Xing Yi Quan: Art of Inner Transformation Paperback – August 20, 2019

I have the pleasure to study Xing Yi Quan personally with Tom. This books it's very interesting, well written and very helpful as a companion if you're taking real classes. I don't believe you can learn this internal martial art ONLY from a book, so I encourage you to find a good teacher (like Tom!) read this book and practice every day!Thanks Tom for spread all your knowledge with the public!

This is am excellent Xingyi book. It fills in many of the gaps that other, equally great, Xingyi books leave out. If you study Xingyi or are interested in 5 element theory this book is a must have. Thank you Mr. Bisio.

Beyond perfect! Precise, simple, informative.

Tom Bisio has made another contribution to the internal martial arts with this excellent book. He has provided the reader with a very thorough treatment of Xing Yi Quan. Very well researched, coherent and clear work that exhibits the author’s knowledge, experience, and passion for the topic. I enjoyed the book very much and recommend it to all who would like to learn more about Xing Yi.

This book is about exactly what the title says, Inner Transformation. I'm a student of Taichi, rather than Xing- yi, but found this book enormously useful.In particular, the explanations of what you should be doing in Zhang Zhuan stances are invaluable. He uses Santishi in the book but the explanations transpose beautifully to the Standing Post exercise. He clarified questions for me that I've had for over 20 years.There's much more of value in this book but I'll not go into detail here. Suffice it to say that I'll be re-reading this and using it as a guidebook.

I read the book out of curiosity, yet with the knowledge learnt from Taiji pracice, i could find the commonality with what is written in this book, the profoundity of the author, and his extraordinary experience helped me somehow have more thorough understanding of the internal art. Good book to read

If you are looking for information on the art of Xing Yi you would be well served if you started here. The author is an expert and has a well established Linage and Education in this field. The book is a great resource for the established player also. Do yourself a favor and just buy it.

This is an excellent book with cited sources. Whether reading specifically for Xingyiquan or for Internal Arts in general, I found this to be well written, researched and presented . I would highly recommend it

Over the course of 216 pages, Tom Bisio manages to talk a lot about Xingyi without actually teaching a single movement, form or technique. To be fair, before I purchased, I had read that in the blurb (that this is not a how-to manual), but somehow it is still disappointing to see.Much of what is reproduced here is is available in the existing literature on the subject, and the author often explicitly references those books. Beyond that, there may be an extra, perhaps 5%, that Bisio enhances the material by adding his own insight. If you are already familiar with the English language literature on Xingyi, then I think this book only adds a little to it. I don't think this book is essential.On the other hand, if you are new to the art, or have not read many books on it, then this book may be a good introduction. Bear in mind that you would need to have learnt San Ti Shi and forms from somewhere else for this book to make much physical sense.This is a kind of book "about" Xingyi which talks about it without teaching you. For example, one chapter is called Xing Yi Quan as a Psycho-Spiritual Path, and another is Who can practise Xing Yi Quan?There is a little useful material here about alignments and forces in San Ti Shi which is shown with helpful diagrams, which I feel is a bit clearer than in other works, but I still feel that more could be done by authors to help explain the internal dynamics and alignments.The author mentions "Four method Breathing" (Tu Na Si Ba) as a foundational training technique, and then does not go on to describe how to do it! There is a series of photos, but without explanation - and explanation would be needed to perform nei gong in such a way that it benefits you. Like so much of this book, it seems to just be an enticing syllabus - a promotional leaflet - designed to entice you to spend money elsewhere.A nice touch is how the Author quotes the Daodejing and nei ye appropriately, since appreciating those (as well as the Chuang Zi and Lie Zi) will provide fundamentally helpful imagery for practising standing meditation and also understanding a fundamental aspect of the quality of movement needed in internal kung fu.Looking at Bisio's bibliography, he seems to be a believer in Chinese internal alchemy, but in this book he does not even include a single diagram of Ren and Du, let alone any other meridians. I think he would prefer that you go on to purchase many more of his books, or pay to go to his lessons.The "transformation" of the sub-title is not overly emphasised, thankfully. This transformation would come about after years of training, so there is little point in saying too much about it unless you felt you could help the practitioner past obstacles - which Bisio does not do here.The five elements also get covered here, and I don't feel Bisio adds anything which makes them start making sense. They are still dangerous ideas which will lead to you getting hit in a real fight if you were to try to interpret what type of attach was coming at you and then conclude which element is needed to neutralise it (Wang Xiang Zhai, who studied under Guo Yun Shen, is the clearest on this matter). It's my opinion that Yin and Yang make sense because they correspond to real phases of processes which surround us in the world - every time the sun rises and sets, when the seasons progress through the year, when the moon waxes and wanes, and when a person takes a step forward. Wu Xing and Ba Gua, on the other hand, are cultural constructs. They are colourful, and you could superimpose them on various processes, but in doing so, I think they do not help - they are just window dressing.Later parts of the book become lists of Xingyi forms, which the author is not going to show you anyway, so amount to pretty pointless padding. There is also reproduction of the "songs" and traditional advice of Xingyi, and the main issue with these is translating them in such a way that the modern western mind could understand. Here Bisio inconsistently offers bits of advice from his own experience, or sometimes does not offer much advice.If you wanted a second book on Xingyi (the first would contain the forms), then this book could be OK. But if you were to buy this as a first book on Xingyi, you may end up disillusioned that the field is full of shysters who want to continually relieve you of the money weighing down your pockets.