Park’s Seminar
I realize that a seminar is just a small glimpse into what & how a teacher presents thier art. I had the opportunity to attend one of Park Bok Nam’s seminar’s earlier this year here in Seattle. Since I’ve studied a couple branches of Bagua (Cheng Ting Hua’s & Zhang Zhao Dong’s), I was eager to get a taste of what Park’s BaGua was like, especially with all the good references I’d heard. From attending seminars from other teachers, I was used to instructors trying to put out as much useful information/practice methods as possible, to give a taste of what the art’s about.
The seminar was broken up into two parts: a 2 & 1/2 hour lecture in the morning, a lunch break, then the technical aspects of the seminar. The lecture started out interestingly enough, Park’s a friendly, personable fellow. But I kept wondering, during the lecture, “when is he going to begin the instructional portion of the lecture?” as he rambled through a funny bio of his life over the 2 1/2 hours. I was surprised how little meaningful dissertation was presented. Oh, well, I thought, as we broke for lunch, the technical half of the seminar ought to be impressive, and make up for the morning.
There were about 30 students attending the seminar, some with little martial arts experience, some were some of Park’s students for several years, some came as far away as California and Idaho.
Well, as the physical training/technical part of the seminar drew to an end, I was again surprised at how very little information was presented in a days time. Probably the shallowest seminar I’ve ever attended. Park appeared to have some skill, and was a nice enough fellow, but none of his students taking his expensive “correspondence program” were much to write home about. Actually I was amazed to find that folks that I thought’d perhaps only been practicing from Park for a couple months or so had actually been students of his for several years. I couldn’t help but wonder how he managed to keep so many of them so captivated with such a shallow, expensive correspondance program, but then I remembered one of his local students explaining that Park doesn’t allow his students to visit other schools or seminars. I understand keeping focus on one art, but not to put blinders on to the rest of the world.
Well, perhaps my standards are too high, and perhaps I expected too much. Perhaps Park was only catering to beginners in the seminar. But I couldn’t help coming away from the seminar with the ironic yet enlightening moral in my mind “a fool and his money shall soon part”. So, I just try to laugh off the disappointment. 
Needless to say, I don’t plan to attend any of Park’s future seminars, nor would I recommend his expensive correspondence program to a friend.
