I love listening to the rain at night, working out indoors in the humidity long into the night.
Now that this year’s rainy season has been officially declared over, it has rained all day today. And will rain tomorrow and the next day. Then a two-day sword seminar starts and I will be inside all day anyway.
Fine with me, as the three-day weekend gave me three days of working out in the sun (plus Friday night’s super-humid gong fu class with my daughter). Sensing that rain might follow, I spent extra time on weapons the next three days, and have pleasantly (?) sore arms to show for it. So tonight, with the rain, it will be the 64 hands of ba gua zhang in preparation for tomorrow’s class.
64 hands is quite unusual in that the techniques are performed moving in a straight line. There is plenty of characteristic ba gua circling, but the body is moving straight forward as a whole.
Created by Liu Jing Ru, he taught us this set last year on his annual visit to Japan. This year he is rumored to be bringing us the more commonly seen 64 palms. Not enough time, not enough time…
But this weekend had plenty of time. Hours of solo review and polishing, then a morning of much-needed iaido, a blast all the way through both seated and standing okuden forms, and on into a solid review of the paired kumi-dachi sets. The perfect, intensive review I needed, with both breadth and depth. I was on fire, moving well but not satisfied, looking for more. My head is still spinning, and not from the circles of ba gua zhang.
Less work than usual for the rest of the week means more of you know what. Truly glorious days are these….
3 comments:
Are these "64 palms" techniques or specified movements within the Ba Gua cirlce walking (in which many more techniques can be drawn)
Frankly, I know almost nothing about the 64 palms. Liu JingRu Laoshi is coming to Tokyo in a couple weeks and we'll be learning them then - so you'll probably read much about it here. Until then, let me quote from the book "Dragon Stretches its Claws" (by Liu Jing Ru and CS Tang":
"The Sixty-Four Palms consists of the Eight Main Palms and to each of these eight main palms are added seven more Palms to make a total of sixty four palms." also
"The Sixty four Palms routine was developed by Mr. Cheng [Chen] You Xin. It was the fruit of his own observation and study on Cheng Ting Hua's maneuvering methods and on those practiced by the students of his same master. It is indeed a painstaking accumulation of experience over a period of some two or three generations and of over some fifty years' work by Mr. Cheng You Xin."
you pretty much hit it on the head. The circular 64 palms were created by Cheng Youxin with help from other masters including his elder brother Cheng Youlong.
Lots of different teachers have different versions of the 64 and in the past it would be difficult to learn the whole set from any one teacher. The routine is considered to be the apex of the style and used to be the quality assurance of mastery (IE: If you knew the whole routine you could be said to be a master of bagua). Of course now this is slightly different since routines are more available to the public these days. My teacher Yang Hai recently recompiled and cleaned up the 64 palm routine and gave it a strong Cheng Youlong flavour. Hopefully sometime soon either he or maybe some of his students will get some of this routine up on youtube.
best wishes from Montreal
James C.
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