By Herman P. Kauz

Tai Chi Master, Herman Kauz, started teaching Tai Chi Push- Hands to Pacific College students in February 2000. Kauz's classes are offered at no cost to Pacific College students as part of the college's mission to provide an environment conducive to both academic and personal growth. Herman Kauz is a direct student of the late Grand Master, Professor Cheng Man-Ching. He has advanced training in, and has been a teacher of, both external and internal martial arts systems since 1952. Herman Kauz is the author of well regarded books in the field, including The Martial Spirit, A Path to Liberation; Push-Hands: The Handbook for Non-Competitive Tai Chi Practice With A Partner; and The Tai Chi Handbook. Kauz's classes offer an opportunity for students to open up, relax, and center themselves. Tai Chi Push-Hands acts as a mild form of relaxation exercise that can help concentration, strengthen the legs, reduce mental stress, and increase awareness of qi in oneself and others. As a meditative training, Kauz believes Tai Chi Push-Hands can help students to see themselves and others more clearly, as well as live more completely in each moment. OM

Abstract

We can do taijiquan push-hands in a competitive way and, perhaps thinking we are practicing its martial aspect, do our utmost to avoid losing our balance as we try to unbalance our opponent. Strength and speed are usually prime components of this kind of pushing. On the other hand, we can push with just a minimum of force, changing direction if we meet resistance and yielding instantly to an opponent's attack or counterattack. This latter alternative affords a chance to develop sensitivity and responsiveness and can, if practiced patiently over many years, work beneficial changes in us which at the outset we could not even imagine. This article deals with a mode and attitude in which we can practice with these objectives in mind.

Introduction

In recent years we have learned about the health benefits of taijiquan (usually shortened to tai ji). Tai ji means to most of us a slow motion set of connected movements resembling boxing, performed solo. It is widely practiced in China, especially by older people. Chinese city parks are filled early each morning with people doing various forms of exercise, a strong contingent of tai ji practitioners among them. This practice strengthens legs, improves balance, calms the mind and spirit, and generally improves mental and physical health. Related to this solo form exercise is a practice called push-hands. Here two persons face one another and attempt to break one another's balance using only a minimum of strength. It is generally done slowly from a fixed foot position. That is, if you are losing your balance, stepping in any direction to regain it is incorrect. The couple then breaks off and returns to a few moves of a simple form which precedes a freer style of attack and counterattack.

The reason we generally practice with a fixed foot position is that our response in both attack and defense comes primarily from a change in our body position and not through a foot movement. We must react to an attack by shifting our center and by yielding to the slightest pressure. The "center" is that point on the body where our opponent can control us. This point is constantly shifting as the opponent attempts to break our balance and as we try to evade.

As an attack is mounted, the defender not only neutralizes it, but also attempts simultaneously to counterattack. The attacker is somewhat vulnerable to a counter as he gets to that point in his forward movement where his weight is equally distributed between his feet. This is termed "double weighting" and results in a temporarily weakened position. If the defender counter attacks at this point, the attacker must neutralize it and continue the attack. We say that attacking is yang and defending is yin. But as we see in the tai ji circle, yang has a small circle of yin in it, and yin a small circle of yang. Thus, while the defender mainly yields (yin), he also at the right moment counters (yang). The attacker is mostly yang, but he yields (yin) to the defender's countermove.

These attacks and counters often occur in split seconds. Though we attempt to practice slowly, our opponent may suddenly speed up, and we must keep pace. Another complication lies in our attempt to use only a minimum of strength to attack or to counter. Often we use more than a few ounces of pressure in whatever we do, allowing a more skillful opponent to use this overdoing against us. We try then to be rooted in our feet and to be relaxed and flexible from the ankles up. We might think of the body as a piece of hanging cloth that absorbs and neutralizes an incoming force without harm. The attacker might then overextend and lose balance, expecting a solid surface and meeting no resistance.

The relaxed alertness and calmness gained from solo form practice is clearly going to be more difficult to maintain when your partner is trying to upset your balance. If we sense aggressiveness from our partner or an unwillingness to yield, we may become angry. All of the difficulties we may have in dealing with others in daily life will gradually make an appearance. If we are open to it, we can learn a great deal about ourselves in push-hands. As nothing we do works to our satisfaction, most of us will experience some degree of frustration. We will try to follow our teacher's suggestion to avoid both resisting a push and pushing into hardness. Our teacher will show many times that resisting a push to maintain our balance will cause the opponent to instantly attack from a different direction and the game will be over. Also, attacking a point that seems unyielding with more strength gives the opponent a chance to suddenly yield, causing our overextension and loss of balance. When a problem comes up in our daily life, we try to think of a solution. Logical, linear thought might be of some use in trying to figure out what is going on in push-hands. But in the moment the action occurs, any advance planning or strategy will probably fail because you can't predict the opponent's response. Moreover, trying to think in push-hands will cause one's body to tense while figuring things out. More importantly, as beginners, we are limited in awareness and are often too hard, too tense, or our timing is faulty. So even if we do our best to follow our teacher's directions, we are incapable of doing what is required. To begin to get a sense of what is going on, our awareness and sensitivity must grow and sharpen. This is a never-ending process.

Continuing to make progress in this direction requires almost daily push-hands practice. But, if we practice incorrectly, by using strength, for example, our progress will be slow or nonexistent. What is ultimately required is internalization by our physical and mental systems of an instant thoughtfree response to the slightest stimulus. Moreover, to be successful, our response must consist of an optimum mix of softness, sensitivity, and timing, to name just a few qualities.

The process resembles that experienced by the zen archery student, who must practice endlessly to loose a shot, which he does not let go consciously. Instead, in a particular moment the archer, the bow, the arrow, and the target become one. To cite another example, the solution to a zen koan cannot be rationally arrived at, but must come in some other way. In both archery and zen, the student does all he can to get a hoped for result. This means he will use his mental and physical ability to do what seems to be required, only to have his efforts rejected or deemed unsuccessful. This sad state of affairs may last a few years, but his efforts, or non -efforts, may one day bear fruit, only to be followed by a further period of failure.

Focusing again on push-hands, common student errors are failing to find the opponent's center, using too much strength, resisting an attack, and trying to think their way through the pushing process. If our opponent is more skillful than we, every pushing encounter will result in failure. This outcome can be quite frustrating, unless the student comes to the training with no expectations or preconceived ideas and is willing to be open to what unfolds as he attempts to follow tai ji principles. There is really no final goal- it is an endless refining process.

It is really only an illusion that the sought for result in push-hands is to push the opponent or to avoid a push. Instead, we should be trying to react in a thought-free way to what our system senses in the moment. This pattern stops the stream of thought having to do with past or future and puts us, if even for a little while, fully in the present. Halting our incessant mind chatter is a marvelous method for opening us to a sense of the spirit (or whatever one wants to call it) that permeates or suffuses us and everything around us.

This aspect of push-hands may seem a bit too extreme or esoteric for some, but it is there for those that are ready for it. The benefits for our lives with this emphasis far outweigh those that accrue from limiting ourselves to just the physical, Push-hands training then can be regarded as learning to become more responsive and more sensitive. To help us in this direction, all our attacking and defending moves should be limited to a mere few ounces of pressure. If we employ even a little too much force, a skillful opponent will use our overdoing against us. Also, all we need do is to unbalance our opponent. The instant this occurs, were it a self-defense situation, we could deliver a further attack to a vulnerable point. Pushing someone 10 or 20 feet away is regarded, from a practical standpoint, as losing your opponent. Unless he is at the edge of a cliff, he has a chance to regroup or to avail himself of a weapon and then return to the fray.

If our reason for doing push-hands is to develop improved fighting ability, we could well retard our development of the more important responsiveness and sensitivity we seek. It is true that push-hands practice can lay a superb foundation for fighting arts, but too great an emphasis on fighting techniques as we do push-hands will make us harder. I taught a kind of self-defense to tai ji students for over 20 years, in an attempt to familiarize them with attacks from punches, strikes, and kicks. I don't think this training helped much to improve students' abilities in push-hands, though it gave them some measure of self-defense ability.

At any rate, we are far better served, in terms of positive benefits, by developing our sensitivity. Even for martially oriented individuals, gaining additional awareness and acting in a timely way to defuse a situation is far superior to having to physically engage an opponent.

As our push-hands develop over the years, we may be fortunate enough to encounter a highly developed practitioner who offers no resistance and whose center is unavailable. While we are searching for some slight degree of solidity, we find we have overextended and somehow have lost our balance. If we use more strength and speed, the result is worse. Everyone who does push-hands seems to approve of softness and yielding and even to believe that is how they are pushing. An actual experience with someone who is really skilled may open our eyes to the vast possibilities for development in the physical aspects of push-hands. Of course, we will want to know how we can reach this higher level. The answer is to give up strength, and to "invest in loss," as Zheng Manqing (1902-1975) put it. By this, he meant avoid all resistance and try to learn from each push.

We are also faced with another problem. Language is inadequate to express what goes on in push-hands. This statement sounds like nonsense, but try as we might, we really can't put into words what is happening in a particular moment. We can talk about the moment before it occurs and after it has occurred, but in the instant something happens, our trained physical and mental system responds, either successfully or not. Many factors come together in a particular moment, and thinking about what is happening will inhibit movement. We might well become frozen and fail to move at the right time. Essentially, we will have lost the flow.

A few hurdles, some rather high, stand in the way of our practicing to rise to a higher level. Among them are such handicaps as a strong body, skill in other martial arts, and a competitive turn of mind. One's system will respond to an emergency by doing what it has been trained to do. Changing a previous conditioning is the work of many years. Reverting to what our systems have previously learned will keep those connections alive and functioning. New connections must form in the brain and in our body if our response is going to change. These slowly form as we practice correctly over the years. If we can't give up what we have, we will fail to move in the direction we believe we want to go, no matter how long and hard we practice.

Our competitive culture has spawned push-hands contests. The Chinese also engage in such competition. Training to win such a contest will probably produce a different attitude toward push-hands than if "winning" in an encounter is of no consequence. We will tend to use strength, become ruthless, and generally ignore or give only lip service to the push-hands advice found in the tai ji classics.

Push-hands styles range from a kind of Japanese sumo wrestling to the very sensitive. The classics state that if even a fly lights on your shoulder, you body should be set in motion. It takes many years of practice to develop the ability to perform in this lighter and more responsive way. But our impatience for results and craving for success will lead to our resisting pushes and to using too much strength. Possibilities for mental and spiritual growth are present in all martial arts. But when these arts are practiced as sport, the emphasis is on winning. Taijiquan practice is also vulnerable to this interpretation. There is no question in my mind that this approach, unfortunately, precludes the attainment of the kind of development we say we are seeking.

My teacher, Zheng Manqing, among others, spoke of push-hands as a precious gem. He would teach everyone the tai ji solo form because it would improve their health. But he refused to teach everyone pushhands. Those of us who practice correctly over the decades would probably also come to the conclusion that we have been given something of great value. OM