by Chris McKinley on Sun Sep 12, 2010 8:27 pm
I made a comment about the Swimming Dragon material in regard to its compatibility to a free-form, principles-based approach to a fighting method compared to the more classic "xing" of most of the Baguazhang material in a post to Shooter on the Why didn't Bagua get Taiji-fied thread. I waited to chime in on this thread just to see what everybody else's take on the material was. So far, the closest thing I've seen written to what I was taught of the material is the following by D_Glenn:
"The Cheng Tinghua school of Bagua called itself the 'Youshen Longxing Baguazhang' (swimming body dragon shape bagua) and in this case everything they do falls under the category 'swimming dragon'. (so if you're asking if this style is or can be a stand-alone system? Yes definitely. All you need is it's 8 methods (ba neng) of push, lift, carry, lead, move, capture, chop, and entering (tui, tou, dai, ling, ban, kou, pi, and jin).)
Some branches of that line now have a specific form which they call 'swimming body' of which there are numerous varieties."
It does indeed depend upon which branch one is considering as to how distinct the material is. Many lines don't even have a separate body of material under this moniker and, from what I've seen, not even all Cheng and Cheng sub-branches do. However, the Swimming Dragon material I'm referring to is not only a separate set of movements, its mechanics are also distinctly different than the classical material.
While it might be accurately said that all of a practitioner's movement in the Cheng lines especially ought to have a certain expressive quality that one might refer to as being like a swimming dragon, it isn't the same thing as referring to the separate material set itself. In deeper practices of Taoist and Vedic medicine, it is known that not only is there a 'mother' dantien, the one being referred to in almost all such discussions on RSF, but there are actually many dantiens throughout the body. For instance, every single joint in the body is considered a dantien itself. Movement in the mechanics of classical Bagua originates with mother dantien just as we are all used to. However, movement in the Swimming Dragon material does not, necessarily. In the SD material, movement can originate from any dantien, so long as it connects to the mother at some point. The more peripheral the dantien which originates the movement, the 'weaker' it's power is said to be. However, it is also conversely believed to be freer and gives the practitioner far more maneuverability than the more classical "all as one" model. Such movement can also be considerably faster, from a biomechanical perspective.
IOW, it's a bit of a tradeoff. Faster response and higher maneuverability in trade for stronger connection and structure, and greater overall power generation. The SD material is described as more Yang.....more separate, more fiery, more distinct.....while the classical mechanics are relatively more Yin....more connected, more inclusive, more of a whole. This is why, IMO, the highest combat potential in the art is that which blends the two sets of mechanics together seamlessly. Not an easy task, I can assure from personal experience.
In some ways, especially at first, the SD mechanics seem to be at odds, even nearly opposite, that which is taught in classical neijia structure and mechanics. I suppose that's even fair enough to say. Eventually, really developing the ability to do both provides a deeper functional understanding of each, IMO and IME. I probably wouldn't recommend trying to learn both concurrently as I could imagine it might only serve to confuse the student's somatic learning.
The movement sets in the SD I was taught are distinct and very short compared to the patterns of pre-heaven classical Bagua. More like shorter Gao-style hou tien (just my impression) and very much like the tien gan exercises. In fact, the tien gan also contain a Swimming Dragon version of their expression which is notably different than what they look like with classical mechanics. Whether the same is true of the hou tien sets or not I cannot say and was not taught, though in keeping with what is said of the SD mechanics in general, I would think that the idea is that all of Baguazhang's material can be expressed that way if one so chooses. Just my suspicion on that, though....I would have to defer to Luo or one of his senior students to answer that definitively.
Like all Baguazhang, the movements exhibit certain principle traits, and some lend themselves more obviously to certain applications than others, but the mechanics are very much worth exploring, especially for someone wanting to develop a more free-form rou shou feel to their combative ability with the art.
Can an entire fighting method be trained from just those sets? I suppose so, yeah....though you'd definitely be missing out on a lot of what makes classical Bagua so great....the structure, the connection, the whole-body coils, etc. Certainly, one could far more easily develop combative ability much faster with just the SD sets than nearly anything in classical Bagua, but it would be an incomplete shortcut ultimately, IMO.
