Plum Blossom And The Heart Of The Warrior Spirit

The Plum Blossom set is the culminating integration of the dynamic coiling motions, awakened energy, and awareness cultivated through preceding practices.

It expresses the heart of the warrior spirit actively – as a martial skill if required – but principally to provide energetic forbearance against the forces that seek to subdue one’s unique expression.

This program also includes a form called Beautiful Springtime, which is an integral part of the short-force martial arts application and is taught in correspondence with the Wooden Dummy.

The name Plum Blossom comes from the stepping path that describes a flower with eight petals spiraling out from the center to eight gates. Building upon Temple Bagua foundations, The practitioner learns to absorb the centralized force and turn to face and walk in the eight specific locations of the outside of the Bagua circle, utilizing this energy to infuse one’s outwardly facing mudras with power.

The set employs the principles of the Temple Bagua walking and shifting, employing the unicorn and small twisting yang stance for rotations, returning to horse stance, then applying coiling straight-line techniques unique to Lo Ban Pai’s Dragon Coiling System.

Plum Blossom is extremely energetic, teaching the practitioner to draw the coiling energy from the ground and environment to the forearms and palms. As in Temple Bagua, the Plum Blossom practitioner acts from the center. The circle mirrors the containment area around the body – developed in Windlock and Shadow Fist Fundamentals – beyond which energy dissipates.

In practice, any point can be the center, so the set cultivates the skill to make wherever the warrior is the central hub. This generates the potential necessary for the practitioner’s personal power to be full and complete at each gateway that is faced, performing the guard-like gestures that protect the core.

The center that is protected, and from which movements flow, is the heart. While some arts train the mind to harness and direct this energy, Plum Blossom expands the skill developed in Temple Bagua to respond to the environment following the dictates of the heart as opposed to the socialized mind.

Plum Blossom is only available to approved students that have completed the necessary prerequisites. This is a four-week program consisting of four levels, which can be undertaken as single weeks if preferred. This provides the student with the opportunity to learn the program in four separate 5-day sessions or attend a complete four-week course.