circle walking: how many and how often change direction?

[Anonymous]

I am curious how many circles other people walk, and how often people switch directions? Somewhere or other in the dvd’s Bruce talked about working towards doing small numbers of circles before direction switching. Maybe he meant “once you get good”, or “once your doing SPC”, I’m not sure. Anyways, I noticed that by going from 4-6 circles before direction switching to doing 10-12 circles before direction switching my practice has really gone up a notch or two or three. Particularly chi acquisition and chi flow wise.

[Anonymous]

Hi, Scott.

There are several places in the materials where Bruce gives advice about how often to change direction. In one place (don’t recall exactly where), he advises every 3rd time around for slow speeds, every 2nd time for medium speeds, and every time for fast speeds. Also, if you use the guided audio practice sessions, he cues change of direction (or gives more general directions) in many of them. There are also meditations the give guidance in letting the chi and intuition determine when you change.

I think if you work really carefully through the materials – and if you can find a teacher Bruce trained – you’ll find the answer to this and other questions.

Good luck,
Matthew

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply Matthew.

I’ve had 2-3 bagua instructors, all here in Colorado. A famous guy in Boulder, a not-famous guy here in Denver, and some training with Lee Burkins on the other side of the state. Each of them made me/us [us as in “classmates”] direction change about every 2-4 circles. In terms of Bruce’s directions, I remember there be particular numbers he emphasized [including a higher number like 8 or something] but that he also talked about “as you get better turn more frequently”, eventually turning every circle. I’ll have to go back and look/listen for Bruce’s numbers again.

All of my bagua instructors discussed that bagua can be done for chi accumulation, and that its very powerful for that. Each talked some in the following direction [and Lee talked the most about it], but none of them took the “create a carrier wave and fill it with light/sound” idea that Bruce’s dvd’s refer to as far as what the dvd’s discuss. Also, I think the meditative/I-ching/monastic take on bagua is new to me [unless Lee mentioned it some in passing]. As a personal observation, I see that I feel more meditative, more connected/physically-integrated, and have more souped-up chi acquisition when I do more circles before switching directions. As a forum for sharing our experiences and observations while doing this BMP program, I thought I’d post about it and see what others might have to say. For all I know, all this observation really means is that I’m not performing direction changes effectively [energetically/anatomically speaking] and if I were I could feel the same things while changing directions more often???

Lee is on the other side of the state, so its kinda effortful to go see him, but I hope to meet up with him at some point next month [April]. I also intend to check in and see if my in-Denver teacher is still around and available. I was his last student that showed up for classes, and its hard to pay rent on one student. I practice consistently [about 6 times/week] and will continue to do so, but yes absolutely things would be easier and faster with a teacher to go spend time with.

Thanks again for the reply. Hopefully we’ll get more posts and discussion going on here in the BMP forum

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