He Jinbao and Yin Style Baguazhang International in Knoxville next week!!!

By this time next week, some of the toughest men and (hopefully) women in Knoxville will be finishing up with dinner and getting ready for an early bedtime after one of the hardest days of martial arts training in their lives. Yin Style Baguazhang International is coming to Knoxville again, for the third year in a row, and the workshop taught by incredible martial artist He Jinbao kicks off bright and early at 8:00 am next Thursday, October 20. Local martial artists that haven't yet decided to take advantage of this awesome opportunity to improve their fighting skills are highly encouraged to do so! If you live near enough to Knoxville to be able to make it, then don't miss it!

Ask Dr. Jimberly: Starting your own Yin Style Baguazhang study group

As promised about ten days ago or so, I would get around to writing a second installment to an "Ask Dr. Jimberly" post, this time addressing the question of how to go about starting a study group for Yin Style Baguazhang in your neck of the woods. Here's the link to the original post, answering "Why the Lion System?" for those that are interested. Of course, these questions are overlapping to some degree, as I indicated in that earlier response. For reference, here is the text of the email that I was answering again:

I started with the lion dvd's several years back as that is what was recommended by ATS, but I am far more interested and physically inclined to the dragon system, so that's been my focus for the last year and a half or so. Also, I am trying to start up a study group in my area - what do I need to do to make such a group recognized by the YSB association at large?

In this post, I'm addressing only the part of this email indicated in italics, as the rest has been dealt with previously.

Ask Dr. Jimberly: Why the Lion System?

Some time ago, I received an email from someone with the following in it:

I started with the lion dvd's several years back as that is what was recommended by ATS, but I am far more interested and physically inclined to the dragon system, so that's been my focus for the last year and a half or so. Also, I am trying to start up a study group in my area - what do I need to do to make such a group recognized by the YSB association at large?

I'll address the second question in this inquiry, about what needs to happen to start a study group, at a later date so as to keep this post as direct and on a single topic as possible. If you're interested in starting a study group in your area and don't have the foggiest idea of what to do, hang on tight for the answer! I'll probably get to it within the week or thereabouts. In the meantime, check out this related post on getting started: A Yin Style Baguazhang Beginner's Guide. Much of the info overlaps.

The reason I'm focusing on the "Why Lion?" question now is that it came up again for me. This week at our study group's weekly get-together, one of the newer members asked me point-blank why we study the Lion System first in Yin Style Baguazhang. I figure this is probably a pretty common question, and so I'll be happy to include the response to the email I got and kind bolster it with what I told our training buddy.

Ask Dr. Jimberly -- "Humongous Godzilla Sword" -- What's with the dadao anyway?

Here's another edition of Ask Dr. Jimberly, where I share questions and answers that I get about Yin Style Baguazhang with a wider audience: What's the deal with that "Humongous Godzilla Sword" (read: the Yin Style bagua dadao)?

Ask Dr. Jimberly -- Yin Style Bagua questions and answers -- About turning and breathing

Since I get questions in my email from time to time about training in Yin Style, and since people tend to be happy enough with my answers, I've decided a nice thing to do would be to put some of these questions and answers up on the blog, maintaining anonymity, so that others can hear them as well, just in case they happen to have the same questions. Now, to be fair, I have to point out that I'm not always going to be 100% correct with my answers and am responding to the best of my knowledge, and so you can try these things out for yourself, see if they work or not, and always feel encouraged to pass your questions along to higher authorities in the art.

Today's question is about turning and breathing, particularly what kind of breathing is appropriate for turning practice in Yin Style Baguazhang. The exact wording of the question is

I have a question about breathing. Do we use lower abdominal breathing or reverse breathing. Hope that you can help... Thank you

Here was my response to this worthy inquiry: