Double Palm Change

Just wanted to convey my gratitude, and say thank you,great post! it helps my practice a lot. My teacher is very open in structure and tries to correct my posture and teach me strongly but as you say, he's only human too, does his best. I can't get anywhere close, sometimes the gulf between student and teacher can be vast so its a challange to connect and get the best out of each other. I'm going to ignore any more comments that might have to do with me personally as they are not germane to the subject.

"However, if Buddy will forgive me, I must raise the issue of energetics here. Surely the 'right' alignment (for instance, in tai chi) is the one which allows you, within the parameters and logic of a movement, to move chi most easy and naturally. This will vary according to ability, openness and body type, and will change over time. Although it is important to be corrected regularly, since we can be blind to our own mistakes, at the same time we have our own internal guide as long as we follow the principles of the nei-gung."

Nothing to forgive, Josh. My experience is that there is far too much talk about something which has not been proven to exist. The word has many meanings so we'd need to have that agreement before any discussion could begin. Beyond that, my further experience shows me that many people

1. Don't have the physical principles in their body well enough to ever worry about energetics, and
2. Use the subject as a dodge for actual physical practice.

BTW,

I have not thrown the baby out with the bath water, just some ideas I don't find useful.

BK and other teachers have told me that you must have the alignments quite precise to open up the body and produce flow. However, this connection is only a static thing for the beginner. Decent bagua people in extreme poses have all the connections and alignments hooked up or the postures are useless or worse than useless. No alignment, no extension through the body, no energy and keep close to home on fight nights and write e-mails because that will be safe. Internals without structure? That I would like to see. The problem is often not the alignment but the inability to produce the necessary energies making the alignment and the energy work effective.

Denying like Buddy that Qigong implies energies and forces proven or not beyond the usual level of body work is ridicolous and sets the special attractivity of these arts aside compared to Western gymnastics or aerobics.

The question of energetics may seem not important when you are used to do sports over many hours which needs already sufficient energies of normally young bodies. But such work outs exhaust themselves in a longer run like the martials arts without inner energy work what is one of the main messages of Bruce having tried many style having the luck coming to inner energy work. This allows also older persons like the masters of Bruce still competing with the young what is normally not possible. But inner energy work and alchemy makes this accessible also without enormous training if you are able to draw the necessary energies out from stillness and the pores of the skin as Bruce tries to teach also.

Therefore the combination of alignments and postures is only effective if sufficient energies are upbuild and controlled by the own mind sensing and guiding them more and more till the breathing of a baby in mother's womb - the mother is not doing such breathing for the baby though the nutritients delivered is prepared also by the energy work of the mother - is attained
again in such stillness out of emptiness.

Often? How "often" do you get to see students where you might make such a claim?

"Denying like Buddy that Qigong implies energies and forces proven or not beyond the usual level of body work is ridicolous and sets the special attractivity of these arts aside compared to Western gymnastics or aerobics."

No, it doesn't. You are simply wrong. I can make my body do things (or could when I was teaching professionally) that made the physical therapy students who came to compare paradigms leave with their heads shaking disbelievingly. No need to attribute any of that to special energetics. Once again, you are talking out of your ass.

"But such work outs exhaust themselves in a longer run like the martials arts without inner energy work what is one of the main messages of Bruce having tried many style having the luck coming to inner energy work." More nonsense. Ever hear of the Tour De France? Obviously I could name numerous such examples where no special energetics are claimed and yet the participants (even of a lower order) finish said contests NOT exhausted.

"But inner energy work and alchemy makes this accessible also without enormous training if you are able to draw the necessary energies out from stillness and the pores of the skin as Bruce tries to teach also."

It is the "enormous training" that allows for excellence, not "energy coming out of the pores". Once again, you haven't trained very much with Bruce but claim to know his teachings. Obviously my previous suggestion was lost on you. Pearls before swine.

"Therefore the combination of alignments and postures is only effective if sufficient energies are upbuild and controlled by the own mind sensing and guiding them more and more till the breathing of a baby in mother's womb - the mother is not doing such breathing for the baby though the nutritients delivered is prepared also by the energy work of the mother - is attained again in such stillness out of emptiness."

Oh brother. Babies don't breath in their mothers womb. Their lungs are filled with fluid. Could at least have a small basis in reality before your spout your silly miasma?

The problem is often not the alignment but the inability to produce the necessary energies making the alignment and the energy work effective.

Denying like Buddy that Qigong implies energies and forces proven or not beyond the usual level of body work is ridicolous and sets the special attractivity of these arts aside compared to Western gymnastics or aerobics.

The question of energetics may seem not important when you are used to do sports over many hours which needs already sufficient energies of normally young bodies. But such work outs exhaust themselves in a longer run like the martials arts without inner energy work what is one of the main messages of Bruce having tried many style having the luck coming to inner energy work. This allows also older persons like the masters of Bruce still competing with the young what is normally not possible. But inner energy work and alchemy makes this accessible also without enormous training if you are able to draw the necessary energies out from stillness and the pores of the skin as Bruce tries to teach also.

Therefore the combination of alignments and postures is only effective if sufficient energies are upbuild and controlled by the own mind sensing and guiding them more and more till the breathing of a baby in mother's womb - the mother is not doing such breathing for the baby though the nutritients delivered is prepared also by the energy work of the mother - is attained again in such stillness out of emptiness.

Hi gang,

Just wanted to give a quick report. Last few days we've been working on Double Palm Change and Smooth Palm Change with Kumar down at Menlo College.

Focusing mostly on two person techniques, and applications for the first three palm changes.

We've learned all of Single Palm, and about half of Double Palm and half of Wind Palm Change over the last two days.

We did multiple attacker drills with Double Palm, and I got to be the dummy for jaw dislocating, head smashing and "cotton palm" demos this afternoon. Powerful strikes!

We worked on Ko Bu as a leg kick, sweep and knee butt. We worked on changing from chin na to throwing and how to use strikes in between to loosen 'em up and to finish them off.

We worked on various palms, using pierce to soft spots, using overhead smash to the spine on leg shoots and opening the 'dang' area to enliven the legs.

We worked on how to change the body's manifestation of Single, Double or Wind Palm so that your body feels and acts differently for each one, and how applications are created spontaneously.

He talked a bit about how Ba Gua multiple attack exercises are different from Aikido Randori. He spoke on how he got almost up to 3rd Dan in Aikido so he go to do a lot of Randori. He felt it was one of the things that Ueshiba picked up during his years in China during WWII. He said it wasn't present in any of the Daito Ryu or Aikijujitsu he saw in Hokkaido and felt that it must be the influence of Ba Gua. Overall it's pretty similar except that in Ba Gua you focus on killing blows and neck breaking twists rather than the throws and projections of Aikido.

He spoke a bit of training with Ueshiba and how he did so at the Hobmu Dojo when he was 18 and 19 years old. Kumar felt that since it's been 40 years and he was just a kid at the time that it's pretty hard to remember most of what went on, but that O-Sensei's skills were remarkable, and only after training with Liu Hung Chieh did a number of things that Ueshiba did make sense to him.

We also spent a bit of time looking at how the intensity and tightness of twisting increases with each of the palms from Single to Double to Wind Palm, doing gradually tighter Ko Bu and Bai Bu turns so that each palm creates a more and more challenging workout.

Much more, but that's off the top of my head! It's been a lot of fun so far and it's good to catch up with some old classmates and friends.

when I was living in Osaka I used to train with a couple of teachers of the Wang Shujin school there and with a couple of friends belonging to the Kubo Isato taikiken group.

I don't know anyone in Tokyo, but here's my two cents on the schools I attended: the taikyokuken is good, and at a consistently good level. In Osaka there were a couple of guys fron the karate fighting scene training with us - kyokushin, usually, and you could recognise them because of their muscular bulk. In addition to taikyokuken (taijiquan) the school also teaches a kata from some jujutsu tradition (I think it's a sister to a Yagyu Shingan school mixed with some Daito) but the kata is taught much in the tai chi way and, in Osaka at least, it was a minor part of training. The other internal arts of the Wang Shujin lineage are also taught, but often to intermediate students only and at closed doors - it took me about seven months, with a background of twenty years between JMA and tai chi, to begin learning keiken (xingyiquan) and never got around to even see hakkeisho (baguazhang)... The chief instructor in Tokyo, Hidemine Jibiki sensei, is a lineage holder for Japan in the arts he's teaching, so I suppose he knows his stuff. I strongly advise you to take a look at this school. It may be worth studying there, depending on your interests and background.

The second school (Kubo Isato's) teaches taikiken mixed with iken (yiquan). Kubo sensei is a student of yiquan's Yao Chengguang and it shows in his work. I don't like the Yao approach to yiquan all that much, but if you're interested in the fighting side of IMA it's worth looking into.

Hope this is helpful,