The origins of baguazhang

At Harmony Healthworks we teach a number of health development and maintenance exercises. Among these are the Chinese internal arts of Taijiquan (tai chi) Baguazhang (eight trigram palm) and Xingyiquan (shape of the mind boxing). While we certainly are interested in the self defense aspects of these arts, most people nowadays practice them for the outstanding health benefits they can give you. We will also, in the future, be offering our own Self Defense Awareness (TM) program.
So that you can get a little background on some of these things I'm going to present my senior, George Wood's excellent translation of our teacher, Luo Dexiu's, website. Both Geo and Mr. Luo can be contacted through their sites in the Links section. These first few posts will deal with the art of baguazhang mentioned above.

The Origin of Baguazhang

Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan are known as the three famous internal martial arts. Among these, Baguazhang is a method of internal and external training that was recently passed down.

Baguazhang's founder, Dong Haichuan, was born in the ninth year, tenth month of the Qing dynasty Jiaqing reign. He died in the seventh year, eleventh month of the Guangxu reign. Since he was a child he loved the martial arts. In his youth he became famous in his home village for his gifted strength and martial valor. In the middle of the Xianfeng reign, he left home to travel. He traveled to all the famous mountains and provinces, including southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, eastern Sichuan and Anhui, looking for famous teachers and gifted martial artists. During this period he became influenced by Daoist training methods and after this he combined the offensive and defensive methods of the martial arts with the Daoist training to create a unique method called Zhuanzhang (Turning Palms), this was the infancy of Baguazhang (Eight Trigram Palms).

After arriving in Beijing, he got a job at the house of the prince of Su. In the house there was a Manchu named Quan Kaiting who saw Dong Haichuan practicing martial arts one day and admired his incredibly high skills. Because Quan Kaiting admired the high skills of Dong Haichuan, he knelt down before Dong Haichuan and begged to become his student. From that time, Dong Haichuan's fame and kung fu began to spread widely. Many students came to study with him. His Baguazhang slowly spread from the center of Beijing out to the other provinces; it spread quickly and became famous in a very short time.

In the beginning, because the movements of Dong Haichuan's art looked similar to that of a man moving a stone rice-grinding wheel, others began to call them Mo Men (the grinding "gate" or sect). Afterwards, he developed eight basic palm movements called the eight palms. Each of these mother palms when changed to move forwards, backwards, to the left, to the right, upwards, downwards and centrally became the sixty-four palms. Because there was similarity to the changes of the Yi Jing (the Book of Changes), Grandmaster Dong and his followers decided to call it Baguazhang. Other modern names that spread for the art are Baguazhang, Bagua Continuous palm, Bagua Swimming Body palm, Swimming Body Continuous Bagua palm, etc.

The core expression of Baguazhang is that of Chuan Zou (piercing and walking, alike darting into a forest and piercing in all directions, footwork moving in all directions) , the body method's appearance will be that of dodging, spreading, jumping and moving. When practicing you move like a swimming dragon, turn your body like a monkey, change your steps like a soaring eagle, thus expressing a combination of internal and external that moves smoothly without breaking.