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I’ve completed a first general overview through the Wind Palm DVD’s. I noticed that there are several variations of the physical movements out there. It’s interesting to see how they all play the same energy. But now I’m curious, is the variation from the Bagua Mastery Program just the simplest variation to teach it to beginners, or does Bruce teach different physical movements to fit different people, did his form changed over time? Anyone knows more about what variations exist from Bruce and why?
On the DVDs Bruce mentions that he taught the wind palm more closely to the monastic tradition. I was taught the wind palm in New York and believe that would have been geared toward martial arts. This makes sense because that was Frank Allen’s primary focus.
There are some big external differences in the form. For example in the monastic version, Bruce only taught the cotten palm. In New York he taught the cotten palm and a second cutting palm. This palm cuts like a samuri sword. It is a drawing cut. That is, you are not chopping as much as you are pulling the palm edge across the tissue like a knife. You are pulling across something to cut through it. I’ll never forget the conversation about severing bone clean and the Friday night dance (you had to be there). If you watch Frank Allen’s You Tube video, “Frank ‘the snake’ Allen.wmv”, you’ll see the two strikes. Frank does the cutting palm first and then the cotten palm. His first strike looks a lot like fair lady weave’s at shuttle. As I said in another post, I don’t remember it being taught this way, but I’d defer to Frank because he is a lot more experienced and may also have been taught privately by Bruce.
Another variation is the turning. I only remember one ko per palm strike in New York. Watch Frank and you’ll see that this is what he demonstrates. In contrast, the monastic version toes in twice (three steps depending on how you are counting) before striking. IMO this emphasizes liu he dramatically more than the martial arts version taught in New York, but the energetics would be exactly the same.
In New York Bruce ran out of time and rushed through the end of the form. Basically, he just said finish like single palm change. So we didn’t get the detail of playing with the etheric field and specifically the push pull of energy of the palms. I don’t remember this even being mentioned in New York.
In New York Bruce started by having everyone become aware of the perineum and talked a lot more about turning around the central channel.
My own variations combine elements of both. For example before I perform the cotton palm my hands wrap the lower tan tien and emphasize liu he in the kwa. When I perform the cutting palm, my palms come together high, wrap the upper tan tien, and emphasize liu he in the head. When I perform the final movement, I wrap the middle tan tien, emphasize liu he in the shoulder’s nests, and finish with the push pull that Bruce taught on the DVDs. I also vary the steps. Sometimes I perform three steps before the strikes and sometimes I only ko once. This helps break the pattern up so you don’t robotically perform the form and preserves the decisions that have to be made at the natural transition points so you’ll be able to flow through and follow the naturally arising energy of the change. When I perform the strikes, one palm emphasizes the pull and sort of plants that side of the body. The other palm uses the energy to power its opening action. The energy flows in one side and out the other. As far as I’m concerned the wind palm isn’t about a rigid external form as much as it is one of the 8 possible changes. Until I’m sure what that change is I just train the neigung elements within the framework of the form while playing with the etheric field in a very specific way that releases energy.
Thank you for your detailed answer. Since the whole Bagua Mastery Program has its focus on the monastic tradition it makes sense to do a monastic version of the wind palm and not a martial version.
Hi James, I’ve read many of your posts here, nice work man. Seems like you are really developing some good ideas, and I’ve found them valuable.
Are you going to be at Kumar’s Push Hands gig in Boston? I’m coming out for the last day on a work trip, so I am hoping to meet you.
In terms of the “monastic” versus martial, Kumar has showed us 3 versions of the Wind Palm so far, and they are all different. Frank taught me his as well, which it sounds like you did in NY as well with BKF.
From what I understand Kumar has two different sets of palms from Liu Hung Chieh.
First set is the 8 palms from Cheng You Long’s school in Beijing. Liu put together everything he learned at that school and made a set out of it. This is what we call the “Martial” set
Second set is all Single Palm Change. There are 8 different Single Palm Changes, one for each trigram. Liu learned these when he was the monastary in Sichuan Province. This is the “Monastic” set. This is the “water single palm” that he teaches in the Ba Gua Program. It’s the “heaven single palm” that he teaches in the Ba Gua Program. It’s the “wind palm” that he taught at the Double Palm Change class he had the other year at menlo. To me that was the “wind single palm”, with just one big turn, rather than the full Wind Palm Change we did last year in Berkeley.
So the simple version of each palm is the “monastic” one, just the most boiled down way of doing it. The full on more complex and fully realized sets are the “martial” way.
However, I’ve never seen him teach a palm change the same way twice, so they continue to evolve that’s for sure!
We are hoping to get him to teach Thunder Palm Change in the fall of 2012 here in Berkeley, so if anyone is down with that let the office know!!
Jess O
also, it seems like he may have put less emphasis on Central Channel when we did the Wind Palm here, not sure. We started this whole series of classes with Ba Gua Meditation, and we did a whole month of NOTHING but the Central Channel. So maybe he felt we’d focused enough on that for the moment. Because man that was a workout, I was sick of the central channel by the end of that class. But later I realized it was pretty valuable and laid a strong foundation.
In researching the various senior students it seems like there were a few different eras of Ba Gua that he taught:
In chronological order:
Colorado- Tai Chi and Hsing-I
New Mexico- Tai Chi and Hsing-I
New York – Ba Gua
Boston- Tai Chi
Fairfax – Tai Ch and Ba Gua
WEEKLY CLASSES END, SCHOOL ‘CLOSES’
Berkeley & Menlo – Ba Gua and Hsing-I (seminars only)
This era isn’t over yet. We’ve finished the Hsing-I part, and that won’t be taught again. But hopefully we’ll get him to continue teaching the palms, next up being Thunder Palm Change.
Jess O
I don’t plan to attend the Push Hands seminar in Boston, but I’ll be around the area. I’ve been wanting to meet with Eric Peters and Bruce for a while. I’ll make plans to meet up with you in Brookline.
Regarding your post, I’m really interested in the monastic palms. Has anyone been taught more of them? Does anyone have video of Bruce or senior students performing any others?
I thought that I’d add a personal note here since this thread is all about the Wind Palm. I was recently practicing the Wind Palm and experienced this incredible moment of fear. Bruce talked about this in NYC in the context of teaching the energies of the I Ching years ago. It was a big topic for the Earth Palm not the Wind Palm and I’ve never had this experience while practicing either the Double Palm Change or the Single Palm Change.
I only recently started to clearly experience grabbing the etheric field and pulling it into the lower tan tien. When you do this in a very real way, you feel like you are gathering what you are made of. You gather it and collect it like hoarding something, like grabbing a huge pile of money and pulling it into yourself. It is a comforting feeling on some level as though you feel more tangible, more solid, more alive. This is the condensing phase of the Wind Palm just before you spin out. The fear came over me when I went out. The expansive energy was so powerful that I felt like whatever I just thought that I was was going to skatter to the winds forever. For a brief moment, it actually felt like my very existence was threatened. I felt as though if I let it all go, I may cease to exist. This explosive expansiveness is the mind going out with the energy in all directions.
The trigram Kun is supposed to be about manefestation and this fear is the fear that our manefestation will be taken away. Ultimately it is the fear of dying. I think I experienced this in the context of the Wind Palm because it isn’t the condensing of the Earth Palm that is the problem, it is the opening that contrasts with it that is disconcerting. The condensing is comforting. Having your mind suddenly open up further than you’ve ever experienced is a bit unsettling. On the up side, the experience teaches you a lot more about what the Heaven and Earth trigrams really mean at an experiential level. This is what it (I Ching) says, this is what it means, this is how to experience it in your body.
Anyway, it was an unsettling sensation and one that I’ll have to deal with eventually. In retrospect, I can’t think of a better way to discover what I really am. You have to love those wacky Toaists!
That’s very interesting.
I described this experience to Bruce while he was in Boston. This was the context where he explained that you can have the same experience when you go inward and explained how to balance the in and out to keep from getting lost as well as dealing with the loss of ego. I thought that I’d mention one thing that Bruce asked: When I described the experience he asked me if I went out to the stars or multi-dimensional. I answered the former, but I can’t wait to understand what he meant by the latter.
Is it the same as Ru Ding that he explains in the first relaxing into your being book?
Can you explain the “going out to the stars” thing? I’ve wondered about that for a while but it seems like nobody really wants to talk about it.
Yeah, it is the same thing he describes in his book. Obviously my experience was very different than Bruce’s.
Regarding my description of “going out to the stars”, for all I know I might have only gone out an inch from my body. The internal sensation or experience was as though my mind was expanding as rapidly as you can imagine in all directions. It felt like I had gone out to the stars. But this is just my interpretation after the fact. Ultimately it is just another narrative or story the ego creates. Who knows how accurate it is. You’ll have to talk to someone with a lot more experience than me to get more. It isn’t that I’m unwilling to talk about it. I simply don’t trust that I understand the experience enough to really comment in any meaningful way.
I shared this because the balancing piece is really useful. If anyone experiences something like this they might remember and then seek advice/training on how to deal with it better. I was fortunate that Bruce had the experience and generosity to share some concrete advice with me. What he said made a lot of sense to me. Hopefully it will help someone else someday.
The only other useful thing I can say is that our minds are incredibly contracted. The experience I had was just opening my mind up a little more than usual. You get there by first working on relaxing your body piece by piece by piece.
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