“The Tao Of Tai Chi Chuan – Way To Rejuvenation” by Master Jou Tsung Hwa

One night, as I practiced Tai Chi Chuan, I saw the crescent moon rise. Suddenly, I understood the connection Chang San-Feng made: the back of the hand is yang, the palm is yin. As the hand turns, a crescent of yang appears. We have two hands, so they must match one another like the relationship between the sun and the moon.

From this I was able to recognise that the pa kua, representing eight phases of cyclical change, is the key to the torso method in Tai Chi Chuan.

The master key to the art of Pa Kua is the circular arrangement of the eight trigrams. Practitioners may imitate circular walking, but they must understand the eight trigrams for their art to truely be “Pa Kua”. The master key to Hsing-I is the relation of the five elements in each movement.

The characteristics of Yin’s bagua are its use of the ‘ox-tongue palm’ (niu she zhang); in terms of power, it emphasises Gan (dry), Leng (cold) and Zhi (direct). Externally, it emphasises Leng (cold), Tan (springy), Ying (hard), Cui (crisp), and Kuai (fast). Internally, it emphasises Suo (contracting), Xiao (small), Mian (continuous), Ruan (soft), Qiao (skill). After He entered the door of bagua, he often heard stories and even personally witnessed the feats which the older generation of bagua practitioners were capable of. In his words, “To look at, no-one would think that Cao Zhongsheng was a martial artist: he was thin, bookish, he looked more like a scholar than anything else. His Jingang Rouqiu Zhang (Buddha’s warrior attendant rolls a ball), Shuang Zhuang Zhang (Double crashing palm) and wrist strikes were all fearsome, really explosive. When he practiced Jingang Rouqiu Zhang his hands looked like they were just rolling around, but the moment you touched him you were thrown back. In applying Shuang Zhuang Zhang, he would first pull you in towards him and then shove out with both hands, often sending people tumbling out several yards.