Push Hands

Texas Tai Chi

Instructor - Gregory Ellis

Push Hands

Overview:

Push hands is a quiet and gentle cooperative exercise involving two people. Their arms and hands alternately carry out pushing and yielding action with the aim of increasing their capacity to relax under pressure. This can be summarized by saying push hands involves the interplay of opposites: positive and negative, relaxation and force, yin and yang.

Push Hands: The art of knowing your opponent.

Pushing Hands is a simplified form of sparring popular with students of Tai Chi. Lacking the punches and kicks common in the practice fighting of many external martial arts, Pushing Hands is a gentle sport of control where success is achieved by upsetting the balance of one's opponent. Typically, participants begin facing one another, each in a bow stance. Each participant has his or her outside hand on the elbow of their opponent and the inside hand on the wrist. As the match begins, the pair use their hands to push against one another, seeking to control one another's energy. Sudden or forceful shoving is taboo. The victor should be the pusher of the greatest skill, not the greatest brutishness.

For students of Tai Chi, Pushing Hands provides an important complement to Forms and Standing Meditation. When performed correctly, the motion of Tai Chi reflects the opposing influences of Yin and Yang. Applying Tai Chi movements against a human opponent teaches this balance in way that can't be learned by other means. Tai Chi teaches the Push Hands combatant to use a minimum of energy, because an too much force can be exploited by a skillful opponent. Circular motion is used to divert attacks from the critical center of the body. The body must be relaxed--if the body is tense or stiff, the center can be influenced from any point, while if the body is relaxed, energy can easily be dissipated or diverted. Awareness and reaction often triumph over force and aggression.

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Why it is important to practice push hands:

The three pillars of Tai Chi Chuan are the practice of forms, meditation and push hands. A Tai Chi Chuan master of the past invented the game of push hands as a method of sparring. It is especially good for developing the sensitivity to feel and react to your opponent's actions. If you are correctly following the Tai Chi Chuan principals of Relaxation, Natural Continuous Motion, Circular Motion, Sinking and Rooting you will see this in your pushing hands practice. Besides being the test of your Tai Chi Chuan principals in action, it is also a wonderful way to share energy between two people, and it's fun.

Push hand essentials:

1. When your opponent strikes you with strength, instead of opposing him (force against force), you simply withdraw your body, neutralizing his weight. Thus his weight will be emptied and will not come to your body.

2. When attacking your opponent you should not attack him immediately. Your hands must first lightly touch his body, and as soon as you interpret that he is going to resist you, you yield (withdraw) slightly and then immediately attack.

3. When interpreting your opponent's energy, you should not put too much weight against him during the time of interpretation. If you have too much weight against him and he moves you may too easily come off balance. To improve your Push Hands and ultimately your Tai Chi Chuan you must "invest in loss"

The purpose of push hands:

Push hand teaches one to fully realize what sensitivity of the entire body means. Externally the practitioner develops an acute sense of touch transmitted through the skin. Sensitivity and awareness is also developed internally. The practitioner learns how to empty the body of all force. When one rids the body of force, the body is there and yet it is not there. Through understanding the principals of push hands, one can learn to balance Yin and Yang in daily experience. Thus the quality of life as a whole is enhanced.