Tai Chi Chuan - Why is Push Hands So Difficult and Confusing?

Tai Chi Chuan – Why is Push Hands So Difficult and Confusing?

Many a beginner and even many a more experienced tai chi player is confused by Push Hands practice.  Many think they don’t need it.

There is a fundamental and deep reason Push Hands is confounding.   It goes like this: we are biologically programmed by evolution for Fight or Flight.  We can all see why that worked in a world full of tigers or marauding invaders.  Push Hands is based on Relax and Respond.  We are not programmed for Relax and Respond.  Furthermore, in order for Relax and Respond to have any functional effectiveness, you need to learn the skill of fusing with your partner without being invasive, controlling or manipulative.  Hence, it takes our complete attention to make this shift.  It takes great inhibition of our evolutionary instinct.  It takes ongoing practice, trial and error, and lots of failure.  Little wonder we want to avoid it.

In terms of the tai chi form itself, Push Hands deepens the functionality of the form.  You begin to understand where the functional use is on many levels, why the sinking into the feet is needed, how being relaxed and light in the upper body allows you responsiveness and agility. 

Professor Cheng Man-ch’ing told us that we should do the form as if we are defending ourselves from an attack (or something like that) and practice Push Hands as if we are alone.  The sense of this statement is that you want to let the form have energetic and functional meaning, and you don’t want to get too involved in having an intention in your Push Hands (which leads to strength.)

So even if you haven’t “gotten it” yet, and you think you never will, there are many jewels to be discovered in the process.  It is a study worth studying.

I have come to believe that looking for an end point in Push Hands study is futile and limiting. Once you have one level of mastery, you can always aim higher by letting the game become more energetic and spontaneous, your push softer while generating more power, your listening more acute.  Most likely I will never be able to handle a real fight using tai chi.  It doesn’t matter to me.

“Why do we climb the mountain?”

“Because it’s there!”

But that is not the truth of the matter.  We climb the mountain because of the many lessons to be learned in the process.  We grow as a result of the very effort itself in climbing.

Imagine pushing someone without force!  How magical!  If you have the patience and the dedication to engage this practice, Push Hands study is pure gold!  Not because you can push someone without force, but because of the many many many OTHER lessons it has to teach.