Tai Chi Chuan – the Perfect Push Hands Form and Why

Tai Chi Chuan – the Perfect Push Hands Form and Why

If tai chi is based on relaxation and non-doing, what does the push hands form feel like using relaxation and non-doing?  What’s going on?  What is happening?  How does one get there?  Is there any purpose in all this?

My famous stick exercise (ok, it’s not really famous!) contains the secret.  “Stick” here does not refer to “stick and follow”.  Stick here refers to an actual wooden stick!

But I digress, let me make some suggestions head on.

Let’s begin with non-doing.  This may include:

Not looking for your partner’s center.

Not blocking them.

Not forcing any move.

No erratic movement.

Smooth movement.

Not getting away.

Letting them go where they want to go.

Not trapping them.

No pressure at the point of contact.

Not controlling them.

Your pelvic movement mirrors theirs.

Body upright.

And so forth.

“Doing” is so habitual, it’s hard to feel.  Mostly we see the partner doing,  but never ourselves.

But if you let go of all the habitual “I’m getting you” – “I’m getting away from you” behaviors, something else happens.  That something else is two-fold: You see what is really going on and you see the path that is intrinsic to the push hands form.

I would claim that this path is not a choice.  It is required.  And furthermore, this path is specific to each and every partner.  That is, the path changes with each partner and the path that emerges can be only ONE path specific to that partner.  New partner, new path.  Only ONE path with this new partner. There is no choice here.

The water flows in a figure eight unimpeded, as if two mountains have defined the path of the river.  Like the water, you settle into this path.  You let it happen.  You don’t control it.  It controls you.  You have no choice in the matter, no different than if you are driving your car on a mountain road.  Best practice?  Stick to the road!  It tells you where to go.  No crashes, no falling off the mountainside, no head on collisions.

And if you are not “doing” in your form, but allowing this specific and perfect path to emerge, what is going on?  Once the path emerges, you are FOLLOWING THE MOVEMENT.  Simple as that sounds, we rarely follow the movement because we are so involved in making something happen.  The movement is the organic result of the push hands form and these two particular bodies in motion.  Attention without intention is required.

I would argue that this is the basis of great push hands.  What you would like to happen is find this perfect pathway and then let it move you.  If you diverge, you get pushed. If they diverge, they get pushed.

If you began from this perspective, you would more readily SEE the doing.  Doing is often an unconscious choice, sometimes based in bad habits.

This is not an empty gesture.  We are not agreeing to go along to get along.  We are not just pretending to be nice, nonthreatening, nonaggressive, or worse, kid ourselves that finally we are being “soft”.

We are actively involved in the creation of the perfect pathway, getting in the river, and finding how to let the water move us without disturbing the ecology of the river.  This requires full body awareness, full body movement.

Doors will open once you approach push hands in this manner.

Is this true?  I think it is true and as we all know, whenever we think a thought, WE THINK OUR THOUGHT MUST BE TRUE!  (But that’s another topic…)