Bagua Symbol and the Trigrams

[Anonymous]

Over the years I’ve given a lot of thought to the meaning of the Bagua symbol and the trigrams. At this point I’m wondering if everyone, including me, has been over thinking the whole subject.

I wonder if there is more meaning in just making a few simple observations like the Bagua symbol is empty in the center. The trigrams are made up of yin and yang lines. Yin and yang represent opposites. The trigrams are just every possible combination of three yin and yang lines. The Bagua symbol is an arrangement of the lines and trigrams that shows how balance is maintained. In other words the opposite side’s trigram is composed of the opposite set of lines. Etc., etc…

If you work with the central channel (at least my current understanding of it), all of these observations correspond to how its supposed to work. In fact, it applies to step #4 in Liu’s overview: For martial purposes, understand and embody how every square inch of your body can rotate like a sphere. Because once you get it in the central channel, there is nothing preventing you from doing it in any place in the body like the center of the palms for example.

In Tai Chi this enables you to express peng, an, gi, and lu in any part of the body as well as having parts of the arm express different energies simultaneously. In Bagua I’d probably think in terms of the pressures from the upper, middle, and lower parts of the body and how they come to bare on any sphere I’m working on. The possibilities are overwhelming,but I’m probably over thinking it.

[Author]

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