Hi Tim,
With your experience in the internal arts and fighting experience, I wonder what is your opinion on some more "flowery" type 360 degrees spins in Bagua zhang such as those found in the dragon bagua form of Fu style?
Here is a short clip :http://www.fustyle.org/Vids/dragonpakua.mov

I think the idea of movements like those is to train the balance and coordination. I think that's fine, as long as you realize if you are training to fight, the bulk of your training has to be practical applications and sparring.