Because I seem to be developing a reputation here as a curmudgeon (ok azzhole) I want to share a bit. This is not Gao style proper but more Bruce Frantzis stuff. Same thing, different method.
In my opinion the first thing a beginning student needs to learn is how to move the body as a complete unit. This is done by focusing on using the hips to move the body. Now realize this is waigong. Most styles have this. Some nanquan styles like WC, SPM, WE, etc concentrate only on the waist I think.
Anyway, BKs method is to use a neigong training method. Gao style uses the tiangong I mentioned earlier.
If you stand in neutral stance about shoulder width and shift your weight very slowly side to side, you will yourself moving from your upper body if you are a beginner. Concentrate in relaxing your body weight downward and move only from your hips. Imagine a rectangle from the fold of your shoulders to the fold of your hips. Keep, very religiously, this rectangle perfectly level. Get a friend to check it. If you think you are doing it right in the beginning, I assure you you are not. Get someone to put their hands on your shoulders and hips and see. When you can move the whole body, centered around the hips, all at once simply side to side, you are doing neigong. This is not the only way or even the quickest way of getting it. You can also just change bow step to bow step smoothly. But I recommend it. Remember this is only the very beginning. OK enough typing. If you have questions I will do my best. If you don’t then that’s it. If you were here it would take you a good while before you could do this to my (or your) satisfaction.
Good practicing,
Buddy
Actually, I think this is a good idea.
You do realize however, with this post being called ‘The first step’, I’ll expect a second and third 
Well… OK but it’s easier for anyone to read Kumars first book as far as this basic stuff goes. If you don’t want to I’ll give my take on it here but realize it’s a lot of typing. What’s the verdict?
Topics and ideas such as the ones you presented here, help bring about further discussions and ideas.
Thats how forums flurish.
Keep’m coming, you might help open up the community to larger discussions.
Do not forget what you hoped to accomplish in your challenge thread. Sometimes in order to get the water moving, you must be the one to cast the first stone.
Buddy,
I think that what you have posted here is a good thing. It points people in the right direction in regards to training ‘internally’. I definately think the key starting point with any IMA is body integration. Whether it BK’s methods or Old Man Gao’s, a starting point is a starting point.
As far as myself, I’m doing Gao style right now (and will probably be doing it forever cause I suck;) ). I have noticed major changes in the way my body moves since I have been doing tiangong pieces. I must admit though; it is not anything near what I thought it would be when I started about 3 years ago. The concept of moving without holding anything while remaining dropped inside the kua is still whooping my a$$!
Thanks for putting up a thread with some good pointers!
Chris
Thanks,
Do you want me to continue along this vein or go right to something more advanced? Like I said most of what I write about beginning stuff is in Kumars book, but I don’t know that noobs will/have read it. It would be a disservice if they did harder stuff w/o having a firm base in the basics.
So far so good. Please do continue. In your example of shifting, then you would also say to keep the head perfectly level too right?
Yes,
Take the idea of the torso (shoulders to hips) as a box. You want to align the inguinal fold (kua) and the "nests’ of the shoulders. This is area just to the inside of where the shoulder joint is. Also TRY always to keep this area relaxed (very difficult when pushing).
The tendency for most people is to move from the shoulders rather than the hips. It really is a good idea to use a partner to tell you when you are moving from the hips or shoulders. You must be very strict with yourself with all of this. Also my experience is that most people tend to lean back when doing standing practice. For many of you, standing correctly will feel like you are leaning forward.
So when you get to the point that you can move from the hips and keep everthing aligned you can start turning. When you have shifted the weight 80-90% onto one leg, and keeping a firm connection with the unweighted leg, turn the relaxed, aligned torso, from the hips about 45 degrees or so into the weighted leg. Be careful to not allow the knee to collapse inward. Then turn back to the front. Then shift to the other side and repeat. So the process is shift, turn, turn, repeat. Please do this very slowly being very strict with the alignments and origin of movement. Please note all of this presupposes that you understand how to do standing practice, which also has some fairly stringient requirements.
Very similar to what I have done in the past. Great great training excersice. Of course this is as you say, the first steps. I was one who found to stand truly straight, felt like I was leaning forward for a while, until I got used to actually standing straight. Funny you mention that…
At some point, you can have a partner lean firmly on you as you do the shifting, and you should very effortlessly be albe to shift him over keeping everything just as you said. This is a great way to keep from letting tension in your upper body to do any pushing against an opponent.
More basic stuff please
Very useful training tips, Buddy. Thanks for sharing.
Buddy.
Keep it coming. Good stuff.
I have found many teachers that don’t emphasize the basics enough or only go into details too late and by than a LOT needs to be unlearned.
I have a question that I’ve been really banging my head against the wall for the past year about now. Not specifically directed at Buddy but the exercise made me think of it yet again.
Just how exactly to you ever get beyond the “frame”.
As wonderfull as this exercise is, it is still an exercise to develope your frame. I’ve been taught that no matter how finely refined your frame is, that is still ‘external’. The only specific exercises I’ve got, points of practice really, are the reverse dan tien breathing and more recently and more difficultly, training the eyes.
I’d be curious about anything to train the eyes specifically. I still tend to glance about a bit when I check my posture.
Ok I will continue later but I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to really get using the hips and not the waist in the turning. If you think you have it you don’t. I taught a class tonight for one of my senior students. Invariably they moved from the shoulders and not the waist. Now I should say do you really need to be so strict if you just want to develop internal power? Frankly, no. You can get by with a bit of fudging. But truly folks I’m not just interested in fighting. If you are very strict with this you might find that it changes you somewhat. It’s neigong and not just wugong.
Omar,
I don’t believe that training the frame is external. It is however prerequisite to where i’m going with this. To develop a relaxed aligned with gravity frame is paramount in my IMA. As far as the eyes go…This is a beginning gazing practice but will still sound a bit esoteric.
You allow everything you see to come back into your eyes then relax the eyes. You are still seeing but not holding onto what you are seeing. Does that make sense? We tend to project our vision and there ways of doing that but this is like dissolving what comes in. Not going crosseyed and diffusing your vision but just bringing in what you see and relaxing your eyes. I don’t know, try it and report back.
Good night,
Buddy
I’ll play with it for a few days. Thanks. Very interesting suggestion. Where I’m at right now it doesn’t sound esoteric at all. I said I’ve been “banging my head against a wall” for a year now but I’ve been working on bagua for more like a decade. It’s just that only in the past year do I think I’ve really had any kind of sense of what was really internal. Before that, I was still just equating it with skeletal alignment and such. Now I’ve got a teacher who has REALLY challenged my ideas about what internal is and shown me that all the stuff I thought was internal was really more like you said, just prerequisites.
One of the things he gets on me for from time to time that no other teacher has is my eyes’ ‘shen’. Other people have taught me where to look or how to do eye fakes etc. but attcking me for not displaying enough ‘shen’ in the eyes is a new one and it strikes me as some kind of real important key to the whole thing.
g’nite. I’m on my lunch break here though.
(Just how exactly to you ever get beyond the “frame”)
By not using it but being aware of it.
If your not aware of it, you can become trapped by relying on it intead of timeing and ablility to change.
If your aware of it, you can understand how softness and change with an aware mind can lead others to emptiness with out recourse to speed or strength…
**** Leaf, good post.
I sat down to write a response and then I got delayed because trying to think about how that applies and how the HECK am I supposed to DO that put me into a deep trance and I realized I have nothing to say. 
Makes me wish I was doing push hands these days. It also makes me really think about how this applies to my current training.
Buddy you said
Ok I will continue later but I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to really get using the hips and not the waist in the turning.
Can you explain what you mean by this statement in more detail? Explain if you will, what you mean by turning as well. Be sure to describe the footwork in this as well, especially when comparing waist and hips. Thanks.
CD writes: Can you explain what you mean by this statement in more detail? Explain if you will, what you mean by turning as well. Be sure to describe the footwork in this as well, especially when comparing waist and hips.
CD,
First off, there is no footwork. We are standing in a shoulder to hip width stance, feet parallel, knees unlocked, weight sunk into the feet. We have very few options when turning the body. I will say around its central axis but truly my experience is that this is too fine a detail for beginners. Chief amongst our options is to turn either from the hips or from the waist. Again I encourage you to use a partner. Define for yourselves what it means to initiate your movement from these two areas. You MUST in the beginning move the hips to move the torso. AND you must move everything else at the same time. The waist we will get to but not yet. Is that clear? If not please ask a more specific question so I can know what you want to know. I don’t mind.
Next. By turning I mean… we shift the weight to one leg and turn the torso by using the hips and keeping the torso moving as a unit in that direction. In other words if I shift to the right I turn my body 45 degrees or so to the right toward the now weighted leg. Does that make sense?
Buddy
Thanks for the info Buddy.
You have reafirmed my faith in the value of the internet for the moment.
Posts like this are what keep my powder dry.
S
Greetings..
As a side note, i find it useful to point out to my students that they should press their knees outward very slightly.. just enough to feel a little tension on the outer thighs.. this tension serves several purposes.. it sends quite a bit of feedback as to weight distribution and hip position, it generates “friction” between muscle and bone thereby generating a charge/Qi, and it highlights Kua status.. we tend to use the legs a pumps, pumping energy into the hips/waist.. an awareness of the sacral connection to the more limber spine is elemental in transfering energy into the upper body with any degree of continuity.. a common error is to break the sacral/lumbar connection as we lead our intention with the DanTien.. DanTien movement is internal, yet visible to the trained eye.. it is the hand on the “handle” of the whip.. the handle is the sacral/lumbar connection..
To get a high degree of feedback on this, try standing two standard house bricks on end shoulder-width apart, wide sides facing each other.. then, take a WuJi stance on the bricks and repeat Buddy’s turning exercise.. we do several silk-reeling exercises in this manner.. for a bigger challenge, stack two bricks end on end.. heck, just mounting the bricks for the WuJi stance is a lesson in alignment and balance..
Be well..