Below is a post I wrote about an interview with Bruce Kumar Frantzis that was posted in the Taoist Water Tradition Yahoo group. If his material interests you, then I suggest that you subscribe to this list. I put my reaction to the article here because it’s applicable to learning neigong in general, but especially the bagua variety. Here it is:
My first reaction to the article was that it was fairly fluffy. Looking at the date, it was obviously supposed to be an advertisement for the book Relaxing into Your Being when it came out. So the article has little useful info because it was supposed to point to the book.
My second reaction was that the factual information isn’t solid either. Statements like “taoist circle walking meditation is 4,000 years old because Bai Hua said so” don’t help anyone. IMO Kumar is best when he just talks from experience instead of making factual statements.
Acting as if “the taoists in China” all do his 16 part neigong method doesn’t help either. Obviously there are many sects, groups, and individual teachers, all who have their own methods and ways of categorizing the material. It’s in comparing those different ways that students can gain some insight into their own practices.
As to the question of how, exactly, to do baguazhang meditation, Kumar doesn’t give much of anything away, even in his books. Would it have killed him to have said that in the Cheng lineages, the bamuzhang (8 mother palms) are a significant piece of the puzzle?
The 8 mother palms are bagua neigong. They are unique in that they blend stillness practices with moving practices at the same time. He mentioned some taoists using seated meditation as stillness practice and then circle walking as moving practice. The bamuzhang take it a step further by doing both at the same time. You hold postures with the upper body and move the lower body.
The Yin-fu system has a whole elaborate practice of seated meditations and moving practices. I know little about what they do, but Andrew Nugent-Head has written numerous books and authored countless DVDs on the subject. I dare say his material would be a better place to look for info on BGZ meditation.
Just my opinion, so take it for what it’s worth. Kumar’s material is good when he sticks to his experiences in Asia and his opinions on things. When it comes to “how to” stuff, it’s obvious that he’s not going to give anything away except in seminars.
The thing is, his system seems proprietary to him only. No one else seems to do it, so there is zero info on his system outside of him. Students can’t do research on their own, and that’s not good IMO.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Jose de Freitas // Oct 22, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I pretty much concur with you on BKZ stuff. I did find the two meditation books quite good though (although they’re on the seated meditation stuff, no BGZ).
I would say, though, that the 16-Part neigong stuff is just his way of categorizing the info, and he does sort of say that in his book on the Opening the Energy gates. Basically, he says “any good neigong practice will have these 16 elements” but they don’t have to come exactly on that order or be categorized exactly like that. Look at the list and you’ll see that most good qigong sets include at least a good 12-14 parts, and the rest may be “secrete” or higher level stuff to develop through sitting meditation. And some of the parts come in one single package, that is, one exercise may include a bunch of different parts. Etc. So I think that he is just saying that in his opinion these 16 parts are the key to neigong, and in one way or another all good neigong practices will have them.
2 Jess O'Brien // Oct 25, 2007 at 1:07 am
Hi y’all, I replied to this on the Taoist Water Tradition List, so I won’t get back into it. Suffice to say, I liked the article more than Dave did, although it certainly could have been more detailed.
I just wanted to throw in that I agree with Jose’s statement on the 16 Nei Gung. The way Bruce has explained it, the 16 Nei Gung are components that he feels are in all of the different chi gung and nei gung work out there. They are his terms for the different elements that are shared by all the internal arts of China, martial and otherwise. He doesn’t claim to own them, and in the interview in my book he explicitly says that they are a cultural heritage that belongs to the world at large.
I do think that the 16 components he describes are pretty useful and cool. There may be more, may be less, who knows. I like ‘em though.
Jose, one other thing, the BKF meditation books do indeed have martial arts connections.
The first “Relaxing Into Your Being” has instructions for adding Taoist meditation into the first move of Tai Chi, “Opening”.
The second, “Great Stillness” has instructions for adding Taoist meditation into Circle Walking taken from Ba Gua. There are complete and extremely detailed instructions for his “four part step” which is the foundation of his Ba Gua system. It’s quite nice stuff actually, it helps get your attention and Yi (and chi!??!) into your legs and feet. But it takes a lot of concentration. In doing it I’ve noticed how inflexible and stiff all the muscles and tendons in my legs are, compared to my upper body.
Sincerely,
Jess O
3 Jose de Freitas // Oct 25, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Hey Jess,
That’s how I really interpreted BKF’s 16 Part description, as something of a list you hold on your hand to check or go over some guy’s qigong teachings. You look at the exercises and meditations that a certain lineage teaches, and you go: “Controling the parallel meridians to the spine… check! Bending the body along the yin and yang channels… check!” Etc. It will show you how comprehensive a system is. Of course, like all such lists it runs a risk of reification (and I do think BKF should have addressed this had on, not enough caveats are given) where you confuse the items in the list for “things”, missing the point that there is a continuum, that the process may not be as linear as it looks, that different emphasis will “hide” some components inside other, and so on. But I also fivd a pretty useful guid on “how to talk to a qigong teacher”, where their understanding of the components will also reflect their system’s comprehensiveness.
Like you, I think his 16 part concept is useful and fun to use. Probably not the end all be all, but still good to have handy.
I have the meditation books, but it’s been a few years since I last looked at them. But my teacher also teaches meditative processes with some of the Taiji and bagua and XY postures/motions. His teaching is sometimes hampered by his poor portuguese, but I’ve figured some things. He also basically teaches the opening moves of Taiji as a complete (sort of) qigong system - he includes the stepping to the side common in the more modern styles, standing in a few intermediate postures and the Opening move of Taiji (repeated a few times).
There’s a Water Tradition List? Where?
Best and thanks,
José
4 Dave Chesser // Oct 25, 2007 at 6:23 pm
“There’s a Water Tradition List? Where?”
The link is in the first line of the post.
5 Jose de Freitas // Oct 26, 2007 at 9:57 pm
OK, thanks. Missed that.
6 Buddy // Oct 30, 2007 at 9:14 pm
To be honest, I think the whole “16 part” thing is pretty arbitrary. It’s all in how you count things up. I’m stuck here on the east coast where the totality of the system seems to have gotten lost. IMO it’s not that difficult if you what goes where.
7 Kent Howard // Oct 31, 2007 at 1:47 pm
There is a well documented tradition of walking meditation among such sects as the Quan Zhen Daoists (Complete Reality) and others. The old Pa Kua Chang Journal had a good (and historically accurate) article on the origins of walking meditation as it relates to Ba Gua Zhang. Of course the Chinese like to claim ancient origins for their arts and traditions as a way of legitimizing them. Western adherents, like BKF and others, have carried such customs as pre-dating and the exclusivity of source material into a modern era of scholarship which should, ideally, be more circumspect.
8 Buddy // Oct 31, 2007 at 8:51 pm
It’s funny because we do things oppositely here. Bill Gates doesn’t claim Windows was developed by Ben Franklin.
I think about 2/3s of K’s stuff comes from Zhang Yijung(sp?) and Hwang Xiyi (sp?)
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