Gao Bagua Staff Complete 8 movements

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Take the day with you

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My father used to tell me stories about his masters and his master's masters. I remember one about his master Choi, who used to go into the mountains in Korea to train. Inside of a cave he would do a ridiculous work out, thousands of punches and kicks. He mentioned to my dad that he used to punch the wall hundreds of times a day for several years. After years had passed he said that the wall had not changed much aside from the small, smooth groove. But now every time that he hit someone with that punch, they would also feel the wall of the the cave. I don't recommend punching walls for training these days but there is more to the story than that. Every day that you are able to get up and train, you take a part of the day into your technique. The days I train and it's freezing cold I add the frost to my footwork. The days I train in the intense heat I add intensity to my lungs. The days I train in the blinding rain I add clarity to my attack. The days I train when I have no ...
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Freedom of Restriction

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Self reflection is not only important in terms of making progress in your training, it's also beneficial to help you gauge direction by separating your own needs from the "needs" force fed to you by society. Bruce Lee often mentioned that we must use our art to honestly express ourselves, but most people have such a diluted understanding of self that this concept is drowned in many forms of false identity.  How do you determine the bad habits in your fighting style from your own personal concepts of combat? Should you accept yourself even though you are overweight? Or should you become the more physical fit version of your self to be true? As early as birth, you are trained to understand a self that may or may not be you. Are you an American? Then you must speak a certain language, be opposed to certain ideas and be supportive of your countries cause. If there is a plane crash somewhere in the world, it doesn't concern you so much because it's not related to ...
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Commitment

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The hardest part of training Bagua is the amount of information and movements that must be practiced and memorized until they are effective. If I spend everyday thinking about all 8000 movements, weapons, power development and new research that needs to be done it can begin to stress me out a bit. Mapping out a plan with thousands of tiny pieces seems like an insurmountable task. On the other hand no matter how complex something may seem, it is at the same time very simple. Just the same as love, sometimes looking at things through a microscope can actually take you out of focus. In the end Bagua is just a combination of circles. Making a circle around your opponent, a circle with in your hands and your body, a circle with your qi . Of course a circle has 360 degrees, angles, etc. But what is the point of making things more complex than what they actually are? My master's father once said, " If you practice walking your circle making a thousand revolutions a day, for a thous...
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