If you wanted to design a system of exercise that combined both esthetic, martial and practical considerations you couldn't do much better than Ba Gua Zhang. It moves the body through an impressive range of movement, imparts flexibility, coordination and fitnesss. Efficiency is at the heart of its fighting strategy, and meditation is an integral part of the practise. On top of all this Ba Gua is perhaps the most beautiful of martial arts.

In many areas of life esthetics and utility are considered separate, but from some perspectives the two are not just related, but are dependent on each other.

Esthetic sensibilities are influenced by cultural factors. But there may also be deeper biological and evolutionary forces at work. Forces that make a beauty more than decoration, but an important aspect of survival.

An appreciation of beauty is common across human history and society. It is possible to stunned by a piece of art from a completely unfamiliar part of the world, with no prior experience of the culture that gave rise to it.

There are objects of admiration that exist outside the realm of human creativity. Not everyone likes cats, but few people fail to appreciate their smooth grace of movement. Cats don't need lessons in moving beautifully. They move according to their needs, according to their biology. Controlled fluid movement is vital to an animal that lives by stalking.

Perhaps our sense of esthetic is just as biological as cat's grace. It's been developed to guide us towards efficiency in action. We've taken the same principles and applied them to art, architecture and engineering, with varying degrees of success.

Moving around, lets go back to a circular art. Mistaking Ba Gua Zhang for dancing is an easy error. Good Ba Gua must be graceful, it demands both stability and fluid mobility because these are the reqirements of combat.

These traits demonstrate efficiency of movement, and appeal to something deep within our brains. The turns and spins of Ba Gua touch us in the same way as the sweep of a calligrapher's brush, the lines of fine sculpture, or the emotive force of music.

Of course Ba Gua is not simply movement for grace's sake. The rhythms and cadences, the rise and fall follow the logic of the human body, of leverage and deception. But that is another story.

One of the most noticeable characteristics of Taiji and Bagua is the continuous transformation of the postures. Contrast this with Karate where there is an alternation of still, move, still, move. Better Karateka maintain the potential for movement in stillness, and so maintain a flow internally. But there is clearly a difference in approach.

Flow is interesting in that it can apply on many different levels, and across different timescales. Using the concept of flow as a filter to view the world can lead to a different awareness, and useful information.

The flow that is apparent in internal martial arts is a physical one. It is the coordination of muscles joint and bones to allow force from one part of the body to travel smoothly to another part.

The force of the feet pushing into the ground is directed through postural control to the hands. The better the posture the cleaner the flow, less of that force from the feet gets caught up in other parts of the body. This can become experientially clear quite easily. Essentially it is just applied mechanics, and nothing mysterious.
Classically these mechanics are the three external harmonies. The shoulders harmonise with the hips, the hips harmonise with the elbow, the hands harmonise with the wrists.

Luo De-Xiu practicing the long circle form of Gao style bagua

What controls the posture controls the flow. In internal martial arts the mind controls the posture. This is described by the three internal harmonies. Heart harmonises with intention, intention harmonises with Qi, and Qi harmonises with power.

To achieve a good physical flow, the mind needs to lead the body. In leading the body it cannot become fixed because the posture is constantly adjusting and changing.

The same idea is found in the Yi Jing, in which nature is seen as continuously transforming. The only constant is that change is constant.

Photos of Taiji or other martial arts postures can be very misleading. It is easy to become obsessed with the beautiful climax of a movement. That moment where the hand reaches maximum extension, where the kicking leg reaches its highest point. To become obsessed and become fixed.

From a martial arts point of view this is lethal. It is precisely at that most extended moment where there is greatest vulnerability.

It is the process of transition, how the movements gather and leap from peak to peak that hold the secrets of power and tecnique.

My teacher Luo says he has 'thief eyes'. He can look and remember or understand techniques very quickly. He puts this ability down to a childhood love of reading comics. To make them more interesting he would use his mind fill in the movement from static frame to static frame.

Whether continuously flowing through postures helps the mind to accept the idea of flow, or whether considering flow will help the body to move smoothly.
Some flows are obvious, others are less so.
The movement of water downstream is clear to our eyes. The ripples and eddies in that water are also visible. You have to watch a long time to see similar flows revealed in the writhing of the river's course as the banks erode. Waves in the sea rise and fall, peaking and crashing as you watch. In the desert sand dunes mimic the same rise and fall, creeping not crashing onto the cultivated land around them. Dynamite shoots cracks through hard ground and rock. Tree roots shatter the ground the same way, but more slowly.

When you look through the eyes of flow objects begin to disappear. Nouns melt into verbs.

Is a body a body or is it a process of growth and death. Our nervous system branching through the tissue like networks of rivers pooling in our brains and bellies, where connections join and fade. We call the process consciousness.

Everything falls fluidly into a state of flux constantly shifting and making attempts at finally defining or understanding the smallest thing completely an infinite task. Instead of billiard balls bouncing in a predictable way the world is a pond with millions of ripples rolling, reflecting and refracting each other.

When you recognize the impossibility of creating some fixed understanding, a pocket dogma to fight over with the people who disagree, then something wonderful happens. You give up attempting to make things fixed and static. You begin to see again, open to all the change instead of constantly picking out the predictable and familiar.
The mind stops trying to label and identify things, but goes with the flow of the senses. This is one of the phenomenon called 'stillness in motion' by internal martial arts.