Modern Jūjutsu
After a bit of a hiatus, I was able to get together with Ben Lawner, who has been my student in jūjutsu and baguazhang for a number of years. Ben has studied Gao lineage baguazhang (高氏八卦掌) with me, exploring a curriculum of locking and throwing developed from a modified subset of our modern jūjutsu practice integrated with elements of Gao Bagua that I learned from Bob Galeone in the line of Hung Yimien. As best as I am able to surmise, the circular portions of Gao baguazhang are a mixture of Song and Cheng styles, while the linear portion was likely developed by Gao Yisheng in the 1920’s.
Ben has been training long enough with me in modern jūjutsu and Gao bagua that I want to provide a structured curriculum of locking and throwing I can pass on to him, in case he has students of his own one day. I have been very impressed with the way in which koryū jūjutsu ryūha are organized compared to modern arts such as Aikidō and the self-defense oriented MMA we first learned. To help organize a curriculum that can be taught side-by-side with Gao bagua, I created a list of techniques from basic hand grabs that covers what I still find reliable from my jūjutsu practice. These hand releases are collected into a set called “Te Hodoki”.
I recently provided Ben this list for review, and will try to stick to that progression when we meet, to see if it sticks. If it does, I will expand and add three additional sets – throwing techniques (“nage waza”), strangulations (“shime waza”), and self-defense (“goshin waza”). That will serve as a core grappling curriculum that students can begin with, and will let them more easily learn the applications we have synthesized using bagua principles, such as different applications from Gao Bagua single palm change or the eight big palms (bā dà zhǎng). Often, our practice is quite spontaneous and fluid, adhering to the emphasis in bagua on change. However, having a basic corpus of qinna and grappling to base the practice on will be useful if others train with us. We have a shared background in modern jūjutsu we can draw on, but the curriculum we originally learned was too baroque and too much of a pastiche to maintain in its entirity and have the time to explore the deeper practice Baguazhang affords us.
In focusing on YCGF, I have not maintained a full practice of the Gao linear tactics. I find Liu style bagua a more compact and efficient training methodology that more directly expresses the internal principles I am seeking to master. This is why I was excited to begin showing Ben those sets once I was allowed to teach. Recently, I have started to do just that. However, there is a lot of excellent content in the Gao linear, and it can serve as a bridge between explicit grappling and the more abstract movements of the eight palm changes. So, it is definitely the case that I will want to maintain a subset of the linear tactics in my practice with Ben. A person who influenced my Gao training was Su Dongchen, who thought having all sixty-four Gao linear tactics was not needed. I’m likely to settle on a subset that I feel I know deeply to focus on at this point.
Other Encounters
It was a privilege to be able to train with several of my sempai in Jikishinkage-ryū recently. I visited Chris Covington and Brian Wagner at their Daitō-ryū dōjō in Essex, MD, and was able to practice Jiki with them. We hope to get together regularly for kenjutsu training when our schedules align. I was also able to work out with John Buckley, who is one of David Hall’s most senior Jikishinkage-ryū students. I enjoyed both experiences greatly.
Recently I also visited a local Aikidō dōjō to meet with an Aikidōka interested in internal martial arts. I was greatful for the opportunity to demonstrate a taste of baguazhang, taijiquan, and xingyiquan to him and talk about the differences between the three internal arts I practice.
