Stability, Great River, Expolorers of Ourselves

Bagua practice is always a series of small corrections—several fine points give much insight.

One of the pieces that really hit home was in the simple –but not so easy—shifting exercise with the 5 circles. In going over the fine points of the shift, Dr. Painter pointed out that the turn with the weight shift occurs in the hip crease so that your arms and torso turn as a unit. This small point of turning at the crease, actually made the shift exercise feel quite different. I felt much more stable.

The image that popped into my head was that my legs and hips were an “A” shaped hoist. I thought of the portable type of hoist that when I was a teenager we used to rent from the tool shop to lift an engine from the hood of a car. I hadn’t thought of that particular tool for years. I thought of late nights at my friends house, and we'd cranking up an old straight 6 out of the car on that hoist.

With this image, my legs and the apex of the hips felt very stable.

Another small correction occurred on working the square stepping. There were two points—one was using the turning thigh to turn the leg. This thought helped me prevent any twisting at the knee during the square step. The second was his direction that as you rotate around the square, the turning point of each step is the leading hip socket. Keeping my focus on that point of turning at the hip joint with each step definitely added a sense of stability with little or now sway and helped keep a feeling of the ridgepole in tact.

One of the most interesting pieces in the body mechanics end of things was the detailed look at the “crossing the great river” principal. I thought I understood this concept, however, I missed it in part. Specifically, it was the point that the emphasis/majority of force shifts at the centerline. So that with the hands in the rolling pearl posture there is a pulling with one active hand and at the center, begins to shift to a pushing with the opposite—now more active—hand. Previously, I was working double weighted for the first half of the turning movement. I noticed that in the past week as I have practiced linear walking and focusing on the great river that this sense has actually transferred to my legs. It actually seems to help/complement the sense of pulling with lead leg and pushing with the back leg. This “enhancement” just happened along with the corrected focus on the great river and noticing the change in active hands.

For me the meditation discussions are always fascinating. This weekend, I was particularly interested in the how the sense of focusing on how in a very real way this is really about self exploration. It is about learning to read and feel very minute bits and pieces in your body, very subtle differences and changes. Being able to relax small parts and let go of tension. Sometimes you can discover tension and not even realize that you are tense on one area or another. It is a remarkable discovery to suddenly realize for example that there are places in you body you are holding tight. In someways it is about control of you own body, but first you have to find those distant places and signals.

So in a sense we are all explorers. But explorers of ourselves--our own mind-body connections in the tiniest details. We are looking into rooms and spaces were we have always dwelled, but have never been able to turn a light on them.