Pa Kua Chang

Pa kua is an interesting form in the Shao lin art. It has many health benefits and a ton of cool fighting applications. I used to practice my pa kua foot work in sparring by using only foot work to evade my sparring partners attacks. Using your foot work as your only defense is a great way to learn to get out of the way of a strike. One of the huge benefits of doing this is that if you don't use your hands to block it keeps them open to strike or grab an opponent. The best thing that can happen in my mind is to use your footwork to step behind your opponent and have that opponent looking around for where you went. You know your foot work is doing well when your opponent experiences you simply disappearing! When I have practiced Pa kua in the past I would hold both of my hands out to the side. As my sparring partner would throw a punch or kick I would draw my lead leg back. This would effectively get me out of the way of the punch or kick that was headed my way. Then they would likely follow up with another strike. I would step to the out side of the person I was sparring. I was now behind my opponent and it allowed me to be able to strike the kidneys, back of the neck and even the front of the body as well with ridge hand strikes and other strikes that come around "corners". At one point I was sparring a black belt in my class. We are very close in sparring. I am not entirely sure what happened but all of a sudden neither of us can move our hands because they have gotten tangled up and we were grabbing each others arms. All of a sudden my feet start to walk. It was if I was simply watching the action happen. I couldn't intentionally reproduce what happened even if I tried. My legs start to walk. I took 3 steps and my sparring partner fell to the ground. He was uninjured but he and I were equally surprised when it happened. I had no intentional thought of doing what happened. My legs simply started walk on their own. I believe this is the benefit of training in the martial arts and practicing so much that it literally becomes a subconscious form of fighting. Your body will simply react to the way that it has been trained for so many years when threatened. Pa kua is a somewhat rare fighting art. It is not easy to find a good instructor in many areas of the United States. Pa Kua has many variations and includes weapons such as the spear, sun and moon forks, pa kua broad sword and staff. Pa kua is based on walking a circle. It is a form that has mostly palm strikes and works on directing the bodies internal energy or "Chi". There are many different styles of Pa Kua Chang. There is original or temple style pa kua, 8 animal style pa kua, snake pa kua, dragon pa kua and many others. I will leave it to you to find a school to learn pa kua at. If there is a Chinese Shao-Lin Center in your area or a Shao lin do association I can highly recommend these schools. You will need to get to black belt in the Chinese Shao lin centers before they will teach you Pa Kua Chang however the additional training on the way to black belt is awesome in these schools as well. Here are a couple of great books that you can read if you are interested in learning more about Pa Kua Chang.