Simple question:
What are the names and attributes of some of the different pa kua styles?
I’m not an expert, but I’ll post anyway:
Pa Kua was originally taught to students that were experienced in another style. so, each and everyone of them added their own flavor to the Pa Kua they were taught. Here are two examples.
Yin Fu Pa Kua: Yin fu was already skilled in Lohan Shaolin before he trained Pa Kua. So, this style’s speciality are the palm strikes (I think the Ox Tongue palm is exclusive of this style of Pa Kua)
Chen Ting Hua’s Pa Kua: The primary art of Chen Tinghua was Shuai Chiao. The Chen style of Pa Kua has lots oh Chin Na techniques and throws.
I have heard of Gong Baotien Pa Kua Chuan, ang Gao style Pa Kua, but I don’t know very much of their attributes. The most common are the two I already mentioned.
Hope this helps. The real knowledgeable guys on Pa Kua are coming; so I’ll better go now
Currently, the best-known styles of Pa Kua Chang are Wudang, Emei, Yin Family, and Yin Yang. Some of the representative old masters of Pa Kua Chang well known today are Sha Guozheng, Li Ziming (a student (If Liang Zheng-Pu), Lu Zijian (who learned from a Taoist, Li Chang-Ye on Emei Mountain), and Tian Hui (Yin Yang Pa Kua Chang).
from http://www.hsing-i.com/pa_kua/phist.html
Then from http://www.jiulongbaguazhang.com/
is Nine Dragon Baguazhang which has a tm next to it, so I wonder if it isn’t just their interpretation.
Can’t generalize at all. Bagua is too diverse.
For instance, people like to say about Felipe Bido said, but what about Xie Peiqi’s Yin Fu bagua - it doesn’t emphasize the willow palm. I’m learning a Cheng Ting Hua derivation, but we do not emphasize chin na, nor throwing. You really can’t generalize at all. You can only examine specific cases.
Based on the old generalizations, and from alot of the old published material, you could say Yin Fu’s forms were more percussive with alot of obvious boxing and also lots of kicking, and emphasized the piercing energy, also alot of front-weighted postures, perhaps owing to Yin Fu’s emphasis on leg trapping; conversely, Cheng’s forms were flowing, with less obvious boxing.
FYI, Gong Bao Tian was a disciple of Yin Fu. Gao style is from Cheng I believe. Gao is usually credited as being unique in synthesizing a long linear form, but in fact this was allready common among many of his contemporaries, perhaps due to the strong cross-polination from xingyi. Jiang Rong Qiao is another famous practitioner who is said to be the first to use a long circular form - before him, palm changes were seen as small modular pieces, perhaps like xingyi’s five elements.
The form I practice is Jiang Rong Qiao’s. It is from the Cheng lineage, but has alot of xingyi influence from Jiang’s other influences (and xingyi was also influencing Cheng himself, independantly of this), as well as some taiji and mizong influence. Jiang’s form is usually characterized as being Cheng-like in flavor, in the sense that it is smooth and flowing, but with a broader, heavier feel to the postures, and alot of thumping strikes hidden in the smoothness. The version of Jiang’s form I practice, however, has replaced coiled, sinuous stances over most of the heavy ones. It looks even more so practiced, even ineptly, heh, by someone with my build.
If you’ve got any specific bagua schools in mind, I might be able to comment on how their practice looks compared to others I’ve seen. With the caveat that I’m no expert on the topic, but just would be glad to share my thoughts if it helped you out.
Agreed 
Agreed as well.
Each generation of bagua practitioners seems to put their own spin on things.
When I practiced, I did Ba Xing Bagua, a hsing-i derivative created by Dong’s last student, Liu Feng Chun.
Bagua
Don’t forget Fu style, . http://www.wudangboxing.com/images/003_Master_Fu_with_ball.jpg
Good reply, Braden. In Gao, we have quite a bit of very direct striking, even though it’s from the Cheng lineage. Sometimes even moreso than some of the Yin stuff I’ve seen some do. I’ve heard the Fu guys are somewhere in between, but I don’t think I know any personally.
I’m also curious about REAL Bagua…you know, the original stuff from Korea via Chung Moo Do. Maybe [Censored] can chime in on that one. 
Chris,
I (unfortunately) was in chung moo to first degree black belt. I’ll spare you the details of their ‘baggwa’ walk. I’m pretty sure it never got any deeper than just the walk, and a bad walk at that.
I practice Cheng style bagua. I’ve only been doing this for 6 months or so, but to me it seems that many of the techniques have rather obvious applications as strikes, yet when examined closer the same movement contains throws and take downs.
I think because Bagua is so conceptual, it’s very hard to talk in concrete terms about attributes to a specific sub-style. As has been posted earlier, the early students each came to the style after mastering another art, so they had a spin they put on their Bagua. However, I think even now, most students adapt Bagua to their own strengths and weaknesses, and that’s part of what makes it such an interesting art. If you were to look at 5 different students with different mindsets and body types, after 5 years of training in our system, we would probably look like we were practicing completely different substyles of Bagua at the very least when we spar, and perhaps even in how we execute the circles. There are bound to be universals, but I think it’s important to discern the difference between good students that all maintain the universal principles of the art and mediocre students that just try as hard as they can to look exactly like their sifu when they practice.
That said, the style I practice is a combination of Gao’s Bagua and that of Han Mu Xia, as well as some stuff added by some of their high-level students. Oftentimes, you can tell the difference in fighting techniques by the tendency of Gao to be more direct and simple, whereas Han stuff is more elaborate and I think perhaps contains more throws and take-downs.
Gao Yi Sheng baguazhang
Hi Chris M,
You mentioned that you practice the Gao style Bagua, if you don’t mind could you tell us a little bit about your teacher and what elements compose the system? Is it from Tianjin or Taiwan? Thanks. BTW, my teacher learns from Luo Dexiu.
-Jess O’Brien