Toronto Baguazhang

04/24/2026

Spirit Sword

As much as I (and you?) love and romanticize swords, I also think it imperative to understand that they are weapons designed to take a life. One important aspect of Daoqiquan’s Spirit Sword Qigong is to impress upon students the enormity of such an act. Each movement has a meaning to contemplate and I don’t think I’m wrong to call this training a meditation on mortality and the sword. The physical actions of this practice may be much the same as those we train for combat purposes but they are carried out in a very different spirit.

To find out more, please go to: www.healthandcombatarts.com

04/16/2026

Posts

No one disputes the importance of footwork in combat training and it is fundamental to the practice of Nine Dragon Baguazhang. Post training teaches students how to cover ground and change direction quickly, using momentum to strike while on the move. It is also an excellent way to improve endurance. We start with one and work our way up to nine.

To learn more, please go to: www.healthandcombatarts.com

04/12/2026

Not Just a Circle

This photo from my teacher’s (Shigong John Painter) training garden a few years ago, shows that footwork in Nine Dragon Baguazhang involves more than walking around in circles. Trying to move smoothly from stump to stump, flower pot to stump, and stump to flower pot, challenges awareness, balance, and power. It’s also a lot of fun. Of course I fell off, but less and less as time went on.

If you’d like to learn more, please go to: www.healthandcombatarts.com

03/30/2026

It was (more than) 20 years ago today....

Gathering 2005 Stroudsburg PA

12/03/2025

Tiger, Tiger

For students of the Daoqiquan family of arts (of which Nine Dragon Baguazhang is the one I train), the tiger symbolizes more than strength and ferocity. For us, the stalking tiger is a study of perfectly controlled flowing movement, able to stop and start smoothly without seeming effort. With its center of gravity low to the ground, the tiger can unleash immense power the instant its highly alert senses give the signal. For the tiger, movement follows intention with no hesitation and it is single-minded in pursuit of its prey.

These are the qualities our Baguazhang students are trained to emulate when they engage in circle walking. We practice lowering our centers of gravity, releasing unnecessary tension to move as smoothly as possible. We train our awareness by speeding up, slowing down, and changing direction on command from an instructor or in response to a sudden attack from a training partner.

Humans have long been inspired by the natural world, adopting animals as totems for our tribes, empires, sports teams, and, of course, martial arts. We study and we imitate in order to enhance our abilities. In Daoqiquan, we delve deeply into this process, not only looking at tigers but other animals and forces of nature into which we transform our movements and our spirits.

If you want to learn more please go to: www.healthandcombatarts.com

11/24/2025

When I first began martial arts training, I was sometimes awestruck by what my teachers could do. It was a time when the world of Chinese internal arts was filled with talk of “energy”, and mysterious qi (or chi). Many years of hard work followed and I eventually became an instructor in Nine Dragon Baguazhang. One day, after demonstrating something, I noticed a student looking at me in just the same way I used to look at my teacher, Shigong John Painter.

It shocked me at first because I knew full well that any skill I possessed was simply a result of practice. I knew that there was no magic in it and, as Shigong Painter was fond of saying, there was, “no qi, just me”.

When I watch a professional basketball player seemingly defy gravity to score, it looks like magic to me. The reality is that players throw a lot of hoops and pros do it for a living, meaning just about every day. We don’t need the idea of qi or some kind undefined energy to explain how they do what they do and I don’t think we need qi to explain the magic looking skills of my teacher or any other highly trained martial artist.

So, if you’re looking for mystical powers, I’m afraid Nine Dragon Baguazhang is not for you. However, if you understand that skill, strength, and well being require practice to achieve, then maybe it is. For more information, please subscribe: www.healthandcombatarts.com

10/06/2025

Founders Day 2025

Jicheng Shifu Yancy Orchard, lineage holder of the Daoqiquan Health and Combat Arts once again hosted our annual Founders Day celebration at his school in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I attended in my capacity as an instructor of Nine Dragon Baguazhang in Toronto along with instructors and students from other schools in Canada, the United States, and Australia, to commemorate the legendary founder of Daoqiquan, Lama Zurdwang more than 400 hundred years ago and the Li family masters who followed in his footsteps to the present day.

Although Daoqiquan was for centuries a family art, it was my teacher, Shigong John Painter who, with the blessings of his teacher, Li, Long Dao, began teaching the arts to the public over 50 years ago and opened his school in Arlington, Texas, for the annual celebration before formally passing the lineage to Shifu Orchard.

Perhaps it is because Daoqiquan was a family art to begin with that Founders Day has always felt to me like a family gathering instead of a stuffy formal affair. Shifu Orchard and his exemplary students welcomed we out-of-towners with the kind of warmth and generosity that comes from the heart. As always, there was an excellent teaching program that left me wishing I had a bigger brain to store all the quality material presented by Shifu Orchard.

Thank you, Shifu Orchard and thank you to your dedicated students for all your work, kindness, and dedication to keeping the art I love alive.

09/28/2025

All students of Daoqiquan health and combat arts, whether they are learning Nine Dragon Baguazhang, Li Family Taijiquan or Classical Weaponry, are taught the importance of physical strength and, more importantly, how to train it. We understand that training strength is as important as training speed and skill. Furthermore, we believe that strength training for combat purposes needs to be efficient and relevant to the kinds of movement required by personal combat.

(Note: Eddie Hall and Brian Shaw couldn’t make it to the photo shoot for this post so we substituted in Toto, who works out regularly)

Being strong is good. For more information, please subscribe: www.healthandcombatarts.com

08/27/2025

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There is a debate happening in Canada about defending oneself when attacked at home. An incident occurred in which a homeowner stabbed an attacker in his own home, yet the the owner is charged with assault!

The debate centers around issues like whose rights should dominate, the definition of reasonable force, and the legal ramifications that one should consider when someone invades your home.

All of this overlooks (or ignores) a basic, inevitable fact that is understood by experienced martial artists - namely, that one's body will react instantly to an attack with what it knows. There is no time to consider "legal ramifications". There is only a survival response.

When I read someone opining about what the homeowner "should" have done, I know I am reading the view of someone who has likely never faced that situation.

For real self-defense, it's crucial to find a martial art that emphasizes training for spontaneous adaptability. Yes, such an approach is taught here: https://www.thegompa.com/join

08/26/2025

My path to Baguazhang was through philosophy and meditation.
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