Ba Gua Circle Walking Nei Gong: The Meridian Opening Palms of Ba Gua Zhang

I was looking forward to this book. I respect Mr Bisio and his endeavors in both the martial and medical worlds.Overall I like this book, I also think anyone interested in Bagua, or even martial neigong will find much of the information of interest. However I also found the book somewhat disappointing.I'll start with the negative aspects;- It really needs a better copy editor, there are many sloppy editing and spelling errors which are just irritating.- The format of the book, double spacing and so forth makes the book look like a submitted dissertation or academic paper, rather than a publically released and published book.- The use of really and bad quickly done computerised imagery instead of decent photographs or illustrations. I thought only Jan Diepersloot was willing to go there, and at least he had an excuse!(These are minor irritations that come with such self-published books)- I bought the book believing that it would be the summation of knowledge gained and trained over years during in Mr Bisio's busy martial career. However the book is based upon an interview with Zhao Da Yuan done in 2011 (with a shorter previous meeting in 2009). This book was published in 2012 only a year later!- The interview, or at least part one is freely available on Mr Bisio's blog, but not in this book. I personally found reading the interview more interesting than the cherry picked snippets used as a framework to create chunks of chapters in the book. It had a cohesiveness and clarity that the book loses.- The book is a collection of random sources used to propogate and expand upon the aspects expounded by Zhao Da Yuan, and often feels clunky due to the varied source material. Rather than feeling like the teachings within a lineage of Bagua, it feels more like Mr Bisio's eccentric assembly using Mr Zhao's explanations as inspiration. It is not made clear where Mr Zhao's explanations finish and where Mr Bisio tangents or attempts to expand upon them using varied sources.- I found the use and mixture of Daoist, "Modern" TCM, and classical Chinese medical theories incoherent rather than supportive. There are major and important differences between these modalities.- When I visited Mr Bisio's blog I found out that large chunks of the material is available therein, though occasionally in slightly different edited forms. In fact often the essay on the blog read much more coherently than did the chopped down versions (to edit out xingyi and taiji) that appears as chapters in this book. This explained the oddity of the format and editting throughout the book.The positive;- The book draws together many threads (often appearing as only a small aspect of a book) and compiles them into one place.- It dives into the various aspects of dingshi and circle walking with aplomb.- There is material on the more 'esoteric' aspects of dingshi and circle walking without the associated new age nonsense.- There is a, small, chapter on adjusting the practice according to Chinese medicine. This is using the circle walking as qigong liaofa (qigong therapy), and while only a peek at the possibilities a very interesting aspect.Overall;Despite the complaints I do like the book, and I think anyone interested in Bagua circle walking and how it relates to Chinese medicine and some of the more (erroneously considered) 'esoteric' aspects will find it a valuable resource. And I highly recommend reading his blog.

One of the few Bagua books that links the meridians with the postures. This is part of my teaching and lineageand nice to see how it all ties together. Good illustrations.Pity he dismisses the pychological side of movement. My Teacher after many years of frustration turned to this to explain why some of his students just did not get it, or just could not get some parts of it. ( Which is what we all go through). Movement and opening the body is all about being open to feeling and the transition between forms and feeling.I found this book helpful in more fully addressing how the eight mother palms work.

This is a pretty exhaustive guide to circle walking. It covers everything from practice schedules, useful physical and energetic focuses during walking to a lot of detail on meridian theory. Each fixed posture has a notional influence on specific meridians and this is covered in detail. Indeed, the book is a mini-textbook on meridian theory in this regard.The book is entirely about circle walking in fixed postures as a method of nei gong. There is no information about palm changes, and it is not a book on how to learn Ba Gua. But that's quite clear in the title.

Great product would recommend to others

Very good product

Getting into Bagua as a form of 'solo' un-supported internal martial arts, this book is great. It walks (pardon the pun) you through enough to get you going, such that your technique can be refined by a teacher. If you have some knowledge of the internal arts, it serves as a guide-post to Bagua, as it has a good breakdown of the order of learning, and the eight mother palms.