Very General Overview:
The first two days (Thursday, Friday) focus on foundational training and the last two days (Saturday, Sunday) focus on turning, forms, and applications. Both dadao (big saber) and shuai jiao (fast wrestling) practice are scheduled during the last two days. The seminar is open, requiring no previous experience in Yin Style Baguazhang, although having some background at least in the martial arts or fitness would be helpful. Interested parties can schedule to attend full days or half days (save the last half-day) individually or attend the entire seminar (recommended in all cases where it is possible). Contact us for details (see below for a link to contact information).
Thursday, September 24, 8:00a-12:00p
The morning session of this foundational day focuses on the Sweeping Palm of the Lion System. First is standing strengthening practice in the Lion representational posture and the sweeping palm posture. Then the remainder of the morning is devoted to practicing sweeping strikes and basic striking combinations. If you've never done any Yin Style Baguazhang and are interested and able to come to a Thursday morning session, this is the ideal place to start.
Thursday, September 24, 1:30p-6:00p
The afternoon session of this foundational day focuses on the Cutting Palm of the Lion System. The afternoon will proceed like the morning with "cutting" replacing "sweeping" for the first three and a half hours of this 270-minute session. Cutting is another excellent place for beginners to find something, so if you can't make a Thursday morning session but can make it in the afternoon, this is good for you. The afternoon session finishes with a new-to-essentially-everyone session in some of the basic kicks of Yin Style Baguazhang, lasting for one hour. The time in between the sessions, obviously, is a break for rest and lunch.
Friday, September 25
This foundational day follows the same framework as the previous day, focusing on the Chopping Palm of the Lion System and the Hooking Palm of the Lion System in the morning and afternoon respectively. The times are the same as Thursday's times for both sessions. These practices, while different from the material on Thursday, are also excellent foundational material, and in some ways they echo the themes of the material from Thursday. Thus, if you cannot make a Thursday session but can make a Friday session, this day would still be great for beginners to come to. The day will wrap up with another hour-long session of studying the kicks of Yin Style Bagua, sampling a few others from the system.
This is a photo from one of the foundational days in the recent London Intensive in which He Jinbao directs myself and another noteworthy practitioner in some fundamental practices. Applications such as these will be largely or entirely reserved for the final day of our seminar. Click on the image to see it slightly larger.Saturday, September 26, Morning
The times are the same as for the previous days, but the focus on Saturday is different. The morning session starts off with circle-turning practice in the representational posture of the Lion System and then studies one of the forms from that system: Enfolding Cutting. Drilling the form and strikes from the form, likely with combinations included, is on the menu. If you're a beginner and interested in coming to this session, it may be in your best interest to contact one of us as soon as possible for a quick primer in this seven-movement form.
Saturday, September 26, Afternoon
This day's afternoon session focuses on another of the forms of the Lion System: Windmill Cutting. Again, you might want a primer on the seven-movement form if you can come to this session. The last hour of this day's session will be on basic drills with the bagua big saber (dadao)
Sunday, September 27, Morning
The morning session on Sunday, with the same times as previously, is similar to that on Saturday morning: circle turning training and a Lion System form -- Moving with the Force Seizing. Again, you might want a primer on the seven-movement form if you can come to this session. The last hour of this session will be the beginning of a structured, long applications session. We will hold this session at a different location from the others to have access to mats.
Sunday, September 27, Afteroon
The afternoon session on Sunday is for applications practice, reviewing and learning to apply many of the techniques studied in the previous days' sessions. This is the sole session that carries a full prerequisite that you've attended something previous to it in order to attend. The session will be structured around the material we covered throughout the seminar and last for three and a half hours, the last hour of the last day being reserved for some fun tussling in shuai jiao, which is a bit like judo but faster and with a different philosophy. The goal here is less to develop skill in shuai jiao and more to get some practice with that kind of exercise and feeling the weight of a resisting opponent. We will still be in the matted environment for this session.
This photo is of myself and yet another noteworthy practitioner practicing applications. In this scene, I am taking him down with a basic cutting palm strike. Click on the image to see it slightly larger.If you think you can or want to come and you haven't made that explicit to our tour organizer, please follow this link to his contact information and contact him as soon as possible.
2 comments:
So Jim . . . how was the seminar? I was in Portland this past weekend and heard very positive experiences from some of the folks there about HJB's seminar the previous weekend.
The seminar was awesome, Thomas, if a little small on the attendance. HJB was as fine as ever in terms of quality and depth of instruction, and according to how a good many of my muscles feel, the workout was appropriately solid as well. Before long I'll post about the seminar and some ideas for new posts I got while training.
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