Ok. I’m going to talk about Bagua for real this time. Not ilke for fake as I did in the last post. And the one before that. but I swear that this time, I am actually going to talk about Bagua. Eventually.
To recap, I did some Bagua a few years after starting Taiji. It wsa walking the circle with the 8 Palms. I leared how to do it with DeerHorn Knives as well. I did it as a way to avoid meditation because the lattelr was too fraught for me as I was suffering frem PTSD. Or maybe even cPTSD.
Side note: I did not know before this that meditation can exacerbate PTSD. Once I started experiencing it in class, I was freaked out. I had flashbacks along with other unpleasant sensations, which had me scurrying to the internet. I discovered that this was not uncommon, though it wasn’t talked about much.
What I read is that without proper guidance, meditation can trigger traumatic responses. This is something to be aware of, and it wasn’t something Ihad heard of before I did meditation in Taiji class. Once I brought it up to my teacher, she decided to see if Bagua would be better. It was, indeed.
I can do meditation now, but it’s still not my favorite. I would be perfectly happy to never do it again, but I can deal with it in class. I would still prefer doing 8 palms, though.
It was walking the circle that made me realize that my life was worthwhile. What do I mean by that? I’ll explain. I was raised to believe that my life was not worth anything other than what I could do for other people. I was a living emotional support person, and that was all I was supposed to be.
I was a pacifist at that time and said that if someone wanted to kill me, I would let them. Then, I started walking the circle with the 8 palms. The basic premise is that the opponent is in the middle of the circle, and you wanted to focus on them as you walked. I was doing this during one particularly rough day, and I suddenly had a flash of, “If it’s you or me, then it’s you (dying).” That was the first moment in my life that I thought my life had value–I was over 35, probably closer to 40.
I talked about it with my teacher, and she was very excited to me. She said that men had to be taught to chil out (in general) whereas women (as I identified then) had to be taught how to fight. Blame the patriarchy for both that girls were told to ‘be nice’ whereas boys were taught they always had to be alpha dog.
I stopped saying I was a pacifist after that moment. It was never really true, but I felt as if ihad to say it. My life was worth fighting for, and I embraced that knowledge.