Customer Reviews

Bagua Daoyin: A Unique Branch of Daoist Learning--A Secret Skill of the Palace

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This book will not teach anyone Dao yin, of any kind. The majority of the book is a collection of essays translated from a book in Chinese by He Jinghan. The translator is the father of a student of master He, who had "little experience of Chinese martial arts(pg 9)" before attempting the translation. This shows.

If you are involved in neijia chuan, neigong, qigong etc then this part of the book may well be helpful as an aid to your studies, or might not.

However the actual set of exercises is shown only through photo's with little or no description, let alone ANY explanation of HOW to perform these movements. Quite often you just have three photos on a page and NO text of any kind, or simply "Hug the body, it needs to be very relaxed(pg 125)". As such i find it highly doubtful anyone would be able to learn anything of actual value from attempts to use it as a learning tool (i don't even think the photo sequence would be great as a reminder for those studying this 'dao yin' set).

Granted the photo's are well shot, but the sequencing of them with no markers for changes of direction or 'the movement in between' simply leaves them as nothing other than a pretty presentation of someone going through a Chinese set of exercises. The description of "sequences of photographs set out a programme of study, showing the beauty of the movements, and the positions and transitions the practitioner is aiming for (Backcover)" is highly deceptive and misleading.

If you already know qigong, neigong, etc then maybe you could use that knowledge and understanding to piece together this sequence of movements, but then why bother you would be better off sticking to what you have already learned. I have no doubt that this 'daoyin' would be good to learn from Master He jinghan, but you won't do it through this book.

As such i find this book, which advertises itself as introducing and teaching ba gua dao yin, as deceptive and misleading as it does nothing of the sort. I am not even sure why the authors use the term 'dao yin' except to capitalize upon the rarity of the term these days. It at most discusses concepts commonly found in qigong and neigong, which can also be found in many other books.

This book, while nicely presented is style over substance, there is FAR better out there.

This book was quite a disappointment. Things are presented w/o reason or context; thus, one would get the idea that BaGua was an isolated series of
odd movements that were "supposed to do something for you". While I don't think the author intended to give that impression, the pictures and text are next to worthless for anything other than a curiosity. The book does not teach; nither does it demonstrate. Thus, BaGua is even more mysterious than it needs to be...

I just got this today. I think this is a good book--not great--for someone( like me) who has studied this particular style of bagua. I've also met He Jing Han and studied with him once. However, the first reviewer is correct in his criticism: the back cover is very misleading with "highly illustrated"--yes, a lot of nice pics but a novice to this art would never be able to learn from these since there is no actual "programme of study" and no "transitions" that can be learned from still pics. In my opinion, one can never learn transitional movements from still pics of any movement art without prior experience in that art.

For someone familiar with Gong Baozhai lineage baguaquan, this book might be useful. I found several snippets of wisdom in the various essays although the majority of the text was not enlightening or new to me. For someone from a different bagua or martial art, this book is probably just confusing because it does not convey at all how to learn the beautiful movements shown by Master He in any practical way. And since this particular bagua lineage is different from other lineages, attempts to copy such movements without understanding the core principles would be pointless.

"Bagua Daoyin" of master He is a great piece of thoughts about martial arts and life from this experienced teacher. The book is based on Bagua Daoyin idea but it is opened to any reader and Chinese martial arts lover. It is not a guide to teach you Bagua Daoyin step by step. Especially the pictures ilustrate principles of the art and way how to move correctly rather than guide you step by step through the excercises. The ideas are more focused on concepts in martial art training and also a connection of the art to civil life. I am a Tai chi chuan practitioner and got a great inspiration from the book on how to practice and how to thing about the arts. The book is opened to wider audience not only to people specialized in Bagua Zhang. Anyway it is a book which needs to be studied not only read as a novel. Good luck!

I had purchased this book hoping that it would contain a bit of actual bagua understanding in it. This book clearly has no real information of any value to bagua practioners anywhere. It was clearly done from the point of view of someone not involved in Bagua. He is an artist, not martial, bent on trying to find the QI Warrior through stories that relate an entertaining quip. Really nothing more. This book was a complete waste of my time to read as well as a waste of money to purchase.

Having studeied bagua and trained in China with Bagua teacher, i was able to link the positons together and enjoy this form.