August, 2008 Archive
The Latest Pushing Hands Workshop was September 19th, 2008
My thanks to
Scott White and his
Personal Training Zone
4022 South 2700 East
Salt Lake City, UT 84124
(801) 596-7035We do push hands in most classes, and the next Full Pushing Hands Workshop is in March 2009.
- Single Pushing Hands
- Double Pushing Hands
- Corner Pushing Hands
Done well, with firmness and structure, elasticity and sensitivity, balance and timing, each Pushing Hands Drill provides insight into body-mind movements. Inspire strength and expire fear-reactions to grasp and hone these drills.
Each one compounds on the lessons of the others and integrates into a fluid-flowing, combat-training system. They provoke awareness. Breath deepens, body structures strengthen, and movement sophisticates, through repetition in each drill, stimulating potent healing potential.
Single Pushing Hands
“If you learn nothing else, learn Ward-Off (Peng)” suggests a Classic Taiji Writer. And indeed, Single Pushing Hands teaches Ward-Off-By-Lifting-Upward. A great reality and powerful metaphor, this concept develops strength and sensitivity in the resisting arm — through resistance. First and foremost, train the Ward-Off with a firm structure to produce strength in the tissues of the warding arm.
Push firmly toward the opponents center, and resist steadily throughout the pushing motion. Train this repetitive motion until arm muscles tire, ache, and weaken, then notice core body muscules participating and guiding; wear out that arm long enough to feel the core. This gross motion becomes subtle as one gains enough structural strength to resist with less and less mental effort. The body begins to feel, through and beyond tensions, resisting minimally, exactly where necessary. The body begins to read the opponent’s force trajectories, smiling with just the right amount of tension. Fascia and tendons and ligaments gain tensile strength through repetition.
Read Three Great Drills That Build Self-Defense »
Single Pushing Hands Builds Reflexive Power
Place your hand on a hot stove and — jerk it away. That’s a reflex! For all the times it works, keep it: you’ll need reflexes later. Your body, your nervous system, crafted this technique for a long time. Use your current training strategies and single pushing hands to unleash the power of reflexes!
Three training methods promote vibrant self-defense: strategic, reflexive, and sensitive.
Strategic models employ set routines and applications to mock attacker behavior and defender technique. Good stuff, and every movement education employs it. Hard styles utilize this approach to a large degree. Faster forms, both one-person and two-person rely on strategic concepts. They hold the possibilities of near-full-power because random attacks are removed. Such drills improve an individual’s threshold of resiliance; they toughen you up!
Sensitivity models reduce fear-reactions and increase deep-body awareness. Slow forms, sticky hands, and soft, punch-absorption practices do this too. By learning to resist little, responding and flowing with attackers, a defender learns to coil around force and to redistribute force into an attacker. These drills and methods create proper responses and deeper inner power.
(Sometimes: because of choreography, strategic models of self-defense become unrealistic, and they may accidentally teach rigidity to bodies and fear-reactions to minds—an uh-oh reflex. Likewise, because sensitivity models utilize slow, soft motions to emulate realistic attacks, they become unrealistic, often teaching weakness to bodies and fantasies to minds by devaluing force and pretending toughness.)
Reflex training exists between hardened training and softened responses. Long-term reflex training represents a balanced approach. Unlearn conditioned fear-responses, and develop sturdy of body, mind, and spirit. Built-in to your spinal column, reflexes —like the hot stove reflex— cause action before you can think about, or cognitively process, events. Strategic methods go reflexive by adding random elements and by increasing perceptions; i.e. strategic methods become reflexive by inserting softness and sensitivity. Sensitivity methods go reflexive by toughening up, by adding some force and oomph to your work.
Single Pushing Hands releases innate, reflexive power by allowing one to practice either or both: structural, heavy hitting push-hands or soft, light, sensitive pushing hands.
Single Pushing Hands, utilizing the methods from the World Taiji Boxing Association,
- builds circular strength
- releases reflexive self-defense
- sensitizes coordination, balance, and timing
How do we do it?
Read The Secret of Reflexive Self Defense »
Sometimes, when I say “I teach Taiji,” embarrassment haunts me. Other-times, reluctance fills me because I know the common misconceptions grating my sense of the Supreme, Ultimate Fist Form. Oftentimes, I disrupt some common misconceptions about Tai Chi Chuan.
Some are ridiculous, some are silly; all of them radiate from a lack of martial training. Martial training is a requirement in Tai Chi Chuan. Do it. Fighting and combat skills set the spiritual stage, the mental mood, and the physical atmosphere for proper confidence, clarity, and calm. Martial training tunes the body, mind, and spirit. Most misconceptions manifest in popular culture (and in pseudo-Tai Chi Schools) because instructors teach wrongly, poorly, incompetently, or deceptively. Get the truth. Don’t believe me. Read it, test it, know it.
- It’s That-Yoga-Like-Thing. No way, not even close. This misconception spreads because people lack in-depth, sophisticated methods and materials for learning and understanding Tai Chi. Instructors at Colleges and Community Programs often lack deep experience in Tai Chi, though they believe they can teach it. Tai Chi teachers seek health benefits (they were told Tai Chi has health benefits), and they often include, in their curriculum, Yoga Breathing, Yoga Meditation, and Yoga Poses to supplement their lack of Tai Chi knowledge and skill. If they do this, get away. They might be bored; they certainly don’t know enough T’ai Chi to teach it.
Read 5 Embarrassing Misconceptions About Tai Chi »
The Intense Third and Final Section of the Yang Chen Fu Long Form
The third section delivers deeper body movements and challenges our stretch reflex. Movements like Snake Creeps Down pound spring into your legs. Complex coiling in Lady-Weaves-at-Shuttles wrap the mind around four corners, and wild, whipping motions from Lotus Kick pop and lock energies in tight circles.
This third section is the final section. Thirds in the Yang Chen Fu Long Form are not thirds in terms of number of movements, but in terms of internal energy work. As such, this is the longest third, motion by motion. Each third demonstrates growth in stamina and development of inner body resources; in this one we go down and up from Snake Creeps Down into Rooster Stands on One Leg!
