Types of Bagua

I've been pretty interested in bagua lately, and may eventually find a school to learn some. But I've had very little luck finding the different styles of bagua. (The best I found so far was on wikipedia, but it was very vague and brief). Anyone know the differences between bagua styles? And are they significantly different from each other, like the tai chi styles are?

Cool question. I am going to give you a short answer right now to get this topic rolling. I have a gig tonight so I can't spend too much time right now.
I know that there are several branches of Bagua out there. The ones that I hear of the most are Yin or Yinfu style, Cheng or Cheng Ting Hua style, and Gao style.
I currently study the YiZong Branch of the Gao Yi Sheng style Bagua. There is a large emphasis on long body postures and deep stance work. Gao style is also charachterized by it's 64 linear Post Heaven or Hou Tian forms. These 64 forms primarily serve to train the body as well as the fighting principles inherent within them. It is a very comprehensive system.
From what I have heard and from what I have seen, Yin style has more emphasis on fajing style hitting in its forms.
As far as Cheng style is concerned, its circle walking forms or palm changes look similar to those that I have seen within the Tianjin branch of Gao style Bagua.
I think that the similarities are there because Cheng Ting Hua is a bit back in the Gao style lineage.
Dong Hai Chuan (the founder of Baugua) had two top students, Yin Fu and Cheng Ting Hua. It is from these two guys that most of the other branches of Bagua have been developed.
I hope this gets the ball rolling a bit.
Time to go

i heard (and assumed ) that bagua is based on a daoist tradition and is (in modern times) mainly associated with the wudang area. but from what i have learned it used to be more a 'family style' and only later incorporated daoist beliefs. do you know anything about that? i'm just find contradicting info on the web, and i'd greatly appreciated some info.

hey, thanks for the great start! For some reason I have the hardest time finding bagua. Even bagua movies are rare to find for me. So I gather than Yin, Gao and Cheng are the bagua branches most people are familiar with, muhc like it's Yang, Chen, Wu and Sun with tai chi? (Sorry if I always compare it to tai chi, but since it's something I'm familiar with, it helps a lot).

I'll admit I'm having a hard time picturing things, as I barely know what the palm changes look like. So I guess I'll start with rough questions?

Basically, I know bagua to be very spiral like, mostly palm base, taking odd angles on the opponent, and walking the bagua circles. Is that fairly true for the 3 branches discussed so far?

Quote:

---

that bagua is based on a daoist tradition and is (in modern times) mainly associated with the wudang area.

---

In modern times I see Bagua being more associated with the Tianjin and Bejing area on the mainland and within several areas in Taiwan.
Bagua does have Taoist roots due to its esoteric influence by the I Ching and other meditation practices that have been developed by Taoist sages over the years.
I think people have difficulty finding quality information concerning Bagua practices on the internet because these practice take a lot of time to cultivate and train properly and require direct transmition to understand properly.