The Chinese martial arts world is fascinating. Be able to codify and to transmit in the centuries, techniques and complex bodily movements from generation to generation, it is stately. That comes amplified, if the purposes and the goals include the internal involvement also (ideal of existence), anf if they are founded upon spirituality. The interlacement of the millennial martial Chinese arts with the spiritual movements create man who raises from an ordinary life, to an extraordinary life dedicated to the development and to the amelioration of the own personality.

Martial art in fact, in his deeper meaning, doesn't mean only to become invincible fighters, but and above all to become good men, with better discipline and values, and with the control of the own physical and mental potentiality. I must admit that these are noble purposes, that follow to a deepened acquaintance of the matter. My same initial approach was like for all the profane people on the martial arts, to imitate the example of the legendary deeds of the protagonists that I saw in the televisions movies. The jumps and the fast movements that the martial actors performed, to first impact without sense but effective, they captured for a little bit of time my interest.

Unfortunately, until to half of the '80s, Italy didn't offer certainly a great chance of choice, and I besides knew only vaguely the differences between a tested system like the Karate and one more unknown like the Gongfu. Once upon a day, I saw ,crossing by bus the center of the city, an insignia on a showcase that brought again: "School of Gongfu"; I had found what I looked for!. The day after I enrolled, and thank also to the seriousness with which the teacher taught, started my search on the martial Chinese arts. I must recognize that I, just since the initial period, sought something more than kicks and fists, in fact, that was only the hull of the art, and not its inside.

The hard reality was to be in a beautiful ocean of techniques and movements call Gongfu. In fact, also if from a first acquaintance it doesn't seem, the world of the Chinese Gongfu is vast. The schools that in many centuries have developed are hundreds, and they are different in way more or less evident according to the style from which they derive.

Substantially the principal schools are two: the external school or Exoteric, and the inside or Esoteric school. This distinction is very important. The first brings more attention to the muscular development, exalting the direct impact, the hard clash (Shaolin style), while the second one develops mostly the internal, understood like inside energy of the individual, through his control and canalization.

Generally in China the two schools are divided, external work said Waigong simply, and internal said Neigong. Under these two big groups of division so much other schools exist, that only differ in the technical part of the movements, but they maintain however the same basic principles. From the 1987 at 1991 I practised 5 styles, of which 2 belonging to the external styles and 3 belonging to the internal. I had way to know the differences between the varied schools, and after a period of hard practice and reflection, I decided to continue only with the study of the Esoteric school.

In the 1992, August, I participated in an intensive course on the Bagua art in the United States, in Virginia, at the school of master Park Bok Nam. At the end of the same year, I met my teacher Loriano Belluomini, deep expert of all the greater styles of Baguazhang, Taijiquan and Xingyiquan (the 3 internal styles). I want to thank him for having given my practice a decisive turn. I studied under his teaching the Cheng school (of Cheng Tinghua) of Baguazhang in a deep way, and partly of the Yin Fu style.

After many years of study of the Bagua techniques, and its theory, I decided to transmit to other people in the simpler way and traditionally correct, the big charm of this martial art. Currently I teach Cheng style Baguazhang to a group of people in a gym in Montegrotto Terme (Padova).

Fabio Sandonà

Summer 1998