When I did xingyi a lot I also had a very forward feeling of intent and I felt at the time could roll over most anything that stood in my way. But my taiji teacher showed me that always having the yi (intent) pull you forward makes you pretty vulnerable to arts like taiji that value yielding. By yielding the xingyi intent could be swallowed whole and used against him if the xingyi guy isn't careful.
That feeling I get is not pulling me forward, just pulling me into motion. You may have heard the phrase, the mind moves, the body follows. That's basically LHBF intent but we are a bit more anal on that point. For example, the mistake we really go after is people looking at their hands, or their arms, or their feet, or the ground in front of them when they're doing the form. Because your mind is no longer leading, but following your body.
Let's say you want to pull someone down. What you try to visualise in your mind is first an expansion outwards, then a quick implosion. In my LHBF practice, the body's own trained muscle memory follows by itself. I can't do it regularly, but that's the kind of effect you want. When you look forward and not at your body parts, your external connections are learned by your muscles and you get a mental image of your body shape and you are well on your way of developing intent.
It seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that LHBF may blend the forward energy and intent of xingyi with the knowledge (possibly from taiji?) that only using such intent can be used against you. Therefore LHBF opens up a wider range of options.
I mentioned vertical circles earlier. In LHBF, the you draw the vertical circle by first going up, then forward, the down, then back to yourself. The size of this circle varies. And sometimes you start from the bottom of that circle. Sometimes you step (Xingyi style) when you do the push up and forward and sometimes when you do the pull down and towards yourself.
Whichever way you do it, you must do the complete circle. So the forward energy and intent is only half of the circle. And I know that this may have arose from the my use of the word "pull".
I was always under the impression that this is why it was considered an amalgam of the three arts and yet slightly superior to those individually. It seems to be an attempt to make up for the deficiencies that each of those three arts have individually while saying something possibly unique in it's own way.
I tend to think that it's considered an amalgam from how it looks.
My teacher, when he lived in Hong Kong, would practice in Victoria Park everyday. And he's been approached by people saying that it looks like Taiji, but then it also looks like Xingyi, but then etc etc.
From my discussions with Xue Sheng, it seems you can understand quite a lot about LHBF even if you only know a bit of Bagua and a good deal of Xingyi, so I don't think LHBF has a lot of uniqueness.
The thing with LHBF, and all learning, is that you should be thinking about it even if you're not in class time. And you should be getting a feel of things besides your main art. Right now, I'm learning Taiji at the place I work and adding to my understanding of LHBF. And I learn to understand the Taiji form from a LHBF perspective. If you take responsibility for your learning and your intiative to learn on your own, then any art can appear to have uniqueness because they're thinking further ahead of others.
Not in mechanics, nor intent. One is a fighter. One a performer. <<shrug>>
