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360 degrees
The highest level of tai chi chuan
practice is high stance and small circle. In high stance and small circle you
can conserve your energy to a maximum level. This is very crucial in battle.
Endurance has always been the crucial key to survival in a long battle.
Moreover, due to high stance and smaller posture you can reach to the deepest
relaxed stage, the mind is highly concentrated, and the sensitivity and
alertness can be extremely sharp.
(Yang Jwing-Ming)
360º
If you want to use bagua in self defence, it is important for you to have
the ability to move in any direction with ease.
Spontaneity is fundamental in self defence.
The stances popularised in many bagua schools are extremely low or linear.
They offer a certain kind of strength but limited mobility when pressure-tested.
We need freedom of movement, ease, comfort, naturalness and internal power.
Large stances impede joint mobility and deny the skeleton its full range of
natural movement.
If you work on the premise that all attacks are likely to involve more than one
opponent, you make no assumptions regarding stance.
Natural body use
Boxers have fought using an upright skeletal stance for millennia, yet most
bagua people stand as if performing yoga. Why is this?
Yoga is great for stretching but has no known combat application.
If you want to stretch, do yoga. If you want to massage your insides, do bagua.
Bagua stretching is mainly internal, not external. We address the bulk of our
bagua stretching during qigong.
Be careful not to take stretching into self defence.
The human skeleton is upright.
Standing upright, with the feet beneath the shoulders/hips maximises your
ability to rotate the hips, move the hips, knees, ankles and shoulders
comfortably.
Do not interfere with your body.
If you cannot generate power standing easily and naturally, you are relying upon
unnatural stances.
Exaggerating your bagua
Exaggerating the bagua is a bad habit practiced by inexperienced beginners who
lack a subtle sense of the art.
Instead of moving in a way that follows the underlying kinetic energy flow, the
student takes huge steps, low stances, and extends their arms absurdly far from
the centre.
Big stances limit your ability to move the joints in a fluid, comfortable way.
The overly-extended limbs create tension in the joints that hamper free
movement.
Bagua is not yoga. It is about spontaneous movement, not stretching.
Low stances
Low stances are a throwback to a time when martial artists wore heavy
body armour and fought battles in muddy fields.
The urban combat situation is a totally different scenario.
Your body usage needs to feel as comfortable and as natural as possible. This
will improve mobility, attract less attention and protect your knee joints.
If you cannot get power from an everyday standing position, you are overly
dependant upon the hips and the solidity of your base.
Whole-body movement generates power in a wave-like fashion. A low stance is
simply redundant.
Horse stance
The horse stance is a popular training method for building up leg strength.
Many people take the horse stance into self defence in the belief that it
provides greater stability and power.
Look at the human skeleton carefully.
The hip joints hang from the pelvis, placing the feet beneath the body. Not out
to the side (as with a horse stance).
Try this: stand with your feet parallel and wide apart. Assume a horse stance if
you want to.
Ask your partner to push gently upon your chest in order to take your balance.
Do not fight back, or attempt to compensate in any way. Feel what the innate
stability is.
Now, stand with your legs parallel but beneath the body. Relax your knees but do
not bend them unduly. Repeat the exercise.
Which structure is more inherently stable? Which structure do you use 16 hours a
day? Which structure offers the greatest degree of mobility?
If you cannot feel the difference, you may want to address your proprioception.
Human body
There is a danger in seeking to improve the human body.
Taoism encourages an attitude of going with the flow, of working with what you
have.
Keep your movements as natural and comfortable as you can. If it feels like a
posture, then you are exaggerating it.
Self defence requires spontaneity and ease of movement.
It asks you to move in any direction at any moment. Being in a stance will not
offer you this.
A stance may offer you a gain in one area at the expense of a loss in another.
We need to remain open and flexible, free and mobile.
Stand normally, with your knees relaxed - you already have mobility. Why mess
with it?
Exotic stances
Tai chi magazines, articles and video clips often feature Chinese people
adopting extremely demanding bagua postures. These are certainly impressive.
However, such stances are merely demonstrations of agility, strength and
suppleness.
They possess no martial value whatsoever. Adopting an exotic stance in self
defence would be suicidal.
Motives
It is important to consider your motive when training bagua.
If your intention is to perform in front of audiences, then exceedingly low
stances may well be a crowd-pleaser.
If you are seeking good health and martial
skills,
such exotic postures are unimportant.
Bagua is not about extremities. It is about natural, comfortable, easy movement.
The emphasis needs to be upon the word 'movement'.
Self defence is not static or fixed.
An extreme stance represents a martial commitment that will hamper your ability
to move smoothly.
Besides, if you are a Western adult, your knees may well suffer if you try and
squat inches from the ground in a very low stance. Why bother?
Freeform
The final test of bagua self defence ability is freeform sparring against
multiple opponents.
This will not prove whether or not you will succeed in a real life street
confrontation, but it will pressure test your bagua.
Do not take our word for anything. Prove it for yourself.
Try low stances against earnest opponents who launch random, unstylised punches,
kicks and grapples.
Find out for yourself what works and what does not.
Page created 5 August 1999