"The Bear’s movement is slow and stable while the Bird is light and flexible. The Tiger is violent and powerful while the Deer is relaxed and limber and the Monkey, active, agile and alert. "


"The twelve animal forms employ modification of the mind-intention and body form plus changes in the steps to create other internal waves that propagate differently through the body: galloping like a horse; pouncing like a tiger; swimming like an alligator; coiling and striking out like a snake etc. Each animal creates a different step, a different spinal wave, different internal vibrations and wave forms that in turn modify mind and intention."

You've mentioned that hsing i has nothing to do with the animals themselves and that the animals were just trigrams attributed to them or something like that (bad paraphrase of your words, sorry).

Hsing i teachers I've spoken to talk about animals like the above paragraph. Are students of hsing i supposed to use the above images at all when applying hsing i? The first paragraph seems like a good way to be when fighting in general without the animals. The second paragraph seems like it's telling the hsing i student to move with specific qualities when fighting. Were you taught to move like you were swimming like an alligator, etc, when you practiced hsing i?

I've said the animal names associated with the Sun style Baguazhang forms have nothing to do with the attributes of the animals, it's different for the animal forms in Xingyiquan.

The individual animals chosen for XYQ forms are supposed to inspire the "intent" of the animals during practice (not so much mimicking the animals actual movements).