Bagua Dragon Body

BAGUA MASTERY PROGRAM

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MODULE 6 Bagua Dragon Body

BRUCE FRANTZIS

Copyright © 2010 Bruce Frantzis All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Energy Arts, Inc., P.O. Box 99, Fairfax, CA 94978-0099 The following trademarks are used under license by Energy Arts, Inc., from Bruce Frantzis: Frantzis Energy Arts® system, Mastery Without Mystery®, Longevity Breathing® program, Opening the Energy Gates of Your BodiM Qigong, Marriage of Heaven and Earth™ Qigong, Bend the Bow™ Spinal Qigong, Spiraling Energy BodyTM Qigong, Gods Playing in the Clouds™ Qigong, Living Taoism™ Collection, Chi RevWorkout™ HeartChi,TM Bagua Mastery Program,TM Bagua Dynamic Stepping System,TM Bagua Internal Warm-up Method/M and Bagua Body Unification Method.™

Editing: Heather Hale, Bill Ryan, Richard Taubinger and Kaualani Pereira Interior Design: Heather Hale Cover Design: Thomas Herington Photo and Illustration Editing: Mountain Livingston and Thomas Herington Photographs by: Eric Peters, Bill Walters, Caroline Frantzis, Richard Marks and Catherine Helms Illustrations: Michael McKee and Kurt Schulten Image Alteration: Lisa Petty, GirlVibe, Inc., Patrick Hewlett and Jodie Smith Models: Bill Ryan, Keith Harrington, Don Miller and Paul Cavel Printed in the United States of America PLEASE NOTE: The practice of Taoist energy arts and meditative arts may carry risks. The information in this text is not in any way intended as a substitute for medical, mental or emotional counseling with a licensed physician or healthcare provider. The reader should consult a professional before undertaking any martial arts, movement, meditative arts, health or exercise program to reduce the chance of injury or any other harm that may result from pursuing or trying any technique discussed in this text. Any physical or other distress experienced during or after any exercise should not be ignored and should be brought to the attention of a healthcare professional. The creators and publishers of this text disclaim any liabilities for loss in connection with following any of the practices described in this text, and implementation is at the discretion, decision and risk of the reader.

Table of Contents Section 1: Developing the Bagua Dragon Body ............................... 5 Overview ..................................................................... 5 Coiling the Body within Dragon Body Turning (Intermediates) ........................................................... 6 The Dangers of Overturning .................................... 8 Overturning Can Release or Aggravate Stored Traumas ...................................... 10 Trauma Resurrected .............................................................. 10 Resolving Past Traumas Smoothly ...................................... 12

Learning Progression ............................................... 13 Phase 1: No Waist Tu rn .............................................. 13 Phase 2: Thirty-degree Turn .................................... 13 Phase 3: Forty-five-degree Turn (I ntermed iates) ........................................................... 15 Phase 4: Sixty-degree Turn (Intermediates) ......... 15 Additional Phases (Intermediates) ......................... 16

Reversing Direction ................................................. 16 Common Misalignments and Ways to Overdo It ................................................................ 17 Your Hands Should Not Cross Your Centerline .......................................................... 18

Your Hips Should Not Tilt ......................................... 19 Your Back Should Not Arch, Occiput Should Not Close ....................................... 20 Your Body Should Not Lean Forward or Collapse ................................................................. 21

Section 2: Circle Walking as a Spiritual Practice .................................. 23 Circle Walking As a Spiritual Practice ..................................................... 23 Context of This Meditation ..................................... 24

Section 3: Moving Chi while Walking the Circle (Intermediates) ....... 27 Coordinating Sinking Energy with Stepping ...... 28 The Lower Tantien and Perineum .......................... 30 Expansive, Rising and Descending Chi ................ 32

Section 1 Developing the Bagua Dragon Body Overview Classically, when bagua practitioners Walk the Circle in the Single Palm Change (SPC) Palm Posture or any other bagua energy posture, they seek to maintain what is known as the "Dragon Body:' Distinct to bagua, the Dragon Body is a type of turning. This module teaches you how to safely turn your waist toward the center of the circle in incremental stages. As such, it is unwise to attempt these methods with any posture-especially the SPC Dragon Palm Posture-until you stabilize that posture while Circle Walking without any turning of your waist.

5 © 2011 Bruce Frantzis-AII Rights Reserved.

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8agua Mastery Program

Figure 6.1.1 Boguo Dragon Body A very specific learning progression is necessary to safely and successfully increase Dragon Body turning over time. You must turn the hips and waist toward the center of your circle in increments of fifteen to thirty degrees, stabilizing each increment before trying to further increase the degree of waist turning by another fifteen to thirty degrees.

(oiling the Body within Dragon Body Turning (Intermediates) Master practitioners gradually coil their bodies in coordination with their turning (Figure 6.1.2). However, beginner and even intermediate practitioners should maintain all ofthe alignments ofthe straight ahead version-including your four points (shoulders nest and kwa that form a rectangle) and your nose on your centerline-until you can comfortably turn sixty to seventy degrees toward the center of the circle. See the sixty-degree position in Figure 6.1.1 for a visual reference. Only after you reach this position should the coiling of your Dragon Body

© 2011 Bruce Frantzis-AII Rights Reserved.

Module 6: Bagua Dragon Body

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150-180

Figure 6.1.2 Bagua Dragon Body Turning Bruce demonstrates how a master practitioner gradually coils his body as he performs Dragon Body turning.

When you do coil, your hips turn a certain distance and you maintain your four points internally. Your shoulder blades and upper arms turn/coil further and your head coils further still. Your internal organs and central channel also coil, yet all parts of your body must remain fully aligned and integrated. There are many external and internal subtleties involved in this coiling-especially as you exceed a sixty-to-seventy-degree turn-which should be learned directly from a bagua adept who can guide you through the process based on your individual needs. For example, the precise details of the process work differently for people with large body types than for those with thin body types.


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THE COMPLETE DRAGON BODY In the most advanced stage, known as the Complete Dragon Body, you can safely and simultaneously turn the upper, middle and lower parts of your torso in different directions. This is done in a similar manner to how you would spiral your arms or legs. This causes a spiraling twisting energy to move through the vertical center of your body and around your central channel, but should not-under any circumstances-twist the spinal vertebrae.

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This spiraling is what the deeper meaning of the Dragon Body implies. It gets its name from the way a mythological Chinese dragon can bend and seemingly segment and rejoin its body while being completely connected and integrated. (~,J~ '~~~7

Safety Notice: It is seriously recommended that you don't try the Complete Dragon Body without guidance from a master or well-trained and competent Level 2 Bagua Instructor as the risk of harming your internal organs is qUite real.

The Dangers of Overturning Bagua's Dragon Body turning is a powerful tool. It can help you increase the amount of energy that you spiral through your body and use for meditation, health or martial applications.

Like any powerful tool, however, you can handle it poorly and with devastating consequences if you don't follow its operating procedures with great care. Through the Dragon Body method, you can either correctly or incorrectly exert tremendous pressures and pulls on the bones and soft tissues of your legs, hips, spine, neck and arms, as well as on your internal organs and glands. The repercus-



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sions can happen instantaneously and be rather difficult to repair. The most obvious problems involve straining or tearing soft tissues, such as muscles, tendons and ligaments. Because of the tremendous amount of twisting involved in the Dragon Body, ligaments and tendons in particular are vulnerable to injury. These connective soft tissues do no recover as easily as muscles and can take years to heal. Damage to tendons and ligaments in your pelvis, legs or lower spine can be especially debilitating and affect your ability to walk for the rest of your life. Joint damage is also a potential problem of incorrect Dragon Body turning, given the degree that you eventually turn your body, including your ankles, knees, hips, and the vertebra of your spine and neck. Uneven pressures on your joints and incorrect twisting of your joints while moving at high speeds around your circle can lead to severe joint and/or spinal damage. There are other less obvious potential problems, which can result from the pressures exerted by Dragon Body turning on your nervous system, internal organs, glands, spinal cord and brain. Even slightly incorrect Dragon Body turning can strongly impact these systems. For example, low-grade stress, say resulting from a slightly unbalanced twist of your spinal vertebrae, can tense your nervous system. This causes sections of the body to essentially freeze, which in turn can negatively impact your organs and endocrine system. Stress on your organs and glands causes your body to secrete chemicals, such as neurotransmitters that strongly influence and trigger emotions and other fight-or-f1ight biological mechanisms. An occasional stressful event, like a brief twist of the spine, will likely have only minimal effects. However, continuously applied stress on body systems, such as can occur through long Circle Walking practice sessions with excessive Dragon Body turning, can have much greater and long-lasting effects. Dragon Body turning especially can affect your spine, which can be distorted at


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multiple levels, including: • Vertebra can become misaligned. • The pressure, speed and fluidity of the normal flow of cerebrospinal fluid may detrimentally increase or decrease. • Spinal meninges can move, which can trigger emotional energies stored in the body to be released. From a Taoist energetic perspective, suppressed memories can be stored within in the cerebrospinal fluid as well as the meninges. • The rate and strength of signals or chi moving through your spinal cord as well as energy centers and neurological pathways inside the brain can also be negatively influenced and activated.

Overturning Can Release or Aggravate Stored Traumas The Taoist perspective is that energies from physical and emotional traumas that you experience in life can become frozen in any place within your body. The deepest and most powerful of such energies are often lodged in and around your spine, especially the cerebrospinal fluid and spinal cord. Such frozen energies. block and inhibit your body and mind's free functioning. Proper Dragon Body turning within Circle Walking can help you to slowly, smoothly and evenly release these energies. Improper turning can release these energies in such a way as to cause you to react to or relive again versions of or variations on the original traumatic experiences.

Trauma Resurrected During a traumatic event, your system is overstrained and pushed beyond its limits. In such a state, your body often becomes unable to process the energies of



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the event, which then become frozen in your body. Metaphorically, the result can be tremendous inner scars that can and often do color a person's entire life. To avoid activating these energies again in any way, many people develop internal defenses so as not to feel unpleasant sensations or prevent being overwhelmed by truths they can't handle. Taoists of the monastic meditation tradition studied how to overcome these defenses through bagua practice. They found that when someone has a severe trauma, their body will commonly assume two types of postures at the time of that event and just after. The first is a gross, external physical posture where, for example, they might crawl into a fetal position or tilt or bend their neck in a certain distorted way. This can happen when a person is too overwhelmed and not able to assimilate what is happening without completely shutting down. The second is a deeper and more unconscious reconfiguration of the body. During the traumatic event, the deep anatomy of their body locks into a position, which causes the body to mold deep tissues in a specific pattern that remains after the event passes. For example, it could be the way bodily fascia wraps around other tissues, or the specific kind of tension ligaments assume as they interface with internal organs and glands. Within this pattern physical, emotional, mental, psychic and other energies associated with the trauma become denied or frozen in a dormant state. If further trauma occurs later (e.g., from Dragon Body overturning) where strong internal pressures are exerted, suddenly and/or powerfully on these deep tissues, stored emotional and other energies/memories can be jarred loose-to a lesser or greater degree. In turn, a flooding of sensations that can profoundly alter or otherwise influence a person's mental and emotional state may occur. They may not even know the source of the mental or emotional anguish and only experience its strange effects. Some people can have bipolar-like tendencies, and easily become or remain


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semi-depressed or manically hyper. Such swings can be their unconscious attempt to either suppress or process the emotional, physical and/or psychic sensations of memories stored in the body-mind. For people who have had severe traumas, Dragon Body turning must neither be done too early nor too fast, so that the entire body-mind system can smoothly release the hidden, pent-up pressures inside. Otherwise, they can release in a shocking and destabilizing manner.

You don't want to risk retriggering traumas beyond your natural ability to handle them, so the advice of a well-trained, highly competent instructor or master is invaluable regarding how to best guide the release process.

Resolving Past Traumas Smoothly You can easily avoid the problems of releasing stored traumas too quickly by adhering to the seventy percent rule regarding when and how far your waist twists. Observing the seventy percent rule can: • Help you to release blocked chi gradually and in a way you can smoothly assimilate and handle. • In time, allow you to release the blocked chi of the trauma itself, by releasing deeply-held tissues, opening the energetic circuits that closed at the time of the trauma, and allowing the energies of the trauma to clear out of your system. When practicing bagua, you can also use the Inner Dissolving process of the Taoist Water Tradition to help release and resolve such energies. Slow and steady wins the race, so by doing less (and not overstraining) you will ultimately end up doing more with the added bonus of doing it safely and with fewer uncomfortable shocks.



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Learning Progression Each time you work with a new bagua energy posture, you should progressively increase your degree of Dragon Body turning. You can practice these phases while straight-line walking or Circle Walking. It is far easier to judge your degree of turn while straight-line walking, so it is a good idea to practice on a straight line at the beginning of each new phase. Then, when you are stable in your new degree of turning and can feel it in your body-not in your visualizations of or ideas about your body-you can try the increased turn while Walking the Circle.

Phase 1: No Waist Turn 1. At first, walk with your hips, waist, torso and head facing straight ahead or very slightly turned in until you are very comfortable. Do this for a month or more, especially with the Single Palm Change (SPC) Palm Posture. Check with your bagua instructor about your ability to absorb and smoothly integrate the posture into your body movements before moving forward. 2. Walk clockwise and counterclockwise and change direction while holding the posture.

Phase 2: Thirty-degree Turn 1. Hold still for each of the three- or four- or two-part step positions, and gradually and smoothly turn inward thirty degrees toward the center of your circle or away from the straight line you are walking. Turn less than thirty degrees if you feel any strain whatsoever in either body or mind. Note how many degrees you can turn comfortably and let that be the degree of turn that you should try to maintain as you walk. Gradually build up to a thirty-degree turn in two or three sub-phases as needed. • Turn (rotate) the muscles of your legs around your leg bones in a relaxed fashion. © 2011 Bruce Frantzis-AII Rights Reserved.

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• Turn your hips and waist and don't allow your upper body to go farther than your hips do. • Keep your four points aligned. • Your eyes look in the same direction that your hips face.

Safety Notice:

Only turn your head or move your hands toward the center of your circle as far as your hips turn and no more.

2. Begin three- or four-part stepping. As you walk a straight line or around your circle, continuously maintain the thirty-degree (or lesser) inward turn. Note that within each part of your inside and outside steps, different physical pressures are generated from your legs that can push or pull your hips off the thirty-degree inward turn. You must constantly adjust the turning in your legs and hips to maintain the same degree of turn regardless of which position your legs and feet assume. Your hips should not float around at different angles between steps.

Keeping the hips aligned is much more difficult than most practitioners realize, and will require a lot of practice. 3. Practice the same while walking the other direction around the circle or on your straight line. 4. Only move onto the next phase when you can easily and comfortably maintain your thirty-degree turn. You shouldn't feel physical strain anywhere in your body (especially your knees, hips, spine or neck), or emotional or mental strain while you walk. This might take as little as a week for some people in some postures, or many months for those with injuries or other body limitations.



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Phase 3: Forty-Five-degree Turn (Intermediates) 1. Standing in a three or four-part-stepping position, turn inward forty-five degrees toward the center of your circle or sideways, away from the straight line you are walking. Turn less if you feel any strain. Turn your hips and waist and don't allow your upper body to turn farther than your hips. Keep your four points aligned. Your hands remain in the same position relative to your hips and your eyes look in the same direction your hips face. In this case, your hips turn to a forty-five-degree angle from the direction your feet are going around the circle or on your straight line. 2. At this point, as you walk along your line or around the circle, continuously maintain the forty-five-degree inward turn with your three- or four-part step. Note that within each part of your inside and outside steps, different physical pressures are generated from your legs that can push or pull your hips off the forty-five-degree inward turn. You should strive to maintain the same degree of turn regardless of which position your legs and feet assume. 3. Practice the same while walking the other direction along your line or around the circle. 4. Only move on to the next phase when you can easily and comfortably maintain your forty-five-degree turn. You shouldn't have any sense of physical strain anywhere in your body (especially your knees, hips, spine or neck), or emotional or mental strain while you walk.

Phase 4: Sixty-degree Turn (Intermediates) Now follow the same instructions as Phases 2-3 and increase the amount of your waist turning to sixty degrees. If you have very thin legs, you may be able to maintain your four-points and do another phase to turn to seventy degrees. © 2011 Bruce Frantzis-AII Rights Reserved.

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Additional Phases (Intermediates) Further turning requires more sophisticated instruction than any text, illustration or video could offer. Studying with a high-level bagua teacher or master is recommended.

Reversing Direction The precise way in which you change direction, reverse your hand positions and turn toward the circle's center or away from your straight line is not critical. The critical issue is now reversing positions without collapsing your arms and your alignments. As you change direction: 1. Move your arms into an energy posture from Module 4 without: • Sticking out your chest. • Closing your armpits. • Allowing your elbows to shrink toward your torso. • Letting the opening and extension of your posture shrink. • Letting tension come into your body and allowing it to stay. 2. Complete your turn and begin to walk in the opposite direction facing straight ahead without Dragon Body turning. 3. As you walk in the new direction, gradually turn your waist and hips to the degree of turn that you are practicing and maintain that degree of turn. 4. Only after you have practiced sufficiently-so you can stabily remerge from turning with your alignments in tact as in Step 2-do you come out of the turn and go directly into the degree of waist turn you accomplsihed in the previous step 3.



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Common Misalignments and Ways to Overdo It Many people who learn Dragon Body turning, in their eagerness to turn further into the center of your circle, misalign their body in any number of ways. Dragon Body misalignments may damage the body's soft tissues, joints, spine, internal organs and glands. This occurs by overstraining and thus traumatizing those anatomical systems before they have become relaxed, stretched and strengthened sufficiently to withstand the torque of significantly turning the waist. In addition to physical damage, overstraining in Dragon Body turning during walking can potentially release deeply held emotional energies in your system. Releasing such energies can cause you to re-experience often forgotten and suppessed emotional content of traumas from past events in your life. During such releases of emotional energies, your internal organs and glands can secrete substances that will cause your body systems to mimic past traumatic events and thereby cause you to feel similar physical or emotional agitations as at the time of the original trauma. This can easily happen without you having the least idea of why these sensations arise. Unpleasant emotional states can continue for days, weeks or months without your conscious awareness of their origins. For many people, when they overdo it, their central nervous system speeds up too rapidly. If this happens to you, you may get more energy than you can handle. If you (or those around you) notice that you're becoming wired, then you should do less in each bagua practice session. If you develop your Dragon Body in a more gradual manner by adhering to your personal seventy percent rule and thereby avoiding strain, your system will more easily absorb and integrate the pressures Dragon Body turning creates.


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Your Hands Should Not Cross Your Centerline

Correct

Incorrect

Figure 6.1.3 In the incorrect position, the lower hand has crossed the centerline.

Figure 6.1.3 shows a common misalignment that occurs with many bagua energy postures, especially the SPC Palm Posture, where one of your hands crosses over your centerline. This creates excessive pressures in parts of your body ranging from your feet to your knees to your neck and from your digestive tract to your kidneys to your lungs. At more advanced stages of Dragon Body practice, you can sometimes cross the centerline according to certain specifications. In the early stages, however, it is a common misalignment and error.



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Your Hips Should Not Tilt

Correct

Incorrect

Figure 6.1.4 In the incorrect position, the hips tilt unevenly to the left side.

If your hips tilt to one side, it can cause spinal vertebrae to misalign. Titling can further cause your chi to become blocked or flow weakly rather than strongly along your spine.


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Your Back Should Not Arch, Occiput Should Not Close

Correct

Incorrect

Figure 6.1.5 In the incorrect figure, A) The occiput is closed down B) The back arches C) The chest is forward D) The buttocks stick out.

Your occiput, the bone at the back and base of your skull, should remain gently lifted at all times. Your spine should remain erect and extended upward. If you lose either of these alignments, your head will likely tilt back (Figure 6.1.5A) while the back arches (Figure 6.1.5B) and your chest thrusts forward (Figure 6.1.5C) and the buttocks stick out (Figure 6.1.5D).


Your Body Should Not Lean Forward or Collapse

)

,

Correct

Incorrect

Figure 6.1.6 In the incorrect figure the upper back and chest is collapsed and the head is falling forward. Allowing your body to lean forward may cause your upper back and chest to collapse and your head to sink into your shoulders. Besides the obvious postural strain, you can block chi flow running to and from your five extremities (hands, feet and head).

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Section 2 Circle Walking as a Spiritual Practice Circle Walking As a Spiritual Practice This specific practice involves the Taoist concept of ling in Chinese, which translates as "spirit" or "soul:' Although this is appropriately an intermediate practice, beginners are free to try it. Walk the Circle with your waist turned while holding the Single Palm Change (SPC) Upper Body Palm Posture. As you walk, dissolve downward. Initially, use the Outer Dissolving process and progress to using the Inner Dissolving process, if you know how to do it and are aware of all of the relevant safety precautions.

See the author's meditation books and CDs to learn these methods.


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Let go and forget all of your created self-images and remember your real self. The Chinese term for this is wang wo, which can be loosely translated as "forget yourself:' Disregard all ofthe mental and emotional junk, the excess emotional, mental and psychic baggage in your system. Connect with your seventh energy body, the essence that is truly you-the authentic essence beyond your personality, beyond you r hopes and d reams, beyond you r emotions and ever-a risi ng thoug hts. This is one of many original Taoist source methods from which eventually came the famous Zen Koan internal question of: What was your original face before you were born? In the Buddhist tradition, this is also a mechanism for remembering past lives.

Context of This Meditation Most people develop an idea of whom and what they are by identifying with their emotions and developing a story about themselves. Our mind attaches to ideas or concepts based upon past experience-whether beautiful or horrible, to flights of our imaginations or to deeply rooted desires. Often these ideas, the "because, because" of our lives, leave people with little room for internal peace or harmony. Instead, they are left with a sense of drifting and alienation from life. A fundamental Taoist observation of the human condition is that only by experientially and personally finding your own timeless essence-before any thoughts appear in the mind-is it possible for any individual to finally come to inner peace. Somehow, you must find it while simultaneously remaining fully present to this ever-changing and often seemingly difficult and chaotic world. Taoists have also observed that whoever can find their"real self;' either from practicing bagua or any genuine form of meditation, is sure to become spiritually relaxed until they feel completely integrated and whole. Your physical movement, mind and energy will become smooth, expansive and open like the invisible wind



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that moves the clouds or the subtle wave that moves the depths of the ocean. This timeless space will also allow you to best conserve and store your chi as you Walk the Circle. Spiritual walking meditation practices found through the 8agua Mastery Program can be very helpful in this journey, so eventually you can attain inner stillness. From that stillness, you may discover your true essence. This method, as well as the others I teach, may take years to incorporate into the seemingly simple act of Walking the Circle. It is important to not be intimidated by the length of the journey. Instead, recognize the tremendous spiritual depth that becomes possible with each and every step. Appreciate the challenge and the value practicing can give to your life each and every day. Consider that, over time, practicing bagua's spiritual tradition will return much more to you than that which you give.

Only progress to the instructions in Section 3 if you can maintain the alignments taught in Section 7 very well.


Section 3 Moving Chi while Walking the Circle (Intermediates) The movement of energy through the body is a complex subject and only a cursory discussion of the energetic techniques involved in Walking the Circle can be provided in any text. Normally, at higher levels of learning, it is the energetic transmissions directly from a master to a student that determines how, when and which energy techniques are best learned. The master must gauge the timing, appropriateness and specific methods most useful to the quality of the student. So the methods and timing used for opening a particular energy channel are based equally on safety needs and maximum benefit to the student's overall developmental needs.

27 © 2011 Bruce Frantzis-AII Rights Reserved.

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Coordinating Sinking Energy with Stepping A heavenly energy continually rains down and through each of us. Awareness and control of this energy is crucial in developing peng jin ("expansive energy") in the lower body and for rooting your energy and your physical body into the earth. Such rooting is more easily accomplished through Dragon Body turning. As you increase your sensitivity to the descending yang energy from heaven above, you can use your Dragon Body turning to continuously root heaven's yang and your own energy into the ground. Both processes are enhanced if you can sensitize your shins to feel as though they are plowing through a chi form of thick mud-pushing the mud away. This helps to congeal the energy of the earth in the legs and increases peng jin not only in the legs, but over time naturally and equally transfers it into your arms. Each mud-walking step (tan bou in Chinese) should sink your energy into the ground regardless of walking speed or degree of waist turn.

A

B

D

(

Figure 6.2.1 Four-part, Mud Stepping Figure continues on next page.

E

F


To coordinate this sinking energy with stepping: 1. As you prepare to step out (Figure 6.2.1 A), use your intent to encourage the descending yang chi of heaven to permeate your body as it enters and moves down through your body from the crown of your head (bai hui acupuncture point). 2. Encourage the descending yang chi to permeate through all parts of your body-especially your central channel-from the top of your head down through your neck and torso, lower tantien, perineum, legs and feet to the heel and bubbling well points on the bottom of your weighted rear foot. 3. Then, from the bottom of your foot, sink your energy deep into the ground to a depth of up to several feet where your chi body ends and connects with the energy of the earth. 4. As you step forward and footbrake, your chi extends beneath the surface of the earth from the rear foot, until it rises to connect with the front foot. From there, it travels up your front leg, through your hips and down again to your rear foot, thereby completing a chi circle (Figure 6.2.1 A-C, F-H).

G

H

J Figure 6.2.1 con't

Four-part, Mud Stepping Figure continued from previous page.


K

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5. Duringtheweightshiftforward onto the lead foot, the energetic connection between the front and rear feet beneath the earth intensifies-specifically between the rear heel and the ball of the front foot. As you shift your weight from back to front, this should also give you an internal feeling somewhat like the energy release of tearing paper (Figure 6.2.1 C-E, H-J.)

6. During the step-up-to-feet-parallel position (Figure 6.2.1 E-F, J-K), your weig hted forwa rd leg aga i n si n ks energy into the grou nd as you r weig htless rear foot pulls energy up its leg. Chi from your weightless leg then travels up your torso and simultaneously branches off to rise up to and above your head, and out your shoulders to your fingertips and beyond. So at the end of the step, you are ready to again bring down heaven's energy and extend it out to your lead foot on the next step-out-and-footbrake step (Figure 6.2.1 A-C, E-H).

The Lower Tantien and Perineum The vast number of internal chi techniques that can be incorporated while Walking the Circle or practicing tai chi and qigong boil down to a thorough, experiential understanding of the sixteen neigong at the level of each of your eight energy bodies. Neigong component #14 covers the practices of working with the body's lower tantien. Learning to work with the lower tantien-including collecting, storing and emitting energy to and from it-and with it the closely related energy center of the perineum is usually a necessary prelude to eventually opening your central energy channel. The lower tantien is the single most important energetic point for the physical body's health. It is the only energetic center through which every major energy channel responsible for the functions of the body's physicality must connect in the normal cycle of the body's continuous circulation of energy.

© 2011

Bruce Frantzis-AII Rights Reserved.


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Lower Tantien ~----------~-----B

Perineum ~--------~r-------A

Figure 6.2.2 The Lower Tantien and Perineum The perineum is located at the bottom of the pelvis between the anus and genitals. Keeping your perineum open at all times allows the body's rising and descending energies (those of heaven and earth) to smoothly flow since they pass through in both directions. The perineum is also important because it is the energetic gateway between the lower and the middle body. Most people have a natural tendency to pinch it closed as they walk by closing down their sit bones and thereby block the flow of chi between the legs and the torso. After your have stabilized your awareness of the energetic centers of the perineum and lower tantien, you ideally want to be able to move chi during your stepping from the perineum to the lower tantien and vice-versa along the central channel. Over time, this will help open up the central channel of energy to the bai hui acupuncture point in the center of the crown of the head.


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YANG AND YIN ENERGIES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH Some people get confused by the way Taoists look at the complex relationships between the yang and yin energies of heaven and

I

earth, respectively. Yang energy has two distinctly appearing opposite qualities. First,

,

it goes out ad infinitum in an absolutely diffuse and amorphous manner. Metaphorically, the Big Bang and subsequent universal

,

spread epitomizes yang energy. However, this expanding yang energy can also go out to a specific point, where its energy arrives

),

and condenses to create yin. Yang chi of the universe or heaven penetrates everything in the earth from all directions: up, down and sideways. Planet Earth is essentially yin as it is like a condensed womb that births a wide range of manifested life. Yet the Earth's core is molten fire (yang), so the Earth also has very powerful risingin all directions-yang energy. Depending upon which aspect you ~ ;~:.~ ,ocus on, t h e Earth 's energy can b e eith er yin or yang. I:~~;I: '~~:.'/'

Expansive, Rising and Descending Chi In general, the subject of expansive, rising and descending chi is not easy to comprehend. However, as you walk you can potentially, consciously-through ordinary intent or better yet using the Heart-Mind-direct different qualities of yin or yang energy to constantly spiral both up from the earth and down from the sky or heaven. At first, it is best to focus on heaven's energy descending from above and use it to derive your movements. 8agua is predominantly powered by this pure yang energy, which when absorbed into the body, takes on an extremely yin quality and nourishes the yang of the body by dramatically strengthening its yin.



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This is one of the reasons why within Taoism the Single Palm Change is called a celestial (heavenly) art. Try to feel this energy coming down through your body and into the ground as it saturates you. As you become more sensitive and the subtle sensations of it become quite clear, it is possible to channel and direct this energy at will.


Bagua Dragon Body

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