The next episode of the Heretics podcast is going to be about the martial art of Baguazhang, so to get in the right head space here’s a classic Bagua applications video by Luo Dexiu along with a great article by Ed Hines of 21 c Bagua.
The article has some great ideas, especially about forms being memory holders for principles, rather than catalogues techniques.
“you need to use the forms, or techniques not as platonic ideals to be chased forever, but as examples from a broad set of ‘what is possible’. It is possible to hit this way, that way and another way. It is possible to unbalance this way, that way and another way. And so on. No perfect techniques, just the capacity to recognise possibilities”
Ed Hanes
The Tai Chi Notebook 
i’ve found out a bit more about tiger’s martial arts background. he learned his bagua and xing yi from friends of his father who practiced while in prison in nanjing for being on the wrong side of the civil war. the xing yi is shanxi style but the bagua is mixed and tiger hasn’t been able to find out the lineage as his teachers, (and teacher’s teachers), political background saw them excluded from records and the post war martial arts community.
tiger also learned, taiji, piguan, meihua, tong bei, western boxing and chinese wrestling – he mimed taking pieces from here and there, keeping what he thought was practical, definitely non-partisan in his approach to tcma.
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Thanks for sharing the video of your teacher. Very interesting!
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hi,
i forgot to add that tiger’s knees are shot from vigorous training and sparring when he was young – still very strong but not as sprightly as he must have been in his prime,
a
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hi,
i listened with interest to the bagua zhang podcast episode and thought to ask my teacher about why the form doesn’t use fists – he said that in application you can use any hand form appropriate to the situation and that palms feature prominently in the form for aesthetic reasons.
my teacher, tiger guo, is from x’ian and has been practicing various styles since he was a child. when i first met him i started learning his own ‘bagua taiji’ ’, a form he has been working on for about thirty years or so. he only speaks a few words of english and i’ve found that mandarin speaking training partners are somewhat reluctant to ask on my behalf about the lineage of his style that draws on elements of bagua, taiji, xing yi – (and maybe tong bei and meihua too).
below is a link to reference video i took of tiger’s bagua taiji a number of years ago as i thought you might find it interesting,
cheers,
adam
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Luo Dexiu is always a pleasure to watch in his applications clips. He definitely seems to me to be one of those rare teachers who “shows you one application but knows ten others he could demonstrate equally well.”
I agree with the quote from Mr. Hines 100% but would only add the caveat that while there are “no perfect techniques” there are some that are much easier to apply to a training partner, compared to a resisting opponent of any calibre. But you all knew that by now, right? 🙂
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