Ba Gua Training Tips #4: Change!

Well, it’s been a long time since I was able and motivated to do one of these posts. Newborn babies and all the other vagaries of life have kept me, shall we say, distracted. But, things are starting to settle in around here, and as I’m going to be undertaking a much larger writing project in the new year I suppose I should get back in the practice of actually doing some. So, without further ado, #4 in our series of basic Ba Gua concepts:
Change!

Change

Being a pretty major concept for an art based on change, I bet this is going to be a huge post! Well, not so much. You can come at the concept of change from many angles in this system, but here my meaning is very direct. Based on the previous posts in this series, we will look at change in the sense of Changing Direction.

As we saw in previous Ba Gua training tips, which mostly concerned walking, this seems pretty straight forward on the surface. But, of course, it’s a little more complicated than that. Just as Ba Gua has special rules for walking, changing direction must adhere to certain principles to qualify as Ba Gua as well. Sometimes new students get frustrated learning simple changes and say, "I can’t do it!" I have to remind them that everyone can turn around, they just have to follow a few simple rules to do it well. So, let’s take a quick look at the specifics.

Inside or outside?

The first thing you need to know is which way to turn. If you’re just practicing on the circle, then you’ll have to turn your back to either the outside or the inside (of the circle you are walking around) in order to change direction. If you’re engaged with an opponent you’ll have to do the same thing. I give a brief explanation of the concept of inside vs. outside in the previous Ba Gua tip, so let’s look at the concept a little deeper.

If your left hand is held in the center as you walk around a circle, that is your inside hand. If you change direction on that circle your right becomes the inside hand. If you turn again, you are back where you started, orientation wise. So far, so good.

This same logic applies if you’re engaging an opponent with the left and switch to the right. In Gao Ba Gua we have a fundamental tactical turn for each of these, known as an Inside and an Outside Single Palm Change (SPC). Here are the basic components of each.

Inside SPC

Walking the circle as described above, if you wished to change from a left inside to a right inside position (assuming your right foot is forward) you would weight the inside foot (in this case the left) and “toe in” the outside (right) foot. This would place the outside foot at a right angle to the inside foot, crossing the plane of the circle, and bring the torso around to face the center point of the circle. This creates a tension between the two legs that has to be released so the toed in foot (the former outside) takes the weight and becomes the inside as the other leg moves out and the torso completes its turn to finish the change. There are actually three versions of this change to get back to the circling position, all with different tactical implications, but we don’t need to go into that now. The important thing is that you are turning into the center or opponent.

Outside SPC

Again, walking the circle as above with your right foot forward, and wishing to swap from the left to the right, you would need to weight the outside foot (in this case the right) and toe in the inside (left) foot. This produces the same “spring-loaded” toed in position as in the previous example, except this time the back is briefly oriented to the center of the circle and the face is turned away from the center. The body and legs complete the turn as before and the orientation on the circle is reversed.

This is very simple, but also a very important concept. In fact every change in Ba Gua, all of the mother palms, no matter how complex they may appear, are variations of one of these two ways of turning. Absorbing this concept of Inside vs Outside is crucial to understanding Ba Gua as a functional martial art.

Common Mistakes

I encourage all of our students to pay very close attention to the simple acts of walking and turning. They are bread and butter in Gao Ba Gua and the bedrock that the rest of the system is built upon.

Once one has gained some skill in the various mutations of the humble inside and outside Single Palm Change, one will begin to feel the sensation of ‘swimming through the crowd’. Remember, Ba Gua is a bodyguard’s art, and the ability to move and change is its most vital skill. The simple principles listed in the first four parts of this series are the keys to opening the door to the profundity and utility of this wonderful art.