Water Method Blog

Hey Everybody, I'm sharing this video with my teacher Bruce with good info for those of you who attended our Art of the Spiral: Embodying Twisting Neigong in Tai Chi & Bagua course or who watched my free webinar on the subject.

I hope you enjoy it! The seminar was profound to say the least, trans...

Qigong, tai chi, hsing-i and bagua target the qi (or chi) that powers the physical body to create health, vitality and longevity.

Tung Hai Chuan, known as the modern progenitor of bagua, taught each of his disciples differently, depending on their specific talents and needs. This is the basis of the main bagua lines and schools that have followed.

Liu Hung Chieh, my teacher Bruce Frantzis' teacher, had the honour of attending...

By Paul Cavel

Fascia is the connective tissue that contains and encompasses the body's soft tissues and structures, linking together the entirety of the physical body.

Healthy, hydrated and elasticated fascia fibres, essentially a web of liquid-filled tubes which envelopes the body, supports and und...

By Paul Cavel

This article covers:

• How to start a personal practice
• My five-year curriculum

How to Learn Taoist Energy Arts

Many people are surprised to learn that beginners learn almost exactly the same material as experienced practitioners. This may sound counterintuitive, but con...

Stop lifting weights to tone your body! You can tone your muscles through the relaxation-based movement of qigong, tai chi and Circle Walking.

The health benefits of walking are well-documented. When adding internal techniques, you can open up your vascular system before you elevate your heart rate to keep training safe and productive. Circle Walking has an edge over other internal exercises like qigong and tai chi because it brings in ...

In this video, I discuss Bagua's Double (Earth) Palm Change and Earth energy from the I Ching trigram (as opposed to the 5 Elements), as well as the Single Palm Change: Earth Version.

—> Learn Earth Palm online

—> Find an in-person course

I’m pleased to have teamed up with MysticMag to discuss physical and mental well-being in this age of anxiety, depression and chronic pain. I hope you find the post useful: click here to read.

This is Part Two of the Water Method series with Paul Cavel and Mir Ali.

Much of the documentation on Daoism has been destroyed, but the oral tradition has been preserved with the teachings being transmitted from master to student for millennia, to us in the present day.

In this video, Mir and ...

By Paul Cavel

When learning any internal energy art, such as qigong, tai chi or bagua, there is a major hurdle that must be over­come to create sustainable, long-term training results: feeling instead of visual­ising. I’ve watched how this has become more and more difficult for students over the ...

In this video, I meet with my friend and fellow Water Method teacher Jason Roberts to discuss how to practise to cultivate qi and manifest the energies of the Five Elements.

We discuss:

• Where to put your focus and strategies for practising the Water Method as it is comprised of five neigong

  ...

In this talk, I sit down again with Javi Martinez to discuss the three integrated streams of Taoist arts training: health/healing, martial arts and personal/spiritual development. Let us know in the comments which is your path... We can centre future discussions on the levels of practice you wish...

By Paul Cavel

In Part 1, we looked at how Circle Walking is the minimalist’s paradise. Once you have some understanding of and become proficient in Circle Walking, you can progress to the Single Palm Change, the core of both the monastic bagua and bagua zhang taditions.

The Single Palm Cha...

In this video, I discuss bending-and-stretching neigong and lengthening neigong, and how they become one.

 By Paul Cavel

Bagua is a pure energy art derived from Taoist philosophy and the I Ching (Book of Changes). It has been practised for millennia to embody the universal energies of change and, at advanced levels, can become a vehicle for spiritual development.

For more mundane yet meaningful purs...

By Paul Cavel

With my new bagua online course starting today, I’ve had a handful of people who’ve asked about bagua for meditation. I suspect there are more of you out there who might want to train bagua as a form of moving meditation, as classically trained for millennia in the monastic tradition....

I’ve trained the monastic bagua tradition (focusing on the Single Palm Change) AND the bagua zhang (martial) tradition — including learning all Eight Bagua Mother Palms — from my teacher, Bagua Master Bruce Frantzis, in private and public tuition since 1994.

Find a Bagua Course

• Courses with m...

 By Paul Cavel

Most internal arts have a specific learning progression, which begins with a set of six or more movements in qigong, and up to 108 moves in tai chi. Then, as you practise the form over weeks, months and years, you sink into your body, mind and qi by adding layers of internal con...

 By Paul Cavel

See Part 1

PART 2: What Is Wu Wei? 

Wu wei is often described as “doing without doing”, but what does that really mean? How can you do something without doing it? This misunderstanding is generally due to scholars outside the tradition translating Chinese characters into English,...

By Paul Cavel

Although people who train the internal arts of qigong, tai chi and bagua do so for a variety of reasons, all motivations can be classified into three general categories: health/healing, martial arts and spiritual development. In reality, everyone trains for health because, at the...

By Paul Cavel

You are being bombarded by noise – unrelenting distractions in the form of notifications, news and marketing – that diminish peace of mind. It’s no wonder why stress is the number one cause of disease with 90 percent of illnesses and diseases being linked to chronic stress (accor...

Bagua is a pure energy art originally practised by those interested in the I Ching or Taoism — having been derived as a physical manifestation to realise the teachings of the I Ching. In this way, bagua is an embodiment of the universal principles of change.

It is also a high-level martial ar...