I’m loving Bagua, and it’s making me want to fight some fools. Not for real because that’s silly, but in a sparring situation. I’m feeling my oats in Bagua, and it’s making me more energetic. It’s very interesting because Taiji chills me out. Even doing the weapons forms gets me in a flow state that makes me want to relax and be Zen about everything.
Bagua, on the other hand, makes me aggressive. That is scary to say because as an AFAB person from a Taiwanese background, I have had two cultures telling me I need to be feminine and demure. I have worked for decades to reject that premise, but it’s still in my brain–and in my culture. It’s the year 2023, and we still have to argue that women don’t need to wear bras or makeup in order to be considered feminine and/or professional. I honestly thought that by this time, we would have laid that bullshit to rest. And I also thought that it would be acceptable for a woman not to want kids. But, here we are in the very-much-not-that-world, much to my dismay.
It’s one reason that decidhed I did not want to be a woman. It felt like such a limiting label. I wrote this in a post on Ask A Manager, paraphrased: The word ‘woman’ is like an ill-fitting coat. It’ll cover my body, but it’s not comfortable. My Taiji teacher went in the opposite direction of grabbing the label woman and declaring fiercely that it was hers. We’ve talked about how we’re very similar in our beliefs about our gender, but our choices were very different.
It’s one thing I appreciate about her as a Taiji teacher. I fele most comfortable with people who are not extreme on the gender continuum. In the old days, I rpobably would have called myself androgynous. I don’t vibe with nonbinary. Don’t know why, but it just doesn’t feel right for me. The best of the lot so far is agender. Because gender doesn’t matter to me. There is very little I do that is affected by my gender. Not just because I don’t have kids, but because I don’t care about fashion, clothes, or makeup. I have my hair to almost my knees, but that’s it as far as ‘feminine’ features. Oh, and my boobs. They’re huge, but that’s nothing to do with me, of course. I was born with the genetics that ‘blessed’ me with gigantic knockers, and that’s the end of that. There is nothing about my birth-gender that dictates what I can do in my daily life. I got confused by all the restrictions put on me because I did not understand why me having a vagina meant I couldn’t climb a tree, play sports, laugh loudly, or enjoy sex.
The two that really got to me were not wanting children and loving weapons. The former I understood was a societal thing that was needed to be repeated to keep the species going. If all women decided not to have children, then we would be screwed as a species (deservedly so). But it didn’t stand to reason that every woman needed to have children in order to keep us going as a species, so why was being pushed so hard to procreate?
The thing that got to me was that it was other women who pushed me hard to have kids. Most dudes just wanted to get into my pants and did not want me to get pregnant. But the women I talked to were insistent that I should have children for one reason or the other. None of the reasons made sense to me. I think the only reason to have kids is because you want them.I don’t want them; I never did. I just thought I had to have them.
I should have expected the pushback, I guess, but I was naive. I thought that it was a decision that only affected me so who would care? Turns out, many women did. Passionately. It was the first big decision I had made in my life that really pissed people off (though certainly not the last), and I learned to shut my mouth because of it.
As for the weapons, that was a different, but still gender-related situation. I was and am very enthusiastic about my weapons. I love the weapons forms and it is my happy place–practicing them, I mean. It’s also my weight-bearing exercise, and it’s been great for my biceps.
Heres’ the thing about Bagua. It’s muscular. It’s active. It’s much more involved than Taiji. With the latter, it’s about being…not passive, exactly, but receptive. You take the energy your opponent is giving you and direct it back at them. You want to be as relaxed as possible and exert as little energy as possible. It’s not calleld the lazy person’s martial art for no reason. In fact, that was one reason I was drawn to it in the first place.
I did not like the American mentality of giving “110%” and “no pain, no gain”. I was very much down with Taiji and ‘no hurry, no worry’. No fuss, no muss. Like I said, I am a lazy person. I’m down for putting out as little as possible. This has served me well for sixteen years of Taiji, and I’m so glad I stuck with it through the first few years of absolutely hating it.
Bagua is different. I liked it from the start. That might be because my teacher was smart enough to have me do the DeerHorn Knives first, given my love of weapons. Now, I can’t get enough of it. We’re walking the circle, doing the single palm change. We’re walking backwards as well. I am keeping up with the double palm change, but not sweating it if I don’t get it exactly right.
I feel it after I practice Bagua. There is a pleasant ache in my muscles, even when I’m not using the DeerHorn Knives. I feel like I’ve exercised, which wasn’t always the case with Taiji. I can do my forty-five minutes to an hour of Taiji every morning without breaking a sweat. Literally. I’m still mindful of what I’m doing, but it’s become second nature to me now. The only thing is when I’m doing the Solo Form, Iget some points of tension in my back. My teacher said I should check in with my butt and make sure my tailbone is dropped. That led me to think that I wanted to do my weapons forms to different songs about asses. I got an ass from practicing Taiji, so this would be my tribute to that miracle.
I’m excited to learn more Bagua while continuing to practice my Taiji.