Martial Arts

Bajiquan Unveiled

Techniques, Philosophy, and Inner Strength

Bajiquan is an art that meets you where you are. It does not demand that you be young, or uninjured, or at your peak.

S Y Kelake

Foreword

It lives in the centre, not the periphery.

This book did not begin in a training hall. It began in a hospital bed, in the quiet aftermath of a fifteen-hour surgical operation, when I lay still and tried to understand what remained of me.

Then, about eight years after the surgery, something shifted. I began to feel more like myself again—more energised, more present in my body, more curious about what movement might still offer me. My Tang Sou Dao master—Grandmaster Loke of Ren Yi Wu Kwan—had never once suggested I stop. Throughout my recovery, he had quietly, consistently offered me a way back in. "Perform the forms like Tai Chi," he would say. "Slow and mindful. Gradual." He never pushed. He just kept the door open. That kind of teaching is its own form of mastery, and I am grateful for it beyond what words can carry.

What struck me immediately was what Bajiquan does not require. It does not require high kicks. It does not ask you to leap. It does not depend on the spectacular, the acrobatic, or anything that belongs to the version of myself I had lost. Bajiquan is a close-quarters art. It is rooted, grounded, and expressed primarily through the hands, the elbows, and the explosive transfer of whole-body force. It lives in the centre, not the periphery.

I could not perform the drop kicks and crescent kicks I once had—or at least not to the level I once had. But Bajiquan did not ask me to. It asked me instead to do something more interesting: to adapt. And in adapting, to discover that what I thought I had lost had simply moved.

What the book covers

The shape of the art

The book moves from legend and history into the working parts of Bajiquan. These are the principles it keeps coming back to.

Chapter 21The Eight Extremes

The book gives the name Ba Ji to eight principles, from Dan Kai (Single Opening) and Tie Shan (Iron Mountain) to Chan Shan (Entangling Mountain). Together they cover opening, rooting, splitting, piercing and controlling an opponent.

Chapters 4 and 7Fa jin, issuing force

Explosive power comes from the whole body working at once: rooting, spinal alignment, and tension and relaxation timed together. The book sets the traditional account beside modern ideas about fascia and ground reaction force.

Chapter 4Bujin and close range

Bajiquan works best up close, so the practitioner first has to get there. Bujin, the entering technique, is a committed whole-body step into range, followed by elbow and shoulder strikes and grappling.

Chapter 8Rooting and grounding

Standing meditation (zhanzhuang), sinking the qi and the horse stance build a base that is hard to move. As the book puts it, power begins with the ground, not with the arm.

Chapter 1Baji and Pigua

Bajiquan was traditionally taught alongside Pigua Zhang. One is short and compressed, the other long and sweeping, and the book argues that together they make a complete system.

Chapters 3 and 6Masters and bodyguards

The book follows the art from Wu Zhong of Mengcun through Li Shuwen, called the God of Spear, to Huo Diange, who it says served as bodyguard and instructor to Pu Yi, the last Emperor.

From the Conclusion

The Art That Meets You Where You Are

The art has a quality that I think is underappreciated in the way it is typically presented. It is often described as a system for elite close-quarters fighters—for bodyguards and soldiers and practitioners who train with singular intensity toward combat effectiveness. And that is all true. But contained within the same principles that make it effective for those practitioners is something that makes it available to people like me, and perhaps like you: it is an art built around what is rather than what was.

The rooting work does not require exceptional legs. The elbow strikes do not require perfect balance. The philosophical framework of Bajiquan — the balance of yin and yang, the cultivation of what you have, the return to centre—is not a metaphor bolted on to the combat system. It is the combat system, expressed in a different register. When the art teaches you to root rather than leap, to express from the centre rather than reach for the periphery, it is teaching the same lesson that recovering from serious injury teaches you: use what is real, not what is imagined.

To anyone reading this who is rebuilding something—a body, a practice, a sense of who they are after illness or injury has shifted the landscape: this book is, in no small part, for you. You do not need to be at your peak. You do not need to be young, or healed, or whole in the way you once were. You need to be honest, present, and willing to begin from where you actually stand. Bajiquan will meet you there.

That is the practice. That, truly, is the art.

The shape of the book

Each chapter opens with a short overview and then works through named sections, moving from legend and history to technique, training, health and ethics.

Dedication · Foreword: How I Came to Bajiquan · About This Book · Introduction

Chapter 1: Legendary Beginnings
Chapter 2: The Philosophy of Bajiquan
Chapter 3: The Historical Context of Bajiquan
Chapter 4: Techniques of Bajiquan
Chapter 5: Comparing Bajiquan with Other Chinese Martial Arts
Chapter 6: Famous Practitioners of Bajiquan
Chapter 7: The Explosive Power and Speed of Bajiquan
Chapter 8: Rooting and Grounding in Bajiquan
Chapter 9: The Role of Spinal Alignment in Bajiquan
Chapter 10: Dynamic Tension and Relaxation in Bajiquan
Chapter 11: Versatility in Combat of Bajiquan
Chapter 12: Specialized Training Tools in Bajiquan
Chapter 13: Unique Training Drills in Bajiquan
Chapter 14: Forms (Taolu) of Bajiquan: An Analysis
Chapter 15: Mental Training and Discipline in Bajiquan
Chapter 16: Health Benefits and Wellness in Bajiquan
Chapter 17: Integration with Traditional Chinese Medicine in Bajiquan
Chapter 18: Women in Bajiquan
Chapter 19: The Global Spread and Modern Adaptations of Bajiquan
Chapter 20: Ethical and Moral Implications & Challenges and Future Prospects
Chapter 21: The Eight Extremes of Bajiquan

Conclusion: The Art That Meets You Where You Are · Acknowledgements

Worth keeping

The ability to act with force is meaningful only when paired with the restraint to choose not to.

Chapter 20

Where heng is the release, tun is the gathering.

Chapter 4, The Breathing of Bajiquan

The stories that a tradition chooses to tell about itself—the wandering hero, the animal observation, the synthesis of competing streams—are not merely decoration. They encode values.

Chapter 1

This is not a lesser version of the practice. It is the same practice, approached with honesty about what the body offers.

Chapter 16

Look inside

Read from the book

Read from Chapter 10, Positive Conscious Release

Release as a strategic act

Imagine an opponent grabs your arm with the intention of controlling or pulling you. The instinctive reaction for many people might be to tense up and pull back, which often makes it easier for the attacker to manipulate your entire body. With Positive Conscious Release, you instead ground yourself, ensure proper spinal alignment, and consciously release the tension in the grabbed arm. This release frees the rest of your body for movement and defence. As you release the arm, you shift your weight, rotate your body, and prepare for a counter-attack, using the attacker's momentary confusion and loss of leverage to your advantage.

Read from Chapter 16, for the injured, recovering and ageing practitioner

The same practice

It would be incomplete to discuss health benefits without addressing something this book's own foreword touches directly: the relevance of Bajiquan to practitioners who are not at peak physical capacity. Whether through injury, illness, surgery, or the natural process of ageing, many martial artists reach a point where the techniques they relied upon are no longer fully available to them.

Bajiquan's emphasis on rooting, structural alignment, close-quarters power, and upper-body technique means that it continues to be trainable and effective even when lower-body mobility is reduced. The zhanzhuang standing practice can be adapted to seated variants for those with severe mobility limitations. The breathing methods and internal cultivation practices are accessible regardless of physical condition. Forms can be performed slowly and mindfully—as Grandmaster Loke recommended—with all of the same internal development occurring at a fraction of the physical intensity.

This is not a lesser version of the practice. It is the same practice, approached with honesty about what the body offers. And in many cases, practitioners who are forced into that honesty find that their understanding of the art deepens considerably.

The book

About this edition

Cover of Bajiquan Unveiled by S Y Kelake

Title: Bajiquan Unveiled: Techniques, Philosophy, and Inner Strength
Author: S Y Kelake BSc (Hons)
Publisher: SYK Publishing Ltd
Length: About 12,300 words, ebook
For: Martial artists and curious readers who want a clear introduction to Bajiquan, and anyone returning to practice after injury, illness or age

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