Chapter

17

The Art & Science of Push Hands

In This Chapter

Push Hands is a paradox. It is a sparring technique in a way, but it’s also a quiet tool of self-awareness. The way you see Push Hands says as much about you as it does about Push Hands. To one person it may look like a delicate dance, while another may see a physical contest not unlike a sumo-wrestling match. Actually, it can be a tiny bit of both.

By moving your dan tien in toward your opponent, your weight shifts toward your front foot and your Qi flows through the body, exerting a very relaxed force (like the unbendable arm). So as your hand pushes toward your opponent, if your opponent is stiff, this will likely uproot his stance, causing him to lose his balance. If he is supple and yielding, he will absorb your attack and respond in kind.

The goal, however, is not necessarily to forcefully uproot your opponent. Rather, the purpose of Push Hands is to become accustomed to the ebb and flow of physical energy expressed in motion and how you respond to it. If your opponent is pushy and abrupt, he will likely overextend himself as he attacks. This attack isn’t violent; it’s just his arm extending into your chest or heart area. When he overextends, he will come in off-balance if you yield. When he retreats to try to catch his balance, he is vulnerable. A slight push can send a larger, more powerful opponent reeling when he is out of center. The Web Video Support’s Push Hands Shifting illustrates how the practitioner does not overextend when pushing or receding, but maintains postural alignment while flowing through the changing positions. It also will recap how QiGong breathing coordinates with motion, and how energy flow is part of each T’ai Chi or QiGong physical movement.

When pushing hands, you seek to maintain a delicate contact with your opponent while remaining flexible and calmly aware of yourself. Push Hands is mainly about observing and responding with the most power and least effort. The expanded awareness and practice of experiencing different aspects of self that Push Hands promotes makes us more fluid and better able to become whatever is required and most useful at any given moment. Push Hands is training in being all things.

Notice that the pusher is focusing his energy toward the other by facing his palm toward the opponent as he pushes. The energy center, Lao Gong, on the pericardium energy meridian is in the center of the palm of the hand. This is a highly sensitive point and also projects energy outward. Also, notice how the push comes from the dan tien, or lower body, as it shifts forward toward your opponent. You don’t lean out of vertical alignment, but rather let your body ride stacked up above the dan tien. The power of your push comes up from the earth, through your relaxed body carried effortlessly forward by your advancing dan tien, and out through your open hand.

The photos are of right-handed Push Hands, and both the advance and the retreat take the form of body and arm counter-clockwise ovals, as you push with your right hand into their heart. They yield by letting their body shift back and toward their right, and then the oval goes back toward you from their right side, as you yield back and to your right. The goal of Push Hands is not to resist, but to yield and deflect incoming power. As you sink back into your back leg to retreat from the incoming push, the goal is to let your upper body loosen, so that the pushing opponent has nothing to push against. Remember to breathe (tip of tongue lightly touching roof of mouth, just behind top/front teeth) and let the body relax and loosen as you exhale and push, or inhale and yield, alternating pushes and your sinking retreats.

Remember the story of the snake yielding to the white crane’s attacks? Your surrendering retreats, each time your opponent pushes toward you, yielding you out of the way as your pelvis/dan tien rotates to the side, removes any power of the pushing opponent. Again, this isn’t done by resisting, or by pushing back with force, but by relaxing the body to let it turn more easily from the dan tien or pelvis, out of the way of the push. Then when the opponent has extended herself forward, her tendency will be to pull back to regain her vertical posture or balance point, as your now-pushing hand and body surges toward her as she now yields to your push. This practice will develop a subtlety of awareness of force and balance dynamics that will make your efforts in T’ai Chi and life ever more powerful and yet more effortless.

Think of a butterfly resting between the exchanging hands or wrists as you push or retreat from your opponent. Try to be sensitive enough to anticipate motions so your advancing opponent does not crush the butterfly as you lithely retreat. And in turn, as you advance on your opponent by pushing with your right hand, you will apply pressure to his wrist, but he will deflect you and avoid crushing the butterfly by yielding as his body rotates in a relaxed surrender off to his right (your left). This pushing and retreating motion will take on a counter-clockwise oval-shaped motion when you and your opponent use your right hands/wrists to push and yield. When using the left hand, it will be a clockwise oval, as you push toward your partner’s heart, and he deflects you off to his left (your right), and he then pushes into your heart and you deflect him to your left (his right).

Realize that, just as with all T’ai Chi, Push Hands is not physical force as we usually think of it.

SAGE SIFU SAYS

Push Hands is done with the same effortless power as the Unbendable Arm presented in Chapter 3. Also notice that, in this exercise, the unused hand is a fist held at the ready near the chest. In T’ai Chi, as in all martial arts, nothing is done without reason. The resting hand is ever ready to spring into action. Don’t think in fear, but in relaxed alertness.

The Psychology of Push Hands

Push Hands is about observing. As with all T’ai Chi, it is all-encompassing and has as much to teach us about our mind and heart as it does about our physical balance and dexterity.

You know how people say you can tell a lot about someone by his or her handshake? That’s not an old wives’ tale. The same is true of Push Hands. If I am aggressive, pushy, and overpowering in life, this will show up in my Push Hands technique. I will often find myself overextending or over-emphasizing the attack, with little thought of staying centered. Likewise, if I am too timid, the dancing exchange of Push Hands will seem limp and lifeless—not much fun. The goal, as always, is to strike a balance between the raging bull and the shrinking violet, the Yin and the Yang, that resides within all of us. Both aspects of self are perfect and absolutely necessary to making us a whole being, just as nature is perfect because it contains these extremes and everything between.

Practicing Push Hands can raise the raging bull from the shrinking violet and bloom delicate petals from the raging bull. As T’ai Chi expands your beingness, Push Hands can help by illustrating in an external social element the internal tendencies you may not have noticed about yourself or others.

Eventually, Push Hands may become a powerful business or marriage-counseling tool because it helps illuminate how people interact. It’s not about labeling one person’s technique as good or bad, but rather about becoming aware of people’s tendencies so we can interact more effectively, no matter where they’re coming from.

Different Forms of Push Hands

There are several different forms of Push Hands. Some incorporate very directly applicable martial techniques that involve deflecting blows and tripping your opponent as he loses his balance. These are fun but not necessary for most T’ai Chi training. If you’re curious about these techniques, shop around for an instructor well versed in Push Hands. If your instructor doesn’t do Push Hands, you may find weekend workshops that teach the techniques, or video instructionals, or perhaps there may be someone who knows at T’ai Chi club gatherings. Contacting the T’ai Chi organizations listed in Appendix A or at www.worldtaichiday.org may help lead you to teachers or events that specialize in Push Hands.

OUCH!

Legends of the Masters

There are stories about T’ai Chi masters who exhibit almost superhuman strength when being pushed or when pushing others. Bill Moyers’ documentary on the healing mind showed an old Chinese master who could withstand the onslaught of a half-dozen pushing students without being budged and seemingly without really exerting himself. This same master also sent those students flying off across the lawn with hardly any indication of movement on his part. I met such a master, a Russian T’ai Chi teacher named Vladimir Pankov, who had mastered this skill, and he stunned my large athletic son when he visited us in America and demonstrated some techniques on him.

There is an area of T’ai Chi that focuses on energy projection, called fa-jing, and it is claimed that some masters (like the one Bill Moyers met) can use the force of their Qi to withstand attacks and send opponents flying. However, there may be a physically explainable element to this ability as well.

Master Henry Look, one of the great T’ai Chi masters, was an engineer by trade, and he saw T’ai Chi from that angle. If the human body is a structure like a building, engineering principles may explain some of this. If just the right structuring of materials in just the right way can build buildings that resist massive pressure in weight-bearing demands, can’t the body likewise do so? If a T’ai Chi master were very attuned to how his body aligned bones and muscles with the support of the earth beneath, he would be more able to resist great external force by using internal engineering principles by relaxing his body out of the way between opponent and earth (see Unbendable Arm). Also, as in Push Hands, if one was so self-aware of these principles, one could be subtly attuned to when this opponent offered the slightest break in solidity. Then the master would be able to uproot the opponent with the least bit of force. This would seem magical to the untrained eye, just as a remote control would seem magical to a caveman. However, it may really be just a matter of developing a subtle physical awareness.