heya i’m curious about the bagua waist motion, i have seen one training of the yin fu style where the start feet paralels and extend their arm horisontaly then swing one side and the other without moving the feet or the knees , using the waist without turning fully the rest of the body
i wonder if its characteristic of all the style of bagua, because in this school they even press their butock outside when turning, and where very stiff
thanks
Not exactly. Of course all movement is initiated in the waist area. What Yin school would that be? Do you study bagua too? It would be easier to explain if you have a background in internal martial arts in general.
I’m not a Yin style man, but they may in fact be training the hips.
Without the hips engaged, the whipping power of the waist is
minimized substantially.
If you could describe the exercises better? That would help.
I’m thinking this is a basic hip conditioning exercise or a version of the “swings” inherent to the Yin style.
Every style of BGZ should have this.
Best,
Pete
i prefer not to say wich school it is, because i start to doubt about their bagua, but better concentrate about what is the correct way.
i dont really know bagua, but i practice as much as i can whenever i cant be disturb (peaple get paranoic even when seeing a guy walking in circle) so i just know walking in circle and try the first palm change.
for this exercise, as i said, you place your feet paralel, in a wide horse stance, then spread your arms horizontal.
now, from this posture, they slowly turn the waist to the left (for exemple) without moving an inch the feet, that is to say, using only the lower back muscle, then they stay for a while in a hooking posture to the left, tense their shoulder, raise their elbow. in all the posture are very stiff and rigid, they assume different strike form this way, and it is said that this exercise is good to strainghten the joint and the muscles…
the thing that bother me, is that they threat the upper part of the body separatly with the lower part (feet do not follow) so i wonder if its characteristic of all bagua..
oh and also they move the waist separatly from the hip
Well, now you’ve confused and lost me ??? If your description is accurate, which I doubt, than it indeed contradicts bagua principles. Without knowing what the teacher is teaching and why you are doing it, it is a waste of time.
Let’s start from the bottom. In my experience, when someone who is Chinese discuss the waist, they are usually referring to much more than the belt line. It implies the entire middle section from the kua to the dan tien and around the back to the ming men. How can you turn your waist separately from the hips?
The waist allows for an infinite number of motions from turning to rotating and from opening to closing. Any motion from the waist will send energy through the entire body whether or not it is perceptive from the outside. Whether you see the leg move or not, there is a wave of energy that travels down to the foot. It is not uncommon to have bagua training that is stationary. That is to say without steps but hardly static. It would be uncommon to not have the whole body connected.
In bagua, 3 of the ten main principles are to raise your back, relax your shoulders, and sink your elbows. To “tense your shoulder and raise your elbow” restricts the flow of energy and limits your ability to open and close the joints for issuing power. As far as my knowledge of anatomy goes, you can strengthen muscle, you can strengthen tendon, you can strengthen bone, but the joint is not something that can’t be strengthened. It’s only a space where to bones meet. In bagua, it is necessary to open and close the joints and increase the range of motion around the joints. In order to twist the full range of motion you can not be rigid and tense.
There are many drills in bagua that require the feet remain parallel and the waist is turning. The arms go through various swings. The techniques of rolling, turning, overturning, wrapping, thrusting, piercing, drilling etc, etc, follow the motion of the “waist”. But they clearly require whole body integration and adherence to the main bagua principles. This includes the sinkings, the pressings, the twistings, the openings, etc.
One of the most important things in learning bagua, (or any martial art), is to know why you are doing something. If your teacher can’t or won’t answer a question about this, either they don’t know or don’t want to teach you. Either way, I would look for another teacher. I would never criticize a teacher or a school that I don’t have first hand experience with. It is a relatively small community, especially in bagua teachers that follow the lineage of Yin Fu. I only asked about your school to get some idea of the level of the teacher, not to say they don’t know what they are doing. If I don’t personally know your teacher, I only have your word and that doesn’t reflect anything beyond your level of understanding. But I will say, if the people and/or teacher in a school get “paranoid” when demonstrating their bagua and their training methods in front of other students or the public, this is an indicator that they don’t know what they are doing or why.
thanks count, i beleive too that this bagua i’ve seen wasnt respecting bagua principle, but i wasnt sure, anyway of course i left very quickly.
so to sum up, can we say that bagua waist motion is close from the taiji waist motion, and that the whole body is connected?
Originally posted by Rurouni Kenshi
thanks count, i beleive too that this bagua i’ve seen wasnt respecting bagua principle, but i wasnt sure, anyway of course i left very quickly.
so to sum up, can we say that bagua waist motion is close from the taiji waist motion, and that the whole body is connected?
Sure, why not? But only in a broad sense and not in every instance.
Just a thought.
Sometimes, one may choose to isolate a particular area of the body and train movement there and then integrate that type of movement consistent with larger principles.
Isolating the waist from the hips and the rest of the body is an example of this.
While I am not endorsing the particular exercise, the principle is sound.
@
Good post Walter.
There are no real absolutes. There is only what one can absolutely do with their body and what they can make work.
I believe the rotation hips have to be connected and understood before one can consider integrating the waist (at least in my BaGua).
Taiji may have different principles and body methods, and Walter has much more experience in those arts than I.
As for other arts? The waist may be the focus of “whipping” hand styles and certain “swinging” sets", but as far as BaGua goes? It’s not the ideal way to move the body or generate “power”.
Greetings..
I (we) do several exercises where the hips are immobilized and the waist is trained for range of motion and connectivity.. some of the Chen silk-reeling exercises lend themselves nicely to this particular focus.. Other times we simply sit on the floor and do waist twists to illustrate and improve our ranges of motion…
Be well…
Bob,
As Bai He was saying we first try to move the whole body from the hips to integrate the upper and lower bodies. Then we isolate the waist as you describe. Then we do a couple other neat things
I was waiting for you to weigh in Buddy.
My post was based on what you had told me in re training the waist .
Who says I don’t pay attention.
The description of the execises do resemble the Strengthening Postures in the bagua coming from Xie Peiqi. When doing these exercises correctly there is tension, but it should be only in the apropriate places of your body. What other type of exercises did you see ?
/Fredrik Regn
When doing these exercises correctly there is tension
so this is characteristic to yin fu bagua or all the bagua?
one may say bagua is not as “shong” as taiji?
. What other type of exercises did you see ?
not much, circle walking without palm change, straight line striking, fighting application in slow motion, rou shou…
Hello,
For what its worth I can tell you that the Koo Lo village Wing Chun I preserve also places a heavy emphacis on the Waist involvement. For any soft “internal” art to genrate explosive soft jing you cannot lock your body down. Typically, the wasit leads the body. This sort of training and usage will strengthen the torso and pre-load the spine for Faat Ging of your methods. The body is like a coiled/twisting “snake”. This is the basics of how I look at it thru WC eyes!
See ya,
Quote:
“so this is characteristic to yin fu bagua or all the bagua?
one may say bagua is not as “shong” as taiji?”
I don’t know much about taiji so i cannot answer that question for you. I think that most bagua on the surface looks less “song” than taiji.
As to wheter this is caracteristic for all bagua i would have to say i don’t know that either. I was just trying to explain that these kind of exercises have their place in the training that i do. I would also like to add that you should absolutely not raise your shoulders when doing these type of exercises.
quote:
“not much, circle walking without palm change, straight line striking, fighting application in slow motion, rou shou…”
So with no palm-change, how did they change from clockwise to counterclockwise ?
Did you ask from who they learnt their bagua ?
/Fredrik
So with no palm-change, how did they change from clockwise to counterclockwise ?
i didnt see them doing any palm change, every student just walk in circle separatly without further precision
Did you ask from who they learnt their bagua ?
of course, and the teacher reply “in china” i didnt insistate after that.
anyway, i guess there are as many bagua style as bagua stylist, so i dont look at style but at principles…
Fredrik Regn:
re:
“so this is characteristic to yin fu bagua or all the bagua?
one may say bagua is not as “shong” as taiji?”
There is no ‘yin fu’ style. Only people who’s lineage comes down from Yin Fu. And no, you may not say it is not as ‘song’ (proper spelling) as taiji. Well…you can say it but you will be wrong! 
Bagua and Taiji are the same. Only the training methods differ.
To clarify what RAF just said, I think by ‘figure 8’ he means the ‘ba gua’? It could be called a figure 8, and 8 sided figure, but mostly we (bagua people) don’t do the figure 8 thing like ice skaters for standard practice. (You could do it that way, it’s just not ‘circle walking’)
Another way to look at changing directions without the palm changes (that’s mostly how I train too) is this:
Think about how it would be if you were circle walking with a partner. Heck! Maybe you are! Your inside arm is touching his at the wrist/forearm area. The two of you stand there pefectly still, squared off like you are about to fight. Then, ever so slowly and carefully you start to circle, looking for an opening. Not like two boxers feeling each other out but like two Samurais with swords raised. You dare not leave the centerline exposed. Despite it’s reputaton for change and continutity, in action Baguazhang has as much 1 hit 1 kill in it as anything else.
Circling in this way it is a mental-psychological war as much as anything. You listen through the lead arm tying to sense the stiffness that will let you controll your opponent or the lapse in attention that will let you steamroller him. Then at some point the relative angle between you changes such that you feel a direction change will give you an advantage. If you have that level of danger in front of you, you wouldn’t do a full on palm change, exposing your back or just dancing through some form. You keep your eyes on the target at all times and don’t bring the lead arm back untill the other arm is in position to take over. As you kou bu and turn your body the other way, the rear hand becomes the front and the front, the rear. Ta da!!! Piercing palm.
Very interesting.
It occured to me that you might actually mean a literal figure 8 and that’s why I included the question mark. I know about 9 palace training and a couple other odd drills like that but they are so uncommon I just figured you were reffering to the circle as a firgure 8 because it is typically 8 steps around.
The only bagua 2 man exercises I have any experience with Shifu with is simply circle walking as I just described, but then leading into bagua push hands. Scary stuff. It’s like getting your sleeve caught in the gears of a factory assembly line machine. And once the pushing starts I can’t see any difference whatsoever from taiji.
Omarthefish:
I only speak for the material that my teacher Tony Yang learned from his 8 year stint with his teacher, Liu Yun Qiao. I don’t know what material and how others were taught the material but there seems to be a substantial variation in what was passed down in the teachings.
Our basic form xiao kai men is taught as 8 lines in a circle or a simple but effective linear form. The linear form has a two man application, continuous or broken down posture by posture.
The applications of the 8 lines on the circle are taught as part of the circle walking. The two persons touch with lead arms and begin to rotate the arms as they circle. Each application is executed while circling and rotating the arms for a total of 8 applications. Some of the applications have sweeps and kicking.
As the years pass, I find more and more treasures in the basic jiben gong and initial forms of a system.
Later.