day 177: moving push hands

concepts:

• movement
• force
  

forms:

• chen push hands
• chen hwa jing drills
• chang quan
  

this Sunday was another small crowd, with 6 people total. since people showed up at various times, everyone was in various stages of warming up or reviewing forms when Sifu arrived.

chang quan

Sifu took the opportunity to check my chang quan, correcting some lingering issues from Friday. he had me work on this awhile while he looked over Phunsak and John Eagles (Phunsak was teaching John the yang tai chi long form), Josan (who is refining the chen tai chi long form), and Jonathan Shen (who is continuing on mantis).

i managed to remember more of the form today, and so had some more confidence in going through the part i'd worked on this past Friday. of course, i found i'd also promptly forgotten a couple of points i'd gotten that day, and so had to work on them a bit to make sure i retained them. but the movements felt more natural, which i take as something positive.

chen push hands

Sifu eventually started our chen tai chi lesson. he started by having us perform a series of tests, wherein some of us were positioned to form obstacles, and the rest were asked to walk towards the "obstacles" and navigate through them. the catch was that this was to be done with eyes closed.

Sifu had us do 3 exercises with this: 1) walking forward with eyes closed towards a partner about 10 meters away, with the goal of stopping within a foot of them, 2) walking forward with eyes closed towards 2 partners standing an arms-length from each other and 10 meters away, with the goal of walking through the arms-length gap between them, and 3) walking forward with eyes closed towards 3 partners with arms-length spaces between them and 10 meters away, with the goal of initially walking towards 1 gap, and then changing direction about 2 meters away to the other gap.

the results were mixed. we all found ourselves accomplishing this with varying degrees of success.

Sifu said this was a demonstration of a "sixth sense", in that it is possible to utilize an additional sense to detect the positions and actions of other people, even when you can't see or hear them. Sifu said that this isn't really so far-fetched, in that it's really just the employment of bio-magnetic sensitivity--something which animals (e.g., birds) use all the time, and something which humans (just like any other animal) have. the problem is that humans, particularly in modern times, have been taught to distrust or ignore their bio-magnetic sensitivity, and so have to be trained to know and use it.

Sifu stressed that the purpose of push hands is exactly this. he said push hands develops ting jing, but that this didn't just involve sensitivity in terms of the usual 5 senses (i.e., see, feel, hear, smell, taste), but also sensing bio-magnetic energy. this is the reason why he wants us to do push hands with our eyes closed and with as little noise as possible, so as to force us to rely on other senses (i.e., our "sixth sense"). this way, we'll develop it, and be able to use it to sense our opponent's actions.

finishing with this, he then had us resume the chen push hands, building upon last week by asking that this time we incorporate footwork. essentially, it's push hands, but done while stepping backwards and forwards with either foot of either partner's choice.

the goal of this is to increase the complexity of the exercise, with either partner free to adjust stance and foot positioning as well as orientation of hands. in essence, it adds additional variables to push hands in the form of lower body work. the motive, however, is still the same: to develop ting jing, but with your sensitivity not just in the hands and arms, but also in sensing the opponent's lower body movements.

i worked with Phunsak on this, and we ended up having a marathon moving push hands session, with no breaks. in addition, we increased the complexity level, with me experimenting with the integration of bagua footwork and Phunsak utilizing varying levels of speed and force and acceleration/deceleration. this was a bit of a challenge, particularly since i had my eyes closed, and required a lot of concentration. we kept this up until Sifu told us to stop, which wasn't for quite some time.

chen hwa jing drills

next, Sifu gathered us together and reminded us about the tai chi principle of "4 ounces of force redirects 1,000 pounds." this is a pretty well-known principle, and one closely tied to push hands. Sifu, however, said that there were other drills we could and should use to develop this specific skill.

for today, he introduced us to the very basic drill. it involves 2 partners facing each other in relaxed postures. one partner serves as the "attacker" and tries to reach out to push the other partner, who is the "defender." the "defender" tries to redirect the attacker's push, but not by using direct force-on-force confrontation, but instead by trying to locate the spots on the opponent's arms where they can use minimal force while still deflecting the attacker's push. the deflection needs to be in a direction that renders the attack harmless to the defender--either up, to the side, or down. in addition, the attacker needs to act in a random fashion, so the defender doesn't know where the attacks are coming from.

the objectives of this drill are to 1) develop the ting jing "sixth sense" to read and detect the attacker's actions, and then 2) follow the ting jing by applying hwa jing in an easy, effortless manner to neutralize the attacker's actions.

we worked on this for the remainder of class, exchanging roles and changing stances. Sifu said this was a good warm-up exercise, and that he'd like to see us use this to start every class, since it works the foundational building blocks of tai chi fighting skills.

by this time it was around noon, and both Sifu and Phunsak had planned to attend Master Su's (not Su Yuchang, but Su Fu-Zing--sic?) in Long Beach, which was at 2pm. so we closed class to go to lunch and allow enough time for them to get to Long Beach.