Gao Style Baguazhang
高式八卦掌The branch of baguazhang split into xiantian circular groundwork and sixty-four houtian palms along straight lines.
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About Gao Style Baguazhang
The Gao school is one of the main branches of baguazhang, the eight-trigram palm, and what sets it apart from the others is a clear division into two parts. It was created by Gao Yisheng, who trained under Zhou Yuxiang, a student of Cheng Tinghua; on his earlier schooling the sources disagree and name both Song Changrong and Yin Fu. The first part of the system is called xiantian, literally before heaven, and consists of walking the circle and the palm changes performed on the circle; this is the classical core of baguazhang, where the spiralling movement of the body and the fluent change of direction are built. The second part, houtian or after heaven, contains sixty-four palms practised along straight lines and is far more concrete in combat: each palm is a short application with a definite strike, lock or takedown. Gao himself credited this part to a teacher named Song Yiren. It is precisely this joining of circular groundwork with linear application that makes Gao bagua legible, and it is also why it teaches well. Gao kept adjusting his programme all his life, so several versions of the core sets exist and all are held to be valid, because they record different periods of his work. Today the school holds in three main areas: Tianjin after Liu Fengcai, Taiwan after Zhang Junfeng, and Hong Kong after He Kecai. The sources give no year in which Gao established his version.
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Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.