John Hine is a Chinese Internal Martial Arts Master who has been training for over 45 years, and runs one of the longest established and successful chain of Tai Chi schools in the UK.
Pa Kua Chang literally means 'eight diagrams palm' and is aligned with the ancient Taoist philosophy of the I Ching (Yi Ching) or 'Book of Changes'.
The basis of this philosophy is the dynamic inter-connections between all things in existence, both animate and inanimate.
The basic eight manoeuvres of Pa Kua Chang can be ascribed to the eight core trigrams of the Yi Ching.
These eight trigrams are considered as the prime movers in existence, which in turn have eight actions each, making 64 actions. These 64 have also eight actions, and so on.
It is a mathematical philosophy of great complexity which attempts to place Man and his actions in context with the cosmos.
