Single, Double, Smooth Palm Changes

[Anonymous]

When you’ve gone around the learning circle a few times and you are genuinely working on Liu’s step #5, you can start to see the palm changes the way that Bruce described them early in the BMP. That is, there really is just the Single Palm Change, the Double Palm Change, and the Smooth Palm Change.

When you are working on a single side and concentrating on balancing it – you are basically practicing the Single Palm Change. It has nothing to do with the external form or complexity of the movement. From in internal perspective, you are just concerned with balancing that one side.

When you work on the Double Palm Change, you are working two sides. Notice I’m being purposely abstract about the “sides” to generalize the statement not to be vague.

So, you could be talking about the left or right sides of the body, the left or right channels, up or down, front or back, in or out. The variations are endless. But when you perform the Single Palm Change, you are working on one side and making sure it is balanced. Then you work two sides at the same time and make sure both are balanced. That’s the Double Palm Change.

Once you start balancing the two sides, you’ll find there are a lot of variations: for example, you can be closing one side and opening the other. When practicing the Smooth Palm Change (similar to the Double Palm Change), the two sides need to balance but they are working together. They are integrating. Each is part of the other. You really can’t separate them. The balancing component of one side is being used by the other and vice versa. It starts to become one thing. It is no longer this and that.

[Anonymous]

Nice.

Now I get it.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Tai Chi is simpler. They are treating the arms as a single limb and balancing them as a unit internally. That’s why Bruce says Tai Chi doesn’t cross the centerline, why it concentrates on the lower tan tien, and why if you know Bagua you can do everything that Tai Chi does plus a few other things. In the end it isn’t all that different. But Bagua and Tai Chi’s training and approach are very different.

[Anonymous]

By Gum,
I do believe you’re right.

I did a full set of 8 Palm Changes the other day.
First time since I blooded up my elbow (July 12, after telling my brother with Parkinson’s not to skip around with his walker).

As best as I can tell, doing the Palm Changes, especially Lake, almost immediately gummed up both my shoulders and my lower back for 3 days—gummed up with the crap lurking in my central channel I figured.
This coincided with watching 20 hours of the “Vietnam” TV documentary (I’m a Vietnam Vet.) and my brother (another Marine) falling on the way to the bathroom breaking his hip and dying.)

I now believe that my central channel has been gummed up for forty years.
(Just a hypothesis.)

Tai Chi is simpler.
But has been much more therapeutic.
Tai Chi doesn’t mess with the central channel.

I’ll return to bagua after my next Tai Chi workshop (Oct.30).
Being self-taught in Liu/Bruce’s bagua, I’m probably doing their bagua all wrong.
Dissolving crap out of my central channel/CNS might be worth the risks. I’ve covered it up for too long.
Could be that I’m just being a drama Queen in my old age.
James, your analysis of bagua has been very helpful,
even if it tirns out to kill me.
I’ll see if it helps in the next life.

Don’t let this wierd post disturb you.

[Anonymous]

Tai Chi is simpler but it is no less effective. The slow movement of Tai Chi allows time to modulate the balance and is precisely why it is more therapeutic. This is one of the advantages of Tai Chi.

Bagua is better suited for performance.

[Author]

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