Hey Everyone,
We had a great turnout at the 2009 Ba Gua Instructor Training.
Congratulations to all of our new instructors.
Here are some group photos of everyone after the retreat was over.
Click on thumbnail to view full image.
Ba Gua Instructor Training Attendees
The next generation of Instructors
We would like to say thank you to all the students for making this possible.
We look forward to more trainings with you.
Energy Arts Team
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Begin to shift forward about 70% of your weight, while bending your kwa, knees and ankles. This phase of the Four Part Step brings you forward, ending with most of your weight on the front foot.
During the shift, allow all of your joints to close a bit, and store up some of their strength. Again keep your focus on balance and stability. Stay present during the entire shift so that you notice any wobble or instability.
As you bend the ankle, knee and kwa, you may lean forward a bit to keep balanced. This is fine as long as it’s not overdone, and you keep your spine straight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-8jcjCkFz4&feature=related
Continue to keep a connection between the torso and the legs, but release any tuck of the tailbone that you had from the first phase of the step. Let your spine relax into its most natural position.
Feel your weight shifting forward as if it was moving through the ground underneath your feet. As if you were the tip of an iceberg and it was moving forward, dragging you with it.
The bend you are creating in your joints will be released in the next phase, and this is the power that will be released into your movement. This is the bend of the bow before letting go of the arrow and sending it out, so allow some pressure to build up inside your joints, but obviously not to the point of discomfort.
This phase of the step is all about withdrawing and falling into oneself. The kwa, hip joints, knees, ankles and feet all feel a sucking in. This continues the process of pulling energy up the legs, and also the torso and arms.
As you shift, feel all your joints drawing energy into themselves. This is moving into yin from the yang of phase one, moving energy back into the center of your body from the outside. Keep aware of this constant change from yang to yin to yang during each phase of the Four Part Step.
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Here is a basic overview of the Ba Gua Four Step:
For each phase of the ba gua step, more layers of detail are added. As you practice, consider each of the following lessons and integrate them one by one. Do one lesson for a few hundred ba gua steps before you move on to the next. They are cyclical and build upon each other, and each is applicable to ba gua circle walking as well as ba gua linear walking.
Lets move now into the details for phase one of the ba gua stepping…
PHASE ONE: Begin with both feet on the ground. Lift one and set it down in front of you, unweighted. Be careful not to reach past your natural limit. The temptation is to do this ba gua step further than you are capable of without losing stability.
Ba Gua Zhang 4-Part Step – Phase 1 [Click to Watch Video]
So at first, take a smaller ba gua steps than your maximum. Stay comfortably within your own range so that your balance is strong and you are stable where you stand. Test your weight allocation by lifting the front foot off the ground slightly.
Can you do that easily or does it cause you to list from side to side? Deliberately place the foot on the ground, staying focused on being well grounded and firm. The weighted leg in ba gua stepping should be as if sunk like a post into the ground, strong and secure, but with some spring in the joints.
When your foot goes out, use a slight swing of the tailbone to drive it forward. Do not over emphasize this swing, but be aware that your pelvis and lower spine is the driver that causes the leg to swing forward.
The point is not to overtuck or disorient your spine, it’s to begin making the mental and physical connection of your spine into your legs. Overtime a strong sensation of connection between your legs and torso is developed when you do ba gua.
The beginning of this sensation is found in activating your tailbone to help swing your foot forward. Remember that this is a very, very small movement, and is more about bringing your attention to this area and helping connect spine to leg, rather than any major, overt movement of the spine.
Only over many repetitions of doing this ba gua stepping will your lower back begin to naturally compliment the movement of your legs, so gently encourage this. Extending your leg is a yang action, moving out into space from the center.
As your foot glides to touch with the ground, let the ball of your foot be the first surface to land, immediately followed by the rest of the foot. The ball of the foot is called the Bubbling Well in Chinese medicine, and is a major energy gate of the body. As the foot makes contact with this area, energy naturally flows into this gateway and up the foot into the leg, and eventually to the lower Tan Tian.
This energy flow up the leg is a counterbalance to the physical extension that you are doing. So as you step out with your foot and touch the ground, your outward reaching is balanced by an energetic inflow. Over time this inward drawing of energy from the Earth pulls chi into the Tan Tian with each and every step. This is one aspect of why ba gua circle walking is considered a superlative nei gung (energy work) practice in and of itself, helping to develop internal power with every ba gua footstep you take.
For more info please see our website: http//www.watertradition.net
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This live footage was taken while I taught a 6 week course in ba gua meditation…the video is not the best of quality but is a nice summary of the origins of ba gua chang:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0awM06tvJk[/youtube]
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The martial art of Ba Gua Chang (‘Pa Kua Zhang’) puts heavy emphasis on training the strength of the legs and the agility of one’s stepping. An often quoted aphorism in the Ba Gua Chang world is that the power in the hands comes from the feet.
Because of ba gua’s reliance of the skill of using the lower body, many ba gua training methods have been devised for developing and strengthening the legs. The core practice of ba gua is circle walking, where one walks around in a circle, changing direction and speed while performing martial arts forms of varying complexity.
However, in order to get the most from ba gua circle walking, basic ba gua training is done by walking first in a straight line. Within the Energy Arts system, the ‘Four Part Step’ is used to accomplish this task.
The Ba Gua Four Part Stepping in a straight line allows one to break apart and minutely examine every aspect of what constitutes a step forward. By making each aspect of weight shifting and moving forward clear and concise, one can detect inefficiencies in their movement, increase the sensitivity and awareness within their lower body, develop pliable strength in different stages of the weight shift, and generally drop their attention and energy out of their head and into their legs. This last part is perhaps the most important, as helping the legs become more awake and enlivened is one the most important keys to making ba gua functional as a martial or meditative art.
In ba gua we seek to make the feet more sensitive, to eventually make them as agile and aware as the fingers of the hands. To do this, training awareness in the feet is paramount. As each part of the Ba Gua Four Part Step is performed, your goal is to keep your concentration fully focused on the sensations of the feet. The feeling of weight coming off of the heel, center and Bubbling Well of each foot. The feeling of the shoe touching or moving against the bottom of the foot. The pads of the toes feeling the air as the foot swings forward. Each ounce of weight shifting forward onto the bones of the foot. Your mind will certainly drift away, but each time it does, return it to the feeling of the foot in contact with the ground, and if possible, feel as deeply beneath the foot as you can.
Another key element to the Ba Gua Four Part Step is continuously being aware of the springy nature of the soft tissues in the legs. As your weight compresses the joints of the leg, feel them take the pressure in the way a spring does. As you shift forward feel that natural spring add to the forward movement. There is a huge amount of play between the slackness and the compression of each leg. The more you can become aware of how it is springing, the more you can help engender that sense by making adjustments to the alignments of your leg.
As you perform Ba Gua Chang, through intuition and experiment, you will continually find the positions of your hips, knees, ankles and feet that increase the spring and squish inside each leg as you step. Without bouncing much up and down, keep seeking to make each ba gua step a way to improve circulation of blood, synovial fluid and lymph. Eventually this will help your legs to become much more enlivened and mobile, allowing your legs to respond much more quickly to the commands of the mind. The aspect of mind that orders your body to take action is called “YI” in Chinese, and translated as “intent”.
For more info on this class and other events in the Bay Area, please see our website:
Jess O’Brien 510-499-4150 xingyiquan5@yahoo.com
Isaac Kamins 415-720-7905 waterpalm@watertradition.net
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