Baguazhang, also known as Bagua, is, along with tai chi chuan and Xingyiquan (Hsing-I) one of the three major “internal”, ie. Neijia Chinese martial arts. Baguazhang literally means “eight trigram palm” which refers to the trigrams of the I Ching, one of the canons of Taoism. The creation of Bagua as a formalized martial art is attributed to Dong Haichuan in the early 19th century. It is thought, by many, that he synthesized several pre-existing martial arts taught and practiced in the region in which he lived, combining them with Taoist circle walking. Erle Montaigue has called Baguazhang (also known as Bagua) as the “hidden jewel” in his whole fighting system. He comments that it is a complete martial art and a true self-defence art, as well as a healing art. The beauty of Bagua, according to Erle is that “fighting and self defence is not logical, so it is impossible to take a logical fighting art and use it for self defence. Fighting happens illogically and so we must have a fighting art that takes this into consideration. If for instance we learn how to block this attack and then use a kick to counter etc., this is logical and will never work in the street because you are trying to place a logical way of fighting into an illogical situation where things are changing every second. And logical ways of fighting require that we think about it first as the body has not learnt sub-conscious or reflex movement. You need a martial system that will teach your body to move by itself in any situation without conscious thought. And Bagua gives us exactly that.” Josephine Anderson is one of a very small number of people in Ontario who teaches any form of Bagua at all and one of only two people in Ottawa who teaches Erle Montaigue’s system of Bagua. She teaches both the Bagua linear fighting form and the Bagua circle walking as well as the “8 animal forms of Bagua”, which include the Bagua “Qi Shaking Methods” and the full animal forms, and Bagua fa-jing methods. For more information on Bagua in general and the Erle Montaigue system of Bagua that is taught at the Double Dragon Tai Chi Studio, you can go to http://www.bagua.org.uk/ |