I Give

[Anonymous]

I’ve been trying to figure out Bruce’s system for over 20 years. I’ve had numerous moments where I thought that I’ve finally got it. Yesterday was one of those days. When this happens, I usually have to give up all of my previous ideas to allow the new way of thinking to exist. In retrospect, this is like seeing the whole process of how we create belief systems from a single idea or concept. The problem is that the slightest misunderstanding can send you off in an entirely wrong direction. On some level, I think I’m a cautionary tale. Fortunately, this process has made me significantly more capable at adapting to change, and helped me to recognize and respect the need for a lineage, a clear way to pass knowledge from one person to the next through time. The problem is the intellectual leaps and logical extrapolations aren’t typically valid. Today, I’ve given up. I give. I’ll still continue this potentially fruitless creation of personal belief systems because I can’t help myself, but today, I recognize that without being taught what the palm changes are really about, it is impossible to know through this method.

With that here’s another post that may be nothing more than mental masturbation. Hopefully it will entertain you and give you yet another way to think about the palm changes.

Believe it or not this whole thread comes from the hand position of the Wind palm that Bruce is teaching in the 4th installment of the Bagua Mastery program. I learned the Wind palm in NYC almost 20 years ago. I don’t remember the palm position being taught this way. I remember it more like Frank Allan performs it except Frank seems to express the palms more like Fair Lady Weaves at Shuttle and I remember it coming out like centrifugal force equally in both hands. Whether I remember correctly or Bruce is teaching it different is completely irrelevant. The point is that the hand position creates a completely different feeling which leads me to interpreting its purpose in a completely different way. So, I had to reconsider my whole thinking about the palm changes. Think about that…the whole thing hinges on one minute detail. So here’s where it goes.

The Single palm change is initially about connecting the entire physical body through the tan tien. Although the central channel is always there, I don’t think it is initially the focus of the single palm change. Instead it is about creating a single whole body spiral. The three lines of that trigram represent that spiral. Notice the symbol doesn’t tell you anything about the direction of twisting because that doesn’t matter. You can twist in or out to create the spiral. It can go up or down. The Heaven trigram symbol includes all of these. The point is one, single spiral.

The Double palm change is about creating two of these spirals. Look at the trigram. It is two stacks of spirals seperated by space. Think of each as a miniature version of the Heaven trigram. Notice that they don’t touch. The space in the middle is the central channel. The two stacks can represent the side channels. Again, the trigram includes both going up, both going down, one up one down, one down one up. The most important point is that the force vectors created by the spirals don’t intersect. They run parallel like two sides of a square.

The Wind Palm is about two forces that couple and create a resultant force vector. This is basic high school Physics. The trigram is two yang lines on top of a yin line. The yang lines are real force vectors created by the arms in the form which create the resultant force vector represented by the yin line. The diagonal is suggested by the trigrams position on the diagonal as an axial pair with thunder. Another way to interpret the symbol is to think of the two small dashes that make up the bottom yin line as miniature Heaven trigrams which combine to create a larger yang spiral represented by the top two yang lines. I think this is it. The resultant force activates the central channel. That’s why the Wind palm is really about the central channel and the Single and Double palm aren’t until you fold back what you’ve learned in the Wind palm into them.

This is as simple as 1, 2, 3. Single palm is one force in one direction, it;s any single side of a square. Think of this more symbolically as the spiral of energy between any two gates. The Double palm is two forces that are parallel, its any two opposite sides of a square. The Wind palm is the resulting diagnol force create by any two sides of a square that aren’t parrallel.

Here’s the extrapolation: The forth palm change is about what happens when two forces come at each other and the explosive yang that is created. The trigram has more than one meaning. The two yin lines can be seen as two minature spirals or as four miniature spirals. I’m suggesting that all of the dashes that make up the two top lines could represent spirals. In that case they’ll all converge on the diagnol to create a bang, thunder. Take the four corners of the square and drive them toward the center like a big yin closing (represented by the two top lines). The result is a yang line, the bottom line. Notice the numerology 1,2,3,4. I think the forth includes multiple ideas about how two forces collide. There is a part of the form that suggests two circles colliding. There is a part that suggests two forces converging and two forces going away from each other. Thunder is playing with colliding forces. This is the opposite of the gentle nature of Wind where the forces combine in a more cooperative, feminine fashion. They don’t clash. This just goes on and on.

I worked out an explanation for each of the first 7 palms changes. They get increasingly more complex and require mastery of the previous material to progress. But I give up. This makes sense. It seems logical. It fits the way I experience the energies of the palms. But, the truth is we won’t know what the real meaning is until Bruce tells us what Liu taught him.

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