Beside the circle walking of Baguazhang , eight separate palms are the most important part of the training. These palms can be used as a way of qigong to heal some certain organs because each palm is associated with some different group of organs.
The palm should be held slightly tight with five fingers separated and concave to resemble dragon’s palm. The forearm should hold feel like muscle has a small amount of inner tension but not so much. You should hold both of your palms by your side and bent knee slightly while you stand. Keep your back straight while place your tongue onto the upper palate. Try to breathe deeply and naturally with your lower abdomen. Imagine that your are breathing out while you push out you palm and your are breathing in while you pull you palm back. Try to hold each of the postures for 3-5 minutes or until you feel unable to hold any more. Keep doing regularly these activities will cure your sickness or easing plain cause buy ageing.
I will discuss these 8 different palms in details in my next post.
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On distinctive feature of Baguazhang is that people keep walking in circles when practicing Baguazhang. But do you know why we need to do this? If you don’t, you might end up progressing very slowly even if you spend a lot of effort learning and practicing.
One purpose of walking in a circle is that you want to practice to relax your body at the same time. Some books refer this as to practice “the power of being relaxed (松劲)”. This is misleading as it is just literality translated from Chinese. Being relaxed is not a kind of “power”. It is a basic requirement of practicing Baguazhang. In fact, the purpose of being relaxed is to improve the efficiency of your movement by helping your body to be smoother. However, try not to mistaken that you need to be relaxed all the time and for every single piece of your muscle as you will then lost the power. Relax your body so that you can speed up and add power to your next movement, but when you strike, be fast and strong.
Do not treat your foot walk and palms separately, they are unified and when practicing Baguazhang, try to understand the relationship between footwork and palms in EACH movement.
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Baguazhang takes ‘Yin Jin’ (The book of Change) as basic theory, the nature combination of envirnoment and human as the basic principle. ‘Yin Jin’ thinks human are in the world of nature therefore we should change according with the change of environment to conform to climate. People should never stop movement(Sports) and should try balance Yin and yang at any time. In this way we can cure disease and prevent them as well.
As the saying goes, “Leg is the part of body becomes old first.” People’s health is closely related to both feet and leg. After age 30, most people will feel the strength of leg is not as strong as before, therefore they would not do as much sports as before which can easily lead to dysfunction, muscle gradually shrinking.
While the basis of Baguazhang is precisely circle walk commonly known as “Eight trigrams walking”.
The circle working practice Feet, Leg and waist which promoting blood circulation. Circle walking accompany with palm promote the smooth flow of body function.
To practice baguazhang, both body and mind should be in relax, quiet and nature while keeping muscles and ligaments relatively tight. Naturally means moving naturally, all the movements should be compatable. Deeply breath to fresh the body while mind focus on the running of the chi. With the smooth flow of blood and chi, we can keep healthy, strong and young.
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Misconceive 1: Baguazhang (Eight Trigram Palm) is a kind of martial art to put the imaginary enemy in the center fixed location and surrounded enemy keep revolution in order to achieve the purposes of dynamic system to static attack.
Many people who learn Baguazhang at first time, or many beginner of the Baguazhang , even some of the people who practiced a lifetime of Baguazhang all have such misunderstanding. This is totally non-reactive misunderstanding of Baguazhang. These people will get no effort on practice Palm even they spend a lifetime on practicing Baguazhang .
Misconceive 2: As the saying goes, “Tai Chi Waist, Eight Trigram Leg”, so Leg effort training is the major practice of Baguazhang.
This still caused by misunderstanding of reverse palm. Because of so-called “Eight Trigram Leg” is actually said “Eight Trigram Walk” which means legs can not stop move and around enemy in the real combat in order to achieve the purpose of dynamic to static attack.
Misconceive 3: Baguazhang (Eight Trigram Palm) uses Eight as the number of boxing counting. In fact, it does not have direct link with “Bagua” in “YiJing”, even cannot summarized as a set of pattern.
This is due to people attached importance to boxing, not focus on theory of Baguazhang during the period of Eight Trigram’s going around. The soul theory of Eight Trigram Plalm is gradually ignored. And less people know about the theory of Eight Trigram Palm in the future generations.
It is very important that you don’t make mistakes in these 3 areas, especially beginners. For beginners, I recommend you spend a reasonable amount of time and effort to understand the fundamentals of Baguazhang and Chi before jumping into the “technical” part of Baguazhang.
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1. What is Baguazhang
Baguazhang literally means “eight trigram plam”. It was developed as a theory base which comes from “negative & positive ” ; “five model”; “eight trigram” from I China (YiJing), one of the canons of Taoism. Basically it’s a kind of martial art of internal power mechanics exercises according to the guide of “genetic eight trigram” diagram. Also it’s a kind of martial art of technique exercises due to the guide of “trained eight trigram” diagram. Among the technique of Baguazhang, plam is the major technique, followed by leg; ancon; fist; claw; finger and head. These techniques are major fighting system which combined exercises of internal and outwards.
2. Baguazhang is one of the 3 major internal fighting system
3 major internal fighting system of Chinese martial art include shadowboxing; body intention boxing and eight trigram plam (Baguazhang). The difference of internal fighting system is Shaolinboxing; Chaboxing and other boxing type of outward fighting system. Internal power is the major technique of internal fighting system.
3. Full name of Baguazhang
The full name of Baguazhang is called “Nonexistence pole boxing, enclosing body and eight trigram interlink plam”.
4. Major characteristic of Baguazhang
The major characteristic of Baguazhang is walking and exercising around the edge of a circle in a low stance, facing the center and periodically changing direction as they execute forms.
5. Inner meaning of Baguazhang
The inner meaning of Baguazhang is based on the arguments of “Five Elements of Health and Grams”, includes theory of “Negative (Yin) and Positive (Yang) of the Eight trigram” and the wonders of “heaven and earth”.
6. The operating principles of Baguazhang
The operating principles of Baguazhang is accessing at any time and dynamic， hard to see a machine, while fixed lines, moving the change, and change it, follow the endless gossip of the rationale for change.
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