applications from the Jue Ba Shen style

Still training today.

We finished the form work for the final movements of Double Palm and Wind Palm, each of which have a slightly unique finishing move.

Bruce spoke a bit about how Liu Hung Chieh had been exposed to a number of different Ba Gua practitioners of the third generation, the students of Yin Fu and Cheng Ting Hua. He said that Liu had focused a lot on Yin style Ba Gua, and that when he created the set that he taught Kumar, he used the best points from all his teachers. Their are characteristics of Yin and Cheng Ba Gua in the palms and he demonstrated how the final chop of Single Palm contains pieces from both systems.

Today was less of a combat-fest and more on the physical mechanics of the movements. We worked on getting a sense of twisting in the leg muscles while protecting the knee joints.

We kept training the low squat of Double Palm Change and how to do that in a way that stretches and strengthens the legs rather than damages them.

We then worked on feeling the Tan Tian. One person would stab their fingers into the partners belly and touch their Tan Tian. The partner would then originate their movements from this place to get a solid sense of the Tan Tian.

We talked a bit about the 8 Secrets of Ba Gua from Wang Shu Jin's book. They are the same as the 7 words of Hsing-I just about. One term is Yuan, "rounding". This means to round the chest, shoulders and Tiger's mouth. This is not a static alignment, rather it's about building a sense of flexibility and strength in the upper body.

This is combined with the term Bao, "wrapping" which is the sense of the flesh coming out of the spine and wrapping around to the front of the body, bringing the elbows together, and solidifying the connection of the arms and torso.

He felt that both of these terms fall under Kuo, "clamping" which is the sense of everything in the body curving inward. The arms, hands, body, legs, feet, everything in Ba Gua has this sense of cutting inward a bit to help unify the whole.

There is much more to all of this of course, just a short sense of what I got from it.

We spent some time looking at the Hsing-I Dragon form. He used me to demonstrate how to sink, fold and bend to be in an extreme crouch on one leg. The goal is to then draw all of your intention, energy and power from your legs, up into your Tan Tian to cause your body to leap up into the air. You then land on the opposite side crouch. Although painful, it is a good kwa stretch and gives a powerful sense of energy rising and falling inside your body. He said that next year he might be willing to teach some of the Hsing-I 12 Animal Forms.

He spent a while demonstrating applications from the Jue Ba Shen style of martial arts. He said it's not as precise as the three internal styles, but can be very free, loose and heavy in application. He battered me around for a while, showing how he was trying to feel the entire field around me more than just my specific hand technique. By tapping into my "field" so to speak he was able to use very intuitive and freeform blocks, grabs, strikes and swats to demolish my attacks. He said training in Eight Drunken Immortals is a young persons art, best learned from 10-20 years of age, but that he might be up for teaching some if there were mats to roll on.

We worked on applications for the final steps of Double Palm Change, using Tuo to rise up and lift the arm, while the other hand scoops and strikes the body, breaking ribs and/or attacking organs.

Again, this is just a few of the highlights, it was indeed a fun day working on some very esoteric martial arts!