To practice Bagua, you must have profound internal strength. You should mainly practice meditation and cultivate qi, and then transform the internal qi into active strength by turning your palms. The power of breathing must be coordinated with walking and turning. When practicing the moves, pay attention to the use of qi, and qigong will be formed naturally. This is natural and flexible qigong. The method of practicing internal strength is static and dynamic. Through static postures, sinking shoulders and elbows, holding the chest and pulling the back, twisting the waist and sitting on the hips, bending the legs and wading in the mud, relaxing and regulating breathing, and soft and calm exercises, you can generate internal strength. Then, through dynamic postures and turning palms, you can use internal strength in boxing. Use fingertips instead of palm roots to exert force, and seek to penetrate force instead of sending people out of the way. When walking and turning, pay attention to the fingertips, and the finger strength will naturally become strong after a long time.
Bagua is nothing more than practicing a rotating iron ball. It is the result of years of turning left and right. When you reach a certain level, your whole body is like a diamond ball that can rotate freely. If someone touches you, you will miss and fall or be hit. People are spherical, and you must attack the center. I am also spherical, and when I am attacked, I will turn and walk.
When the opponent hits you, your body is like a ball. Don’t stop when you turn and turn. Enter the coiled snake and suck and walk. Try to seek the combination of hardness and softness.
The Bagua releases the pulling and elastic force, and its use is like a big python’s steel whip. Walking in circles is the basis of internal strength, and it can train all the strength of Baguazhang. Only after walking in circles for a few years to train internal strength can the moves be used. Walking and turning skills are an important part of force training. To be able to hit people with steps, you must train your body to have spring strength. With this strength, as long as the arm touches you, you have to go out. The two arms are like electricity, whether you hit others, or others hit him or block his attack, you will be knocked out. Spring strength is the structural principle, which is trained with walking and turning steps. Fixed-style palm plus mind training is the main method of practicing spring power.
Press down the palm and press your hands on the ball, and your arms like holding a big balloon. Relax your shoulders and support your elbows, hold your chest and pull your back, empty your neck and head, turn your upper body slightly toward the center of the circle, and walk in the mud. Imagine that you are in waist-deep water, and you have to walk with the ball you are pressing and the ball you are holding in front of your chest, so that the ball will not run away, nor will it be squeezed and broken. Experience while walking, and you must have such an idea every time you practice. Practice often, and you will feel it immediately after you make a posture and have a little idea.
Hold your palms with your fingers apart, as if holding a big balloon with a diameter of 50 to 60 cm. Imagine walking in the mud in shoulder-deep water, so that the ball will not run away, nor will it be squeezed and broken. Imagine that the water waves impact the ball to float up and down, move toward the chest, and other directions. No matter where it moves, it must be stopped so that the ball moves with you. The other six fixed-style palms are similar to these two. The idea should not be too heavy, otherwise you will feel dizzy. As your skills deepen, your thoughts gradually fade, and you will feel like you are there and not there. Ignore all kinds of feelings and let everything go naturally.
Hitting someone with inch power can easily cause internal injuries. Pressing on the ribs may not show any external signs, but it can injure the internal organs. Relax your shoulders and drop your elbows, empty your neck and top strength, connect each joint, coordinate your whole body, hit someone with your front hand, use your back hand to exert force, and have a deep intention. Find a small tree of moderate size, first press your fingers on the tree, then suddenly hit it with the base of your palm, so that your whole body is consistent. The moment your palm touches the tree, your whole body tightens, intending to knock the tree down. Then return your center of gravity and restore your usual relaxed state. Leave the base of your palm from the tree, and only press the tree with your fingertips. Start with the Shunbu style, and support your left palm with your right palm. Then use the Twisted step style. Bury a two-meter-long wooden board one meter into the ground, nail dog skin on the upper part of the board, and repeatedly practice collapsing palms and tucked palms. If you choose a large tree or a wall that is not elastic, you will not be able to practice inch power, and your wrist will be injured.
The foundation of Bagua Jin is all in one word, Push. Ming Jin is based on the Push. Push emphasizes a momentary state. The physical state when pushing heavy objects is the state of whole body strength. Understand this physical state in your heart and apply it to the initial state of each critical punch. Whether you practice hard or soft, you can quickly find the state of punching with whole strength. Practice boxing with strength in your body. From loose to hard and then from hard to soft, practice soft and use hard, and hard is only manifested when it is used. Boxing is a state of the body. When this state is in the body, the strength is also practiced. At that time, every move has the meaning of boxing. With real internal strength, a single palm change can also produce countless changes, and you can fight as you want. The point is heavy and the body is loose. You must practice until your body is stable. When you stretch your hand, you can put the force on others. A lot of force is put on you, but the center of gravity of others’ bodies is not given to you, making you unable to resist. Bagua Jin is so terrible that it will hurt people as soon as you hit them.
When you grab an eel, it will immediately inflate its body, and wherever you grab it, it will be full of air. This is the same as the saying in internal martial arts that “there is no point in the body that is not springy”. When practicing boxing, you need to practice with all your strength. When you practice to the extreme, you can achieve the effect of moving your whole body. Turning your palm actually requires the whole body to move with strength like a python, and it will be terrible if you hit it.
When the Bagua palm is in place, the body will be filled with Peng strength, which is the best defensive strength. When the Peng strength is used, all parts of the body are connected and connected, forming a force-bearing pile state similar to an arch bridge. No external force can break through this pile state, and it will inevitably slide away. This is the force that cannot enter, and it uses the advantage of the pile frame to protect the body. Peng strength is a defensive strength, and it can also be used for fighting. No matter what method the opponent uses, you just need to start from your own center line and keep Peng to the opponent’s face, combining martial arts and fighting. The correct way to practice is to keep the Peng force in your body and fight to the end. No matter what action you take or what force you use, you must not lose the Peng force. In this way, the Peng force grows on your body and melts into other forces. You can use any force to contain the Peng force, and you can break the enemy’s moves and hit the opponent directly. That is the true integration of attack and attack.
The horizontal force is to be horizontal without being seen, because it is the body that is horizontal, not the hand. The ability to fly horizontally is due to the support force from all directions on the body. The three-body posture starts with this support force. The use of Bagua is like a big python steel whip, and its rigidity is all in this force. Bagua is practiced from the root, from the root to the tip, and everything is based on the pile, and the rigidity is manifested in the pile. The first place where Bagua can exert force is the shoulder and elbow. This is the performance from the root to the tip. For example, when you change your palm, don’t think about how much force you can put on your palm and fingers at the beginning, because that will easily lose the center of the posture. Instead, when changing styles, you should think that the enemy is at your shoulder and elbow. In actual combat, you should sneak to this position and use the power of the waist and hips to rotate the body when changing styles to drive the shoulders and elbows to hit and smash. When you first practice, the shoulders and elbows are easy to use, and when you are more skilled, it will naturally reach the palms. This is the practice of exerting force, and the steel whip power lies in this. However, if you have hardness but no softness, it will not work. The softness lies in opening and closing, twisting and turning. The power of collapsing palms and hitting palms is all in opening and closing, and the power of leading palms and penetrating palms is in twisting and turning. The styles of large-scale expansion are all about opening and closing. If you can’t open and close your body, you can’t exert power in this type of palm style. The styles of constricting the body and twisting and turning are about twisting and turning. The two complement each other and accumulate and release each other. After twisting and constricting, there must be expansion, and after expansion, there must be closing. Closing is twisting and constricting. Expansion can also hit, such as iron hammer hitting, steel whip hitting people, and green dragon swinging its tail. Closing can also hit, such as python entanglement, entanglement and attack, and holding the moon in the arms. This is the first one. The second is the body method.
The fist strength and Dantian Qi of Baguaquan are generated by walking and turning in accordance with the posture. When you do it, you will find that the strength, power and Qi of the human body are all in the Dantian area. When the mind is calm, it is generated without thinking, and it is felt as the body moves. When you first practice, you are required to be stable and calm, get rid of clumsy strength and seek clever strength, do not hold your breath and empty your chest and breathe, keep your mind still and be quick and full of spirit, and make good use of the combined strength of the ground and bones and the waist and abdomen Dantian to penetrate through each section and reach the landing point. Walking in circles and turning your palms can generate amazing power, and the lethality comes from turning your palms, and there is no need for external training methods to assist. The real fighting method of Bagua relies entirely on internal strength, which is generated by turning in circles, and it will rise when you are hit. The soft power that seems to be soft in the hand can come into being with a slight contact, and the layers of internal strength are overwhelming, trapping the opponent in the force field and unable to extricate themselves. The purpose of practicing is to form the body’s limbs into an orderly whole. What is practiced is the whole body joints loosened, the joints connected, and the limbs play their own independent roles under the overall coordination of the whole body. Long-term hard practice of turning palms can train the whole body’s whole strength, train the power of both palms while walking, and fight while walking. Simply practicing routines cannot replace the power of walking in circles and turning palms. Walking in circles can strengthen training with a few single styles, and the power is faster. Through turning palms, you can get all the skills. The whole strength and unique skills required by Baguazhang can be practiced through walking in circles. Twisting, turning and walking are practiced to unity, and the Hunyuan power under the command of spiral power in the continuous movement of Baguazhang is generated.
Bagua is not just practicing hand techniques, but practicing body techniques. The changes in the hands are also changes in the body techniques. The strength of the hands is the whole strength of the whole body. That is, the waist is the axis. When the waist is trained, the strength comes out. If you want to train the waist, you must first loosen the waist and hips. If you want to loosen the waist and hips, you must first loosen the arms, sink the shoulders and drop the elbows, and slide the hips along the neck. Only when the shoulders and waist are completely loosened can the force penetrate the limbs. When turning the palms, you should practice walking in a “full circle” (the hips face forward, do not move on the circle line, and the waist belt and hands turn to the center of the circle to walk in a “half circle”; the hips do not move as before, and the waist and palms face behind the body and can still turn freely to walk in a “full circle”), which means that the waist and hips have been loosened, and the movement is free, and the force penetrates the four extremities. The strength of the limbs must be very full. Elasticity, springs everywhere in the body, loose and flexible, and connected at every joint, so that the opponent dare not let go easily and attack other parts, and can be released continuously, sometimes like a spring, sometimes like a steel bar.
Practice rolling drills to fight for wrapping power. If the arms are not loose enough, the rolling drill power must be limited, the arms are not active, lack of changes, and the speed is slow. Only by walking in circles can you relax your shoulders and elbows, relax your waist and hips, and sink your qi into the dantian. If you only practice routines, the effect is not obvious. Fighting and wrapping not only refers to the fighting and wrapping of the hands, but also the fighting and wrapping of the body. Practicing walking in circles is to practice the holding and embracing force and overall force. The head is suspended and the five toes are grasping the ground is fighting, and the elbows are closed and the heart is covered to hold the force. When fighting and wrapping come out, rotation is also included.
The spiral force of Baguazhang is also called spiral force, twisting and drilling force, and twisting shoulders and adjusting back. It is a special training method in Baguazhang. It is necessary to seek smoothness in adversity. When practicing, the body frame is in a two-way spiral shape that is reversed up and down. When the human body walks in a circle, the Tanzhong point is retracted inward, which naturally produces a cutting force, and at the same time, the Jiaji point behind the back will inevitably produce a centrifugal force. When rotating, the Baihui is pushed up and the perineum is loosened and lifted, which can produce a floating force like water, which can make the enemy uprooted and lose stability. When practicing Baguazhang rotation, the center of the eyebrows is required to face the center of the circle, which will produce a swallowing force like fire. This is to use the power of the shoulder and back to transfer to the arm to achieve the purpose of increasing arm strength. This force generated from the whole body is much greater than the force obtained by simply stretching and contracting the elbow or shoulder muscles. Spiral force is very useful in fighting. Using the arm to press against the opponent’s torso and twist and drill, not only is the force great, but more importantly, the direction of movement is constantly changed, creating an illusion for the opponent, which can easily make the opponent lose balance. The main principle of the Bagua footwork is to turn the body into a human spring by twisting the body and buckling the legs to store momentum, which greatly increases the speed and momentum of the step and the lethality of the palm strike. Place both hands one in front and one behind, use the force of the shoulder to make it have a fighting force in front, behind, left and right, empty the chest and tighten the back to make the upper and lower forces fight and gather each other, rotate the body and step straight to naturally generate a twisting force, and use the hips to drive the body to naturally generate a compound round force of different proportions in the vertical, horizontal and vertical directions. When turning in circles and fighting, you should sink your qi into the dantian, relax your abdomen and heart, retract your abdomen and slide your buttocks, lift your head and hang your crotch under the control of your waist and abdomen, empty your chest and tighten your back, so that you can form a perfect rotating sphere.
The essence and vitality of Bagua lies in walking and turning, and the characteristics of the whole strength formed by walking and turning are very different from those obtained by standing. Although the two are different, they are quite complementary. If the whole stance obtained by standing is simply applied to walking and turning, it is just a fixed stance in motion, and the walking and fighting strength of Bagua cannot be practiced. Bagua walking and turning contains uninterrupted whole strength. During the movement, the waist drives the limbs and the whole body, the head hangs in the sky, the joints of the whole body are loosened, the body is tied to the sky and falls to the ground, and the whole body is full of internal and external power. Walking in circles and turning the palms requires skills. During the movement, the waist can be rotated all the time, the hands and feet are always in harmony, the arms can produce spiral force in a naturally loose state, the legs can be in harmony with the body and hands all the time, the head can talk to the sky all the time, and the palms of the feet can alternately rub against the ground from left to right. The head hangs in the sky and the feet are rooted in the ground, the Bagua of the body returns to its position everywhere, and the whole body moves to become a whole strength.
The principles of Baguaquan are three emptiness, four urging, and twelve tightness. The three emptinesses are the emptiness of body and mind, the emptiness of palms, and the emptiness of soles of feet, which means that the upper, middle, and lower plates are all round and empty. Because of emptiness, there is perfection and no gap, and the positive energy follows. The four urgings are to urge the shoulders with the waist, the elbows with the shoulders, the wrists with the elbows, and the fingers with the wrists. These are the upper four urgings. The waist urges the hips, the hips urge the knees, the knees urge the ankles, and the ankles urge the feet. These are the lower four urgings. The twelve tightnesses are the tongue against the upper palate, the hanging head and the crotch, the two knees hugging each other, the scissor legs, the mud-wading steps, the five toes grasping the ground, the shoulders sinking and the elbows hanging, the wrists tightening and the fingers firm. The internal and external are connected, the upper and lower follow each other, and the whole body is twisted into one force, forming a thick and full three-dimensional circle. The characteristic of a circle is that it concentrates its strength. Only in actual combat can it be flexible and not stagnant, avoid the real and attack the virtual, combine the real and the virtual, combine movement and stillness, the small can defeat the big, the weak can defeat the strong, borrow the force and return the force, and overcome the hard with the soft. This is the basis for Baguaquan to generate and change strength.
Baguaquan has the following strengths:
- Drilling, flipping, stretching and contraction contradictory strength.
Drilling, flipping and contraction are achieved on the premise of twisting strength. Drilling is to twist the strength and then continuously buckle inward and move forward; flipping is to twist the arm and then continuously struggle outward and move forward. Drilling to the extreme will produce flipping, and flipping to the extreme will produce drilling. The eight strengths of pushing, supporting, leading, leading, moving, buckling, blocking and intercepting must be produced by changes on the premise of drilling, flipping, stretching and shrinking.
- Explosive force of shock, bounce, shake and explosion.
The high-level power generation in Baguaquan is the sum of the four strengths of shock, bounce, shake and explosion. Shock is sudden; bounce is elastic; shake is vibrating; explosion is sudden rupture and produces a large amount of energy and powerful gas substances. It comes from three emptiness, four urging, and twelve tightness. After a long time, it can produce a feeling effect like electric shock, and the person touched will immediately float out of the distance.
- Flat force floating in the air.
Flat force is to hit the opponent and fly out flat like a board. To train flat force, you must achieve a certain foundation in internal strength, so that the heart and mind, mind and qi, qi and force, hands and feet, shoulders and hips, elbows and knees, up and down, and inside and outside. On this basis, while the palms accumulate power to touch the opponent’s body outward, the palms follow the forearms to rotate inward, and at the same time, they are pushed and shaken quickly. The five toes grasp the ground, the valley is lifted, the buttocks sink, and the sitting hip spine is like a bow, assisted by the combination of shock, bounce, shaking and explosion, and the combined force of tearing and pushing bursts out instantly, with a great momentum of collapse and earth splitting.
- Visceral shattering penetration.
Penetrating force has the effect of shocking internal organs, breaking meridians, and penetrating skin. It is mainly the combined force of tearing and supporting. Tearing is to pull the surface of the touched muscle outward and to both sides, while using the supporting force to make the palm base sink. The force must be completed in one breath, without any pause, but do not forget the key points of three empty and four urging and the wonderful use of shock and explosion.
- Thick and full of accumulated force.
Supporting the force of eight sides, accumulation means that the bow has been drawn and the arrow has been strung. Once you let go, the arrow will go out quickly, with a great momentum of overwhelming mountains and seas. It will not be fired unless it meets the target. On the basis of three empty and twelve tight, the internal force can be accumulated, and the four urging force training is carried out, and the qi sinks into the dantian, and the qi is used to urge the force. Only in this way can it penetrate through the joints, and the force is emitted from the root. The foot is the root of the human body, and the dantian is the root of the middle section. The accumulation of force should be coordinated with the swallowing, opening and closing, rising and falling, and rotating in the body method, and also with the breathing method. To store is to close is to inhale, to release is to open is to exhale. When exerting force, you will know the size and change of the force, and use the force to return it.