaxes the mind, and allows your energy (broadest sense) to do whatever it needs to without restrictions.

Inner dissolving does essentially the same thing except you are trying to create inner space. When you implode, you are still opening but the opening is inward. When you implode, you get the first glimpses of emptiness but as Bruce says there are many layers of emptiness before you start to really get what it is. I’ve practiced inner dissolving for almost 20 years and wouldn’t consider the thousands of times I’ve imploded as going into emptiness. I just think of it as opening up or opening in. Emptiness has a very different meaning for me now and I may get to that.

The end result of outer and inner dissolving is to open the body, but more importantly to find the heart-mind and gain access to your central channel.

Here is where Bagua comes into the picture. But before you talk about Bagua, you have to understand more about the role of the central nervous system, CNS, in Taoist practices. Bruce has written about this is his books so rather than rehash his material, I’m going to digress for a minute and try to relate this in a totally different way – I’m going to talk about magnets.

Everyone has played with magnets. But I want you to think about the magnetic fields. If you hold a single magnet, do you feel the magnetic field? I don’t.

When you bring two magnets together and the fields repel each other, do you feel the magnetic fields? Most people would probably answer, yes. But I don’t think you do. I’m suggesting that you never feel the actual magnetic field. You feel the forces acting on each other through the effects on your body and ultimately through your CNS. Your mind says oh, that’s the magnetic fields, but you really are feeling forces acting on your physical body.

I’m going to go a little further and just suggest that you can’t feel anything without your body and CNS. And that is why all of the Taoist practices start with the physical body as their foundation. Chi works similarly. You don’t feel chi unless it acts directly on your physical body. Different energies work at different “frequencies” which tend to act on different tissue.

In the single palm change, we are supposed to find the heart-mind and work our way through the tissue at a particular “frequency” all the way to the central channel. This took me twenty years. I’m not talking about imagining some line in the body and I’m not talking about this piece or that piece. I am talking about feeling the whole physical body at once – everything. This can’t be done without the heart-mind and it can’t be done without learning how to relax your mind to an extraordinary degree. This is the pre-requisite for entering into Bagua as a spiritual art and understanding the trigrams. 7 bodies to go…

So, when I’m practicing the single palm change, I’m trying to focus everything into the central channel. I’m activating and working with all of the primary gates. You feel all of the physical tissue at once but the mind focuses into a laser like thread that connects to this frequency. This is why Bruce always talks about the single palm change opening a small “whole in the net”. Think of it like attacking with an ice pick, a tiny focused point or line shooting out like a laser. This is represented symbolically as a yang line.

In the double palm change you open up the central channel. It expands cylindrically around the central channel and fills with something that feels just like water. I can’t help but wonder if this is the “water of life”. It is chi, the frequency of the etheric body.

I can control the radius of the cylinder but I’m not sure how big I’m supposed to make it. I think it is sufficient to open this up enough to contain the bones but I need Bruce to say for sure. Perhaps the goal is to open it all the way out to the edge of the etheric body but I don’t think so (at least not at first). Opening the central channel activates the field outside the body and makes it more tangible, but I think I’m experiencing the etheric through this water. When I open the central channel, it is experienced as one complete homogeneous thing. It is one thing but it has edges. There are two sides. The yin line symbolically represents this. The yang line has expanded creating a container that is filled with something. Your mind is active on the edges and receptive inside. You put your attention on the center of the palms, the balls of the feet, and bai hui. All of them interact through the water. The water is receptive to whatever forces or pressures come into it. These forces pass through and interact with it other. They co-create each other and are balanced through the central channel. The central channel is no longer a line, it is the conscious water.

A point doesn’t have an edge. A line doesn’t have edges. The single palm change is one. It is light and inertia-less because of this. The double palm change has two sides. It is two. Two things are going on at once and it has a heavy water like quality and cohesion.

When I practice the wind palm, I open the central channel more. I open it out to the secondary gates. I also split the body again. Where the double palm change created two sides, the wind palm splits it again. The secondary gates start working in pairs where I’m storing on one side and releasing on the other. Watch Bruce’s hands really closely when he switches between the single, double, and wind palms. In the single he tends to keep the wrist joint straight (to work along the central channel axis and the primary gates.). In the double palm change he tends to bend the wrist but emphasize the rotation, the two sides of the circle.). In the wind palm, he tends to bend the wrists front to back. You can think of this as a mnemonic device to help the mind quickly switch between the palms (the energies, the organization of the neigung components, etc.). The secondary gates tend to be like the corners of a box. Two on the yin side of the body and two on the yang side (acupuncture meridian point of view, but not the acupuncture channels). I’m suggesting that you can store into one side of the box while releasing from the other.

In the single palm change you have a line going in, going out. In the double palm change you have two sides of the body interacting with each other. In the wind palm you have each arm and leg storing and releasing. There is a lot more going on at once.

You have also changed the energy you are working with very deliberately. I’d also argue that you are trying to very methodically open the energy bodies. What isn’t obvious is that opening the central channel to the bones doesn’t complete the opening of the etheric. It only gives you access to it. You start to feel the etheric more concretely but it isn’t fully open yet.

In the same way, the wind palm doesn’t completely open the emotional body. It gives you access to it. Bruce said that you need to get your energy to the edge of the etheric to start opening the emotional body. I think opening the central channel to the bone inside the body is similar. It starts activating the etheric. It doesn’t necessarily open it all the way.

Symbolically, the wind trigram reflects the two sides storing and releasing simultaneously by the yin and yang lines on each side of the central channel (the yang middle line).

I’m not sure about the thunder palm. I need to see the DVDs. I think that we’ll divide the body yet again and you’ll continue to go way, way out. You’ll have to have opened up the emotional body to its edge to really start opening the mental body.

I’m also guessing that the fire palm will start going into inner space. The two yang lines surrounding the yin line symbolizes magnifying the yang lines of the single palm change. The unseen world of the psychic body may be the subatomic world. You can’t see it. I’m sure you continue to go out too, but you’ll need to balance the in and the out to go out further.

The water palm continues inward. Symbolically the two yin lines surrounding the inner yang line is like magnifying the inner line of the fire trigram.

The mountain palm takes this further and uses spiraling in and out of the central channel to drive deeper into inner space and further out.

Finally the lake represents going into emptiness. That’s why it can’t be described and isn’t like anyone of the other palm changes. You can go in any which way and come out any which way and in any pattern or combination of patterns that is possible to imagine.

Sorry, I got tired and started plowing through this at the end. The latter stuff is all speculation anyway. I can work with the single, double, and wind palms exactly as described; however, I don’t work beyond the etheric body yet and I don’t have the frequency of the emotional body yet.

Everything is done with the heart-mind. Everything functions through the central channel. Everything takes an f-load of training to get through step by step. You are basically increasing your disconnectedness and consciousness through the CNS. It is systematic and methodical. I don’t really meditate as I walk. That’s too hard. I use Bagua to dredge up stuff that needs to be dissolved and use lying down meditation to dissolve it.

That’s the spiritual process for me. Frankly it is a lot of hard work. Twenty years and I haven’t even gotten through the second body yet.

[Anonymous]

Thanks James.

(I know that this has been an “f-load” of work for you.
Together your recent 6 posts are superlative efforts;
this post on Meditation is even more extraordinary.)

I, too, must defer to Bruce as the lineage holder.
But you personally have fulfilled my expectation for his “Bagua Mastery Program.”
The notebooks, video and audio, as in-depth as they are, are after-all, pretty “lifeless.”
I was hoping that a real dialogue with Bruce in this Forum might bring his materials to life, but Bruce seems to have bigger fish to fry.

I purchased the Program hoping that it would enhance my meditative experiences.
And right off the bat, it did—even though I haven’t even gotten to the Single Palm Change.
But it was you, with your posts in this Forum that showed how bagua can work with meditation.

(I’m sure that nobody, including Bruce, intentionally wants to elevates him to a cult figure. That would be dangerous—as, for example, when Chairman Mao was elevated by the masses during the Cultural Revolution to a personality cult.)

I think that your posts and your experiences avoid cultism.

Now your post offers another clear glimpse of how bagua relates to meditation.

Where does “Bagua come into the picture”?

I like your metaphor of magnets.
Just to be careful, I like to remember that no metaphor is perfect—they all miss the mark.
For example, adding iron filings to your magnet-metaphor takes the metaphor to another level; see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCHJmMdHNPo

Wow! Look at those lines in the magnetic field. What lines, you idiot? All I see is iron filings in a pattern.

Qi really is “something.” But what?

Side note, I digress:
You mention the “secondary gates,” 2 on the yin side of the body and 2 on the yang side.
But you didn’t think that they had “acupuncture channels.”
Maybe they do.
The Qiao and Wei Mai Vessels are “extraordinary” vessels that nearly run along the left/right side channels (albeit on superficial skin layers.) These 2 pairs run along each side of the body.

Qiao Mai is sometimes called a “Bridge” vessel.
Wei Mai is sometimes called a “Regulator” vessel.

For example:
Both Right/Left -Alignments are near pairs of Yin and Yang Qia Mai running along the insides of the Right/Left-Alignments and near pairs of Yin and Yang Wei Mai running along the outsides of the Right/Left-Alignments.
These “extraordinary” vessels merely share points from the other 12 ordinary meridians—Kidney-Bladder, etc., and have no unique points/organs/channels of their own.

The Qiao Mai vessels put yin and yang into dynamic motion.
The Wei Mai vessels join all the functions of the ordinary meridians like a great net.

Self-acupressure of a single point is what has put me in touch with the “heart-mind.”
Me-thinks that with bagua you really do “meditate as you walk.”
Since any one point of the body is as powerful as any other point or the “central channel.”
Each point (a point has no dimensions) is holographic; in a single drop of dew the entire earth and heaven is reflected and can be seen.
This is what led me to look to bagua to expand the experience with other parts of the puzzle.

This is why your post is so valuable to me. It’s like you have given me the corner pieces of a picture-puzzle. Maybe just another piece of the BIG puzzle, but a very key piece.

Therefore, I wholeheartedly agree with you that it “can’t be done without the heart-mind.”
(Even though explaining one unproveable concept with another unproveable concept just kicks ‘the can’ further down the road.)

With your short comments on the various palm changes (SPC, DPC, Wind, Thunder, Water, Mountain, Lake) you’ve provided me with a rough map to follow when applying bagua to meditation.

I’ll end this comment by referring to “Bendowa,” by Dogen (circa 1200).
One of the most important words of all of Dogen’s teachings is “tanden,” translated as “simply transmitting.”
All buddha’s “have been simply transmitting” ONLY this wonderous, mysterious dharma;
Meaning: this is the ONLY thing they transmit.
This transmission takes place only from one person to one person
(hence the idea of a lineage).
It cannot be transmitted through TV, DVDs or books.
The truth is not something substantial like words printed in a book.
It is “something” which human beings cannot create.

Qi is “something” that we cannot grasp with our intellect.
It is beyond anything artificial.
We can only say, “excellent, wonderful.”

You have transmitted something very wondrous to me.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Are there natural links in the palms like how extreme yin creates yang and the 5 elements flow on to each other (eg: water begets wood)? In other words, is there a point where you basically finish a palm and that particular type of palm naturally wants to bounce you to the next one?

It wouldn’t matter to me either way at my level but nonetheless I find it fascinating to talk about these things.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know much about the 5 elements but in terms of the energy bodies you can either mix them together (which Bruce doesn’t recommend until you are very clear about each separately) or you can go into emptiness and come out at a different level. I think this is what Bruce is referring when he talks about jumping levels. You can move up or down the energy levels.

It would only be speculation but I guess this becomes part of the subject of alchemy. You are basically changing one thing into another.

I have one interpretation of the hexagrams where the upper and lower trigrams refer to an energy body at play and the pattern of the neigung you apply using that energy body. In another version you are mixing the energy bodies. But it is all intellectual b.s. as I can’t do any of it and have never been taught any of it.

I’m concentrating on opening the second body slowly, evenly, methodically and without gaps. That keeps me plenty busy right now.

[Anonymous]

Hey James. Really appreciate you sharing your Bagua as a meditation approach. Gave me much insights.

I am struggling to understand this myself, and thought Bagua can be used as a form of mindfulness, which is the gateway to meditation. I am still working out what meditation is supposed to be.

My take on it is a lot of the meditations in the course appears like variations of mindfulness exercises, and / or releasing / dissolving exercises. I was thinking by dissolving and releasing more and more layers inside us, we can get to emptiness.

[Anonymous]

After I posted this thread, I re-discovered all of the meditation material that is peppered throughout the BMP. If you are interested in the meditation side of Bagua, I’d recommend finding all of the material and reading it as a complete set of instructions. The overview is particularly good and will probably make more sense than what I’ve posted here. Keep in mind that when I post, I purposely try not to simply regurgitate Bruce’s writing; I’m usually trying to give my personal take on the subject at my current level. That’s very different than writing from a position of mastery where you know the subject completely.

At the moment, I’m focusing on the mind-stream. There are two sections in Relaxing into your Being that are particularly pertinent. I found this a little out of order. Bruce has steps 1, 2, 3. I found it ass-backwards: 3, 1, 2. In other words I was using it to dissolve before I realized what I was doing, and now have gone back to do step 2 properly before using it to dissolve.

I mention this because the mind-stream can take you into emptiness without drama. It also creates the bridge to performing Bagua as walking meditation. I’ve never been comfortable combining the two: it has always been too complicated. I’m finally able to start walking and chewing gum at the same time.

For the overly ambitious, don’t bother trying this while performing Bagua until you can easily find the mind-stream while sitting. It’s just a waste of time.

[Anonymous]

James, would you elaborate on mind-stream? I read the book, however, it is a challenging subject and hence I would appreciate if you could talk more about it, like how you go about finding it and how it feels when you find it. Thanks a lot!

[Anonymous]

The mind-stream is really difficult to describe and it is entirely possible that I’ve mixed up what term is what. For me, the heart-mind (p169), mind-stream (p140-141), mind flow (p170), and awareness of awareness are all nuances of the same thing. I work with them in the middle tan-tien.

Everyone is familiar with normal consciousness. We all feel separate and solid. We look at the world around us.

Awareness of awareness is when you catch a glimpse of the consciousness that is observing. It only happens for an instant and then you are back to feeling separate and thinking thoughts about what was observed including thoughts about the feeling of the consciousness that you became aware of.

You can do this once or twice and then it will all become thinking again. You’ll make it into thoughts and ideas and create some story around it. You’ll tell yourself how important this experience was and how advanced your practice has become. But, the truth is your back to the same separate, thinking, normal consciousness again.

If you can connect with the heart-mind you’ve got a better chance of repeating the real experience and if you can truly string instants of awareness of awareness together it begins to feel like a flow – like a flowing stream.

The practice that Bruce describes is learning to stay in the flow. It is right on the edge of conscious thought and unconsciousness. The hard part is letting go. You have to let go of every thought, emotion, idea, story, or name that you think you are. You sort of die to everything you think you are and just become the observer again.

I say again because I really believe this is the pre-celestial state the all the alchemical texts talk about returning to.

To use a metaphor it is like looking at a photograph. That’s normal consciousness. Then you realize something has to be looking at the photo. That’s you. But, what is behind that? What is observing your awareness? What is allowing you to be aware? It is more awareness. But what is behind that? Still more awareness. This is the mind flow as you catch glimpse after glimpse of the awareness of awareness.

I’m not talking about thought after thought. Unless you have the sense that your very existence at stake, you are not likely experiencing what I’m trying to describe. If you are feeling stress, you are making a big mistake.

You have to relax into your being.

[Anonymous]

I’ve gotten much clearer since I originally posted this message. I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit the post and look at the material in a totally different way.

Regardless of whether you are approaching Bagua for martial arts or meditation, the Taoist approach starts the same way. I really don’t think it matters how you start or what form you pick. The basics are the same.

You’ll need to start improving your breathing, learning to relax, understand basic alignments, and most importantly begin to connect the extremities to the spine. Basic Taoist breathing is all you’ll need for a very long time (at least a decade). The basic alignments can be intellectually grasped in an afternoon, but being able to dynamically move while keeping them together will take as much as a decade to perform properly. Learning to relax is an ongoing process that never ends and goes through many levels of sophistication. These are all goals that Bruce taught me the first time I met him and that I’ve spent over two decades trying to master. Looking back I realize that the most important skill to master is connecting the extremities to the spine.

I think Buddy Tripp used to say “get your spine as far away from your arms and legs as possible.” Most people think of moving their arms away from the spine, but moving the spine away from the arms is a more appropriate point of view. Your movement will become more aligned with moving from your center. But that detail aside, the basic idea is to connect your limbs to the spine. Few people realize that you haven’t completed this step adequately until you can chose to connect each arm and each leg to any point on the spine at will and nearly instantaneously. This means you have to be able to connect the limb at any height on the spine and clearly to the front, back, or side at that height.

All of the exercises to lengthen tissue, open energy gates, open energy channels like the yin-yang meridians, align properly, relax, and breathe properly – simply help you to connect the extremities to the spine. The more you relax, the more sophisticated your dissolving becomes, the more you stand and work through alignments, the more time you spend improving your breathing – the more quickly you’ll arrive at the goal of connecting your extremities to the spine.

So, you can do neigung sets or you can do Tai Chi, Hsing-I, or Bagua. It doesn’t matter. The reality is you will do each poorly and with very, very limited internal content.

The truth is few people have the stomach for or the desire to do the work that is required to clear out all of their crap to get the body and mind to start opening up enough to allow the body to connect fully and properly. Liu said it “…few want to learn”.

Go back and read my first post, “The Brilliance of Circle Walking”. What I’m describing is one of the simplest and most elegant ways to achieve all of these goals at once. There is no mystery. No magic. Just the simple, physicality of getting the arms, legs, and head connected to the spine.

Next, you need to connect them to the lower tantien. You are going to connect the body to the spine and the lower tantien. In a more complex step, you can fuse the lower tantien to the spine. This involves Spiraling Energy Body and a more sophisticated mastery of the body and chi. Bruce has only mentioned this step but to my knowledge he has never taught it. Why should he when so few have accomplished step 1.

To review, you’ll connect your extremities to the spine and lower tantien, and then you’ll fuse the lower tantien with the spine. In Bagua, you’ll need to be capable of working with your bone marrow before you are done. Spiraling will open your chi. You have to be careful not to confuse the 16 part neigung with the art. I’ve made this mistake a million times. Hopefully this next section will start to explain why.

Next you’ll start to work through the palm changes and the trigrams. I have literally a thousand ways of working through them, but I’ll describe the simplest organization of the material that I’ve come up with to date.

The single palm change contains all of the system but you can’t fully understand it in the beginning. Like the single palm change, the double palm change can’t be fully understood in the beginning either, but they teach you how to begin comprehending the lower tantien and from there you can begin understanding the meaning of a single yang and yin line. This is absolutel critical to any further progress.

The progression works very systematically. The single and double palm changes open the lower tantien, the body. The 3rd and 4th palm changes open the middle tantien, the mind. The 5th and 6th palm changes open the upper tantien, the spirit. Each tantien is methodically connected to the central nervous system, CNS. It is through this connection and dissolving that you gain the ability to relax your energy matrix and release any stuck energy into formless emptiness. You are literally relaxing your body (lower tantien and everything connected to it), your mind (middle tantien and everything connected to it), and your spirit (the upper tantien and everything connected to it) simultaneously. Emptiness doesn’t start until the 7th palm change when you’ve created enough connection to your body, mind, and spirit (everything that is uniquely you –the sum total or body of individuality). Your ability to connect to and release your body, mind, and spirit comes in stages as does your depth and understanding of emptiness. The 8th is the full comprehension of emptiness.

The palm changes have physical, neigung, and monastic implications. For example, in the single palm change you work with the physicality all the way to the bone marrow. In the double palm change you start working with the etheric body and spirally all of the energy gates. There is this interesting interplay of first creating space (yang action of the single palm change) and occupying or using it fully (yin of the double palm change). The gates can be used to release the ligaments. Done well enough you can control the joints and synovial fluid. Taken further you gain control of the anterior and posterior ligaments along the spine and eventually start controlling your organs. By the fourth palm change, you’ll open the heart and heart-mind. The fifth palm can focus on the cerebral spinal fluid and how to use the diaphragms to circulate it. The fluid is the yin within the yang of the spine. If this is correct, the sixth is the spinal cord itself (the yang within yin) which has three distinct layers. Begin releasing them all and you can use Bagua to explore the emptiness represented by the center of the Bagua diagram and patterns of change.

On one level you can think of all the trigrams as form or structures. They are the red dust. The center is the formless Tao or emptiness. To move from one trigram to another, you can release the shape or structure and then create another shape or structure.

Bruce demonstrates this on the Wind palm DVDs when he is showing the opening of his field with one palm and opening inward with the other. The trigram simultaneously represents many things. It is a shape or form within the mind. It represents the fully opened lower tantien including the lower organs in the abdomen. It also represents the yang action of the middle tantien as well as the pattern of release. I may be wrong but it feels like you release into inner space in the lower tantien and that is directly connected to the opening field expanding out from the other hand. The two are the same. They balance each other. You only go out as far as you go in. The release is done by relaxing all three tantiens simultaneously but the pattern of release is distinctly in (as directed by the lower line) and out (as directed by the two upper lines). The gentleness is because the movement of the lines doesn’t conflict with each other.
This is in contrast to the fourth palm change where the pattern of change creates a reverberating clash of waves. The release is sudden, powerful, and two forces are creating the equivalent of a head on collision.

The fifth palm change opens the psychic body and the upper tantien. I may be wrong but this feels intimately connected to the cerebral spinal fluid. Perhaps we’ll find out this year when Bruce teaches the palm change.

I’ll stop there. I hope this completely different organization gives you both a sense for how interesting Bagua can be and a better understanding how it relates to meditation and spirituality.

[Anonymous]

Thanks James.
Magnum opus.

Although you have progressed much, much further in bagua than I, our goals are the same.

Lately I’ve focused on one process:
INHALATION.
Fact: the RIBS are directly, physically connected with the spine.

Everyone agrees that the diaphragm is the main muscle of respiration.
But not everyone understands the role of the external intercostals in INHALATION. They are the only accessory muscles capable of increasing thoracic volume.
(see Kaminoff, “Yoga Anatomy”)

They are between each rib (eleven sets between 12 ribs).
They run from the top of the rib cage down and forward on a diagonal.
(“forward” is very important).
When you inhale they contract (I prefer to say that they “stretch IN”).
As they stretch IN they lift each rib UP and laterally–increasing thoracic volume (like lifting the handle on a bucket.)
As this happens the scapula and the arms follow the UP and OUT motion.
I believe that this is what the classics try to describe when they talk about the back pulling UP.
This is PENG.
PENG is the first move in “Commencement” Wu Style–
Legs bend, lower body joints close as the upper body joints open and expand. PENG!
PENG lays the foundation for Ji, Lui and An.

I believe that this is what Bruce describes when he says that in mud-walking the energy is pushed down the back of the rear leg into the heel and into the ground.
INHALATION !
The mind leads the Qi, the Qi leads the fluids.

Now (during INHALATION–Stretching IN) your spine is directly related with earth energy.
RELEASE.
RELAX.
EXHALE.
EXHALE into exertion.
Your power is being driven by the earth energy.
All those things you talk about (marrow/bone/tissue/dantiens/wei chi/meridians/etheric energy/cosmic energy) are now connected to the spine (central channel).

I have not yet fully experienced (felt) this in bagua.

But I definitely feel it doing the Yang 88-Long Form
(have been working on the Long Form since 1993.)

The journey is fantastic.

Bob
Post Falls, Idaho.

[Anonymous]

Thanks James.

I had a long-ass reply,
but it looks like I lost it.

Main gist:
RIBS are connected to the spine.
INHALATION raises the ribs and everything else.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. Nice to hear from you.

At the moment, I’m really interested in how Hsing-i, Bagua and Tai Chi are structured. I haven’t started thinking about Tai Chi much, So, I’m not really sure how it is organized. At one point I thought the sequence of Peng, Gi, Liu, and An were organized around the macrocosmic orbit. So, closing Peng was the part of circle from the lower tantien to the perineum, Rising Peng was from the perineum up the spine to the height of the heart where the central channel splits. Gi was from the heart out to the hands along the outside of the arms and simultaneously up over the head. Liu was the flow from the hands to the heart along the inside of the arm and simultaneously from the top of the head down to the heart. An was from the heart down to the lower tantien. The whole orbit acts like a big circuit and all parts of the flow are occurring all the time. You just emphasize one part or another. Since it is Tai Chi you have to initiate the circulation from the lower tantien and stay connected from there. In Hsing-i I use the hands to connect to the spine and initiate mostly vertical flows. In Tai Chi I use the tantien to connect to the macrocosmic orbit. You can still add all your neigung into the movement like open and closing the joints, but the orbit is the organizing principle. Its the circle of Tai Chi. Spliting the body in half at the lower tantien is why the upper body is light and the lower half is heavy. It also explains why Tai Chi plays yin and yang back and forth from its extremes.

I currently work with the diaphragm like it is another extremity. Basically, if you know how to connect your arms to the spine, you can connect the diaphagm in a like manner.

gotta go. Take it easy.

[Anonymous]

BTW, This is just one example of how I tried to understand Tai Chi at some point along the way. It isn’t how I think about it now. I probably should post this in the Tai Chi forums, but I’m too lazy.

I’ve often heard Bruce mention that Hsing Yi, Tai Chi, and Bagua are all internal martial arts; however, I’ve never heard a full explanation of what differentiates the three arts.

He always maintains that each is unique and each is based on the 16 part neigung system. He has given vague, broad clues about their differences. For example, he has mentioned that Hsing Yi comes from the hands, Tai Chi from the lower tantien and Bagua from the feet. But what does this really mean? He says that they are all effective martial arts. He has mentioned that Hsing Yi is the simplest to learn and that Tai Chi has additional complexity that includes everything that Hsing Yi has as well as additional elements. He’s also said that Bagua contains everything that Tai Chi and Hsing Yi have, but it also has more internal content and complexity.

Somewhere in the Hsing-I program Bruce mentions the underlying structure of Tai Chi. He says something like Tai Chi plays the yin and yang polarity. In module 1 of the Tai Chi Mastery Program, he says an important phrase which he translates as “If there is an up there is a down. If there is a front there is a back. If there is left, there is right. If there is in, there is out.”

If I were writing another mediocre Tai Chi book, this is where I would insert my poorly summarized Chinese cosmology section.

Instead of wasting more time on that approach, let’s look at Peng, Gi, Liu, and An: the energies of up, out, in, and down. Let’s try to understand what each is and how they are created based on the polarity of yin and yang.

If you just think of Gi as pushing blood away from the heart and organs and Liu as assisting the veinous return, you already know more than 99% of the people practicing Tai Chi. A large portion of the 16 part neigung system is nothing more than increasingly sophisticated ways to make these flows stronger. Peng and An are always done as a set: remember you can’t have up without down. This is clearly expressed throughout the form over and over again. Single hand Peng is named single hand Peng because only one hand is doing Peng. What’s the other hand doing? It is usually doing An. It is the contrast or polarization that gives each more power. The stronger the up of your Peng, the stronger your An will be in the other hand. They create each other and strengthen each other.

So this is a really accurate description of what is going on at a basic level but it still won’t help you do Tai Chi or create the energies. Something is missing.

You need to be able to connect the arms and legs to the lower tantien. The forces have to balance each other to become strong. It is from this “organization” that you become of aware of the Tai Chi space that Bruce talks about and is the source of all high-level Tai Chi.

When I watch the TCMP DVDs, I always watch to see if the students give both arms equal attention. You can immediately tell whether someone understands Tai Chi by observing this very simple principle because the arms have to connect to the spine at the same height so the forces you create will balance each other. This is one of the most fundamental left right balances that you have to develop and it occurs regardless of the hand shape or their position. For example, in the posture Brush Knee, the upper hand connects to the spine at the same height as the lower hand even though the hand height is dramatically different. This makes the spine incredibly strong and balanced at the height. In contrast think about how many times Bruce has shown back breaks that are based on creating two opposing forces on the opponent’s spine at two different heights. That’s anti-medicine. In general, everything is done from the lower tantien, but you can vary the height to adjust blood flow to and from various organs for health reasons. That’s a more advanced subject. The ability to connect the arms to the spine this way is usually learned in Core IV, Bend the Bow.

I can’t really explain how to relax the vascular system to create Peng or how I push fluids around. Wish I could. I will say that Peng isn’t opening and closing the joints. The joints can open and close. Peng isn’t twisting or spiraling. Your tissue can twist and you can spiral your energy. It isn’t the movement of the diaphragm, but you move the diaphragm in various ways that add to each of the four energies. You also use all of these systems in Hsing-I and Bagua, but they aren’t Tai Chi. It is the polarity of yin and yang and the space this occurs in that is the defining characteristic of Tai Chi.

So take three postures that look almost the same in Tai Chi (Play the Lute, Single Hand Peng, and Lifting Hands). Play the Lute emphasizes wrapping from the back to create a force to the right and wrapping into the front to create a force to the left. The dynamic, opposing forces are powerful. In Single Hand Peng, the side that creates up, adjusts pressure into the bubbling well while the side that creates An, adjusts pressure into the center of the heel. So, there is up and down, but there is also forward and back. An usually opens the joints and Peng closes the joints. What if you have half the body closing and the other half opening? In Commencement both sides are doing the same opening and closings. In Single Hand Peng, the body is split. By the time you get to Brush Knee, the body is split again and instead of connecting the same side hand and foot, you cross over on the diagonal. The pushing hand connects to the forward leg on the other side. That’s the foot that adjusts pressure into the bubbling well while the lower hand that is doing An connects to the back foot with pressure in the heel.

It is more complicated than that. In Brush Knee the pushing hand goes through three distinct phases: Gi, Peng, and An. The lower hand coordinates with it: it performs Gi, An, Peng.

All of the postures start to make sense once you understand the four energies and the basic, organizing principle of polarized forces. It not how Hsing-I is organized. It is not how Bagua is organized. That’s Tai Chi.

[Anonymous]

All excellent observations.

For me Bruce is unique;
he’s the only player I know of that treats and practices all three arts: Bagua, Hsing-I and Tai Chi.
Even the venerable Cheng Man-ching primarily only treated Tai Chi.
I do think that Bruce sufficiently distinguishes the three in his books and courses.

You remark,
“So this is a really accurate description of what is going on at a basic level but it still won’t help you do Tai Chi or create the energies. Something is missing.”

Then you make great points on some of the “missing” parts.
But the beauty of these arts is that you never can exhaust describing what is “missing.”

In fact, leaving something out is not a feature of failed explanations,
but of successful explanations (D.C. Dennett).
Function, purpose, meaning, intention, significance, consciousness and value are intrinsically defined by their fundamental incompleteness. (T.W. Deacon).
Nature deals with the possibilities of events, but does not reduce these events to deductible, predictable consequences (I. Prigogine).
(These guys are all scientists and modern philosophers.)

So to me Tai Chi is the art of evoking
“The fullness of emptiness.”

[Anonymous]

I agree that Bruce is unique. I still don’t think people realize just how extraordinary his knowledge of the Taoist arts is.

I’d also say that unless you understand what makes Hsing-i, Tai Chi, and Bagua unique arts, you’ll never understand what they are or how to do them.

My frustration over the years has been that no one could explain what they were doing or how they were doing it in enough detail to help me understand. The people who know, guard the information like it is the recipe for Coca Cola or intellectual property. I don’t think people realize how much or how little Bruce has explained because almost no one else knows what these arts are.

I’ve posted a lot of flawed descriptions of Bagua on these forums, but the whole art comes down to knowing what a yang line means, what a yin line means, and realizing that the instructions of the trigrams pertain to the lower, middle, and upper tantiens.

[Author]

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