“And The Problem Is”… Push Hands

Push hands, or pushing hands, is an exercise where tai chi players learn to “listen” to their partner’s energy.  The exercise starts out very simply with two people facing each other in the same bow stance: either left or right. Each person then extends the same arm as the forward foot and touches the back of their wrist to the back of their partner’s wrist.

The next step is to begin “stirring the soup”. Each partner keeps their arm extended, soft but with structure, in a large curved shape, and moves forward and backward while turning their waist and keeping their hand in front of their chest. The goal here is to “feel” your partner’s movement and then feel the energy in their body so you can maintain contact at all times.

As you gain skill in this simple exercise you can begin to vary the force you use and respond to your partner’s change in force.  The new goal is to take your partner off balance.   This is not a competition of muscle against muscle though.  If you are to really learn to use your own, and your partner’s, internal energy you need to flow with the energy rather than to just grab your partner and throw them off. Sometimes it’s better to add force and other times it is better to lessen your force.

From this beginning exercise, there are many variations and more advanced training exercises.  Learning this skill is not easy and takes a lot of practice.  Form work, jiben gong (moving repetitions), standing exercises, pole work, etc. all contribute to your skill level and can be done on your own.  However, I don’t know of a way to practice push hands without a partner.  Maybe one of you could develop a robot that could help here; I’m just not sure what it would be like to feel a robot’s energy.

I remember reading somewhere where a tai chi teacher was railing against push hands saying that it promoted being artificially soft and was not really useful.  Considering that push hands was developed by people who used tai chi to defend themselves and their families in real life threatening situations, as well as being used by every generation since, it seems odd that it would suddenly loose it’s effectiveness as a training tool.

Now I don’t remember who said that push hands was not a valuable exercise, and they may have developed a very good form of exercise that they do in place of pushing hands.  If so they may have also developed a new style of martial art, or at least a new branch of tai chi.  I don’t believe anything is written in stone; anything can be improved upon. The problem is most “improvements” turn out to be less than satisfactory.

It remains to be seen if push hands really is dead as an exercise.  In the mean time I think I keep practicing, just in case.

Bye for now,

John

P.S. This picture was taken by my senior training brother Michael Holland in Zhongsan Park, Bejing, China. Far left is my teacher Miram Holland; Center My Master, Master Cui Zhongsan; Next to right my senior training borther Rinjun; Far right my senior training sister Joann

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