days 137 & (not) 138): starting push hands

concepts:

• relaxation
• slow
• circles
  

forms:

• yang long form
• push hands
  

this week was my graduation, and i had to miss Thursday class to attend the PhD hooding ceremony. so this is not really a post for both Tuesday and Thursday, but for the sake of consistency i'm keeping both in the discussion--i'll just omit day 138.

day 137

we began push hands today. we started off with a review of the yang long form, but beginning from the very start the that we learned during the winter quarter. i've been doing this on my own, since i find that it helps preserve the memory, so it wasn't that big a deal. i did, however, note a few areas where i didn't quite have things remembered, but for the most part i was able to not worry about the sequence of actions and just focus on proper movement.

from there, Sifu introduced everyone to random circles, which apparently is a fundamental component in beginning push hands training. this involves moving the hands and arms in circular patterns in front of the body, commencing with drills roughly similar to cloud hands, with the hands rotating as the arms rotate. further drills involve coordinating these actions with lower body and core body movements.

after a little time on this, Sifu said we could try basic push hands. he emphasized several things:

he began by stating that push hands was an inappropriate term, since it tends to make people think the exercise is about pushing, or yang action. in reality, he said it's about sensing the opponent, and so requires yin action--and if anything, more yin than yang. as a result, the more accurate term is "listening hands," which better reflects ting jing.

in addition, push hands is done differently--and according to him, incorrectly, in the U.S. in the U.S. the practice is to maintain feet stationary. but this is actually only meant for the elementary stage of push hands, and more advanced levels integrates movement of the feet so that the drill becomes a dynamic interaction involving the entire bodies of both partners.

finally, he said that push hands is not the end of tai chi; mastering push hands does not mean mastering combat application of tai chi. push hands is just an exercise to help improve certain skills, and is just one exercise of many exercises that help the practitioner progress towards learning tai chi. as a result, we shouldn't satisfy ourselves with just push hands for training, but need to recognize it as one training tool of many others, and one training tool with very specific purposes, and hence one that needs to be utilized as part of a much greater process involving other training tools helping us really master the use of tai chi as a martial art

he had us break off into pairs, with each pair exercising basic random circles, using their forearms as the contact point between each partner. Sifu said we needed to maintain a relaxed state, and to not push, but instead to allow ourselves to sense the movement of our opponent. to help develop this sensitivity, he asked us to do things slowly, and just practice the basic circles.

this occupied the remainder of class. i worked with Linus. i should note that this was Linus' last day in the U.S.--he graduated from the business school a quarter ago, and has just been taking the class this quarter even though he's not registered (he was coming to class for culture). he showed up today to say goodbye, since his flight back to Singapore was this night. i took a picture of us doing push hands (that's us in the photo at the top of this post) as a memento.

see ya Linus! if i'm ever in Singapore i'll be sure to look you up! and if you ever visit the U.S., i expect you to do the same!