The Secret of Reflexive 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,

1. builds circular strength
2. releases reflexive self-defense
3. sensitizes coordination, balance, and timing

How do we do it?

Pushing Hands, at a basic level, emphasizes structure, motion, and breathing. We look at the static setup to lock the structure, root the pattern, and process the breath. We examine the dynamic pattern to integrate our structure with our weaving pattern and deepening breath.

1. The Static Setup

Two people face each other, straight on. Square off, face to face, shoulders and hips square. This is an aggressive, face to face, scenario, and if we learn to cope with this set-up, other, less aggressive scenarios will be easier. Elbows bent at 100 degrees, each holds the left wrist in front of the breastbone. Left wrists touch. Right wrists hover, palm toward the ground, by right hips. We stand casually, in Taiji Fighting Stance, close enough to hit each other.

Taiji Fighting Stance I call Bus Stop Stance because it’s how I stand at the bus stop or while waiting in line. It’s casual. Some specific details follow: heels are hip-width apart. The forward foot is barely forward; the heel of the forward foot lines up, on the sideways line, with the rear toes. The forward foot turns inward 45 degrees. The rear foot points directly forward, at the opponent.

Basics of Taiji Posture never leave us.

1. Weight sinks into the heels.
2. Knees bend.
3. Pelvis tucks a bit.
4. Breathe with the belly.
5. Space remains in the armpits.
6. Chin tucks.
7. Crown of the head lifts up.
8. Tongue rests on the roof of the mouth.
9. Eyes gaze over the opponent’s shoulder.
10. Hands hold the Taiji Tile Palm.

Remember: each player’s wrist remains in front of their own respective breastbone, always. The other wrist hovers next to the hip, palm facing the ground.

2. The Dynamic Pattern

Starting with left hands and left feet forward, one player pushes the other.

The Pusher exhales and presses the left palm on the back of Receiver’s left wrist. The Pusher moves weight from right foot into left foot and twists the waist toward the right-front corner. The angle of the push is 45°. We learn to proper angles by using the proper angles over and over. Note also that the feet, because of the directions they point, bind the hips. The hips move very little, though the whole upper body–the ribs, breastbone, shoulders, and head–turns toward that front-right-corner. We develop powerful waist turning, twisting, and torque!

The Receiver inhales and receives the Pusher’s pressure on the back of the left wrist. The fingers of the left hand point toward the right shoulder; this rounds the upper back enough that pressure spreads across the whole back instead of focusing on the arm. Let some pressure build: don’t go limp; this develops arm strength and structure. The Receiver moves weight from left foot into right foot, while his or her loose waist (and whole upper-body) twists from front-right to front-left. Again, the waist torques in sensitivity and power.

Each hand rolls over. The Receiver’s palm rests on the back of the Pusher’s wrist. Now the Pusher becomes Receiver, and the Receiver, the Pusher.

Neither the Pusher nor the Receiver flex nor extend their arms. Well, just a little: the elbows remain at about 100 degrees, give or take 10 during the dynamics of pushing. The arms don’t move much at all. The only thing that happens in the arms, at the basic level, is that the wrists turn over. The weight change combined with the waist’s twisting-torque create the Pusher’s pressure and the Receiver’s resistance.

Press and Receive. Repeat 100 times. Change to right hands, repeat 100 times. Do it again tomorrow.

Enjoy.