Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Temple >

Chi Kung: Zhan Zhuang

22:15 / 15.07.04

I've just started learning Zhan Zhuang stlye Chi Kung and I'm trying to find the Chinese names of the stances, the individual names for the eight exercises of Ba Daun Jin, and all their meanings.

1st Position - Wu Chi
2nd Position - Holding the Balloon
3rd Position - Holding your Belly
4th Position - Standing in the Stream
5th Position - Holding the Balloon in Front of your Face
6th Position - Weight on One Leg
7th Position - Holding the Ball on One Side
8th Position - Extending One Foot Forward
9th Position - Rising Up on One Leg

Ba Duan Jin - Eight Strands of Brocade - Eight Fine Exercises

Anyone happen to have any of this written down on a piece of paper next to their monitor?

19:08 / 16.07.04

I know in one of the other martial arts thread on here I link to Kung Fu Magazine's website. Their forum is your best bet.

Hunting for Chinese names in pinyin is, well, like shooting fish in a barrel, if the barrel is going over Niagra Falls and you're balanced on a unicycle on a tightrope overhead.

Chi Kung can also be qi gong, and "zhuang" could *possibly* also be spelled "ch'ueng" or "zhwang" or something. I don't really know all the Romanization forms, I just know that they're inconsistent and contradictory.

Actually, you could try finding the right characters for that qi gong style on zhongwen.com and then searching for those characters on the web. I have no idea if that would work. Does Google recognize Chinese?

22:14 / 16.07.04

Google something like 'Chinese to English translator', or 'online Chinese to English'.

I've used one before but what you sometimes find is that you get so many different meanings for the word(s) you type that you sometimes have to guess.

Unconditional Love

22:49 / 16.07.04

zhan zhuang links books and web links quite a few.

11:38 / 17.07.04

Hunting for Chinese names in pinyin is, well, like shooting fish in a barrel, if the barrel is going over Niagra Falls and you're balanced on a unicycle on a tightrope overhead.

Thats what I thought. So I was hoping to get lucky. Like shooting the fish while doing a backflip off the unicycle.

19:59 / 19.07.04

Wolfangel's link is totally ACES.

Judging from that ideogram, I think this is the right "zhuang" (means "wood" or "plant," and is the name of "Zhuang-ze" or "Chuang Tzu"). Finding the right "zhan" is trickier -- this (means "verbose" or a surname) looks the closest, and is part of the word for "looking into the distance," but it's not the same ideogram, really.

But, alas, no clues for the names of the positions, except for "wu ji" or resting stance. (Probably wu (military) ji (foundation), but I really don't know -- could be "five (elements) muscle" too.)

20:46 / 19.07.04

Wow that's wierd, there's so many different ways of using the words. I've got a Shaolin book that has Wuji as Martial Techniques.

Apparently the language is supposed to be a bit of a nightmare to translate because English and Chinese are so different. I was talking to someone from Singapore i think it was, a while back and he was saying that Chinese words are like ideas and that the usage is very different from our language because when these symbols/ideas are combined they can represent a lot of different things.

I wouldn't be suprised if you asked a few Chinese people and they gave you different answers every time. It's a lot looser and more fluid than our language i think.

09:51 / 20.07.04

Geoff and Phyllis Pike have a couple of great books on the Eight Precious Pieces of Brocade exercises.

20:21 / 27.07.04

I've just got a new book: Chi Kung, The Way of Power, by Master Lam Kam Chuen. May explain somethings, right now though I'm still reading The Way of Energy.

Unconditional Love

20:28 / 28.07.04

the wu ji in my school means emptiness its the starting posture in tai chi (long yang form) everything starts from nothing and returns to nothing.philosophical but also monty python. also the short yang form starts this way but i am not so sure about sun and the wu styles nor chen as i have not got to them yet. we also practice short form on the left which is worth while if you dont already do it.

Unconditional Love

20:37 / 28.07.04

http://users.bestweb.net/~jond4u/Remember_Wu-Ji.html

try this article as well

23:27 / 28.07.04

try here

or here . . .

09:30 / 31.12.05

So.....what's the point in all of these Chi-Kung books when time and time again you come across warnings not to attempt learning it unless you have the supervision of a trained person?

I'm just wondering because it's bugging me. Apparently if you try learning Chi-Kung from books or DVD's etc, you can really screw yourself up.

I found a site on the net that said you could learn the set it showed you because it was the first level of what someone had learned (Grand Master Tian) but the second level and onwards were more advanced and only got taught to you by a teacher I think. So is the stuff in these books equivalent in some way? Maybe they just show you the simpler stuff......I'd still be wary of trying any of it out without a teacher though.

16:16 / 03.01.06

I'd still be wary of trying any of it out without a teacher though.

Not to sound harsh, but don't be such a pussy. Most of the time with things like this there are feelings attached to certain postures and motions. It's these feelings that tell you if you are doing the right thing. Let your body be your teacher, and if you get absolutely stuck somewhere then stop what you're doing and ask someone with more experience than you. "Damnit, Smithers, this isn't rocket science. It's brain surgery!"

Unconditional Love

16:33 / 03.01.06

I had a very good teacher for 3 months before christmas, i was taught eight pieces, eight animals, and standing like a tree, and other exercises, some similar to tai chi warm ups, some similar to warm ups for bagua and hsing yi, no surprize really since they all contain elements of each other.

But what was surprising to me at least was the relationship between chi gung and kung fu, the eight animals especially cast new light on kung fu for me, especially snake and crane chi gung in relation to wing chun, the basic chi gung of these animal forms contains the basics of wing chun (imo), since i will be starting wing chun again soon i will try to see how to implement snake and crane chi gung and see how it effects my performance of the forms.

I have also been considering wing chun in relation to buddhism, how everthing is centred in wing chun alot of the movements come to the middle, perhaps emphasising the middle way in relation to the body, again with the dantien emphasises the middle, the centre of being as the point of origination and breath.

I think to a point you can do all the physical arts without a teacher, but i would postulate that at a point to make the physical movements more than exercise/fighting skills a teacher or an understanding of the underlying philosophies becomes nessecary. A teacher who can teach the internal (spiritual) nature of the movements and transmit that to a student.

19:26 / 03.01.06

I studyed Wing Chun for 4 years and i was fortunate to train under James Sinclairs for some of that time. The principles of the system are Taoist (centre line theory , economy of motion and simultanous attack and defense). The art itself matchs the concepts of Taoist philospy closer then Buddist.

19:38 / 03.01.06

Try this site:

www.caiwenyu.com.br

It's not Qi Gong, it's Bagua Zhang, another form of internal kung fu, and related stuff. it's the one I practice down here in Brazil for four years already. The english version of the site was translated from portuguese by yours truly ( of which I am very proud) and there's quite a lot to read. Take a look and tell me what you think of it...

17:05 / 04.01.06

Thanks for the link! That site is cool and has some good info on it, I'll remember to go back to it and have another read. It's great to read that you're practising Baguazhang aswell, that's the one type of martial art that I'd love to practise more than any other, but the nearest class I know of is about 40 miles away so I'll have to forget about it for the time being.

I've just found out about a Taijiquan class not far from here though, so I'll be joining that shortly hopefully, and if I'm lucky the person running the class might know some of it himself. He'll at least know a good bit about Chi-Kung anyway I suppose, so I won't have to worry too much about book learning, which is obviously not enough to grasp the art fully.

18:13 / 05.01.06

Real Bagua Zhang is hard to find: millions practice it, but only a handful practice it correctly. My sifu also says most people that practice Taijiquan don't really understand the forms, they just imitate them like parrots imitate human speech, so be watchful...

18:27 / 05.01.06

The foot-work on Bagua Zhang is essential. It has to look like the person is "sliding" about a inch from the ground, like the soil was slippery. That's how you tell the guy knows what he's doing. if he's bounciong up an down and lifting his leg and pointing the tip og his feet up, and mixing with shaolin acrobatics and whatnot, don't even bother (he probably will). I don't want to seem arrogant or something, but this is really important.