Apparently the guy that is doing the Yin Yang Bagua form is in Beijing and that is where I will go next time and after the Olympics are over I will be going every year or every 2 years but I just can't see the benefit of going to Beijing and training once a year for a week or 2 or once every 2 years without a Sifu here as well.
I will have to think about this one. But I do really like that style of Bagua.
I imagine, much like Xingyiquan, there are stances that need to be trained at the beginning. If so what are those, if you donÂ’t mind me asking?
My 2 bagua forms I did were from a Wushu guy so there was more form and less substance.
I tried to post a reply earlier but my computer had something of a fit and scrubbed everything I wrote. So I'll try again. In terms of basics I think we run into a fundamental difference between bagua and taiji and xingyi. Taiji has its 13 postures, xingyi has San Ti, but bagua tends to look at essential movements rather than stances.
There is a posture that is adopted in all bagua forms - one foot forward, weight distributed 80/20 between back and front feet, upper body turned almost 90 degrees to the side, that side arm extended, the other across the body. It can be called the Gate Guarding Posture. The thing is, though, that you don't really stand is the posture for any length of time, you're always moving, usually for a sequence of eight steps before a change.
I consider three things to be basic to bagua.
The first is becoming comfortable with walking the circle with pace. This may sound pretty straightforward but you have to remember the focus on a central position. It is very easy to lose that focus and then your circle gets kinda wonky.
The second thing is becoming comfortable with changing direction, either on the same circle or onto a different circle. Figure-eight walking is very good for developing this sense even though it involves only a simple palm change.
The third thing would be mud-walking. The degree to which mud-walking is applied varies with each style, and, apparently, each practitioner. The masters is the videos above didn't do it at all. My own style uses a very truncated form. The thing is, though, it is good for developing good balance while travelling around in a circle.
I guess, like all nie jia, it comes down to balance and connection to the ground. Rather than with strong, balanced postures, bagua does this with balanced motion.
Now that's very interesting (and might explain why I encontered so many problems with the founders name, which I think now was Tian Hou Jie). I did find this, however:
Tian Hou-Jie (Tian Ruhong) was a native of Shandong Province but moved to Hebei province in the late Ming Dynasty. Once while on tour in Sichuan Province, Tian saw some criminal activity and tried to exact justice. Two Daoist priests (Pi Yun and Jing Yun) rescued him when he was having problems and from that point on he acknowledge them as his wushu tutors and followed them for the next 12 years.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty Tian returned home but resented the autocracy of the local authorities and left again. He took a youngster named Tian Xuan with him and taught him his style of Yin Yang Bagua Zhang. Years later Tian Xuan returned to his home fillage in Shandong Province and taught the style to other Tian family members. Until recently the style was only taught in this village to these family members. - The Power Palms of BaGua Zhang 2002
This would suggest that the style was extant before Dong Haichuan learnt his style from Dong Meng Lin, so maybe the story of Li Zhen Qing is not so far from the truth.
Is it likely that Tian Hui changed his name when he became the 'inheritor' of the Tian (Yin Yang) style? It is supposedly a family style afterall.
No Cheng style or Yin Style clips!!!!! :angry: :uhyeah: 
