Just remembered one thing that came up in conversation with taijibum last night…. We were talking about body rotation in the bagua dragon/millstone stance. He mentioned that traditionally, in Cheng style, your torso should be twisted around so that you can look down onto your back foot. In his view, this is hardly ever taught these days and, even when it is taught, it takes a long time to be able to do.

In fact, I was taught this by my first bagua teacher, Zhang Sheng Li. It didn’t take long for me to be able to do it, either - I know for sure that it was only a couple of months. He’s right, though, that no-one else has ever taught this; one of my teachers actively told me that I should not be doing it. Still, I remember how, when I was training with Zhang, I really felt power developing in the waist and dantian. I’ve never had that feeling since then.

Hmmm. Maybe I should try training with Zhang again. I forget whether I mentioned, but I ran into his senior student by chance in Ritan Park a couple of weeks ago. I was going to meet Dragoncache for a beer, and apparently Zhang was teaching someone in a private lesson. I went to find him, but he must have left by another way in the meantime.

Anyway, what do you think about this? Should we train bagua by twisting around until we can look down on the back foot?