Taiji Class Notes #9

Hi everyone, let’s talk about Push Hands. We are going to look at a few things that came up during the class on Saturday, September 12, 2009.

It was a rainy fall day in Boston even though we are still in the tail end of summer. The roads were bad and the drivers on them worse, so we got off to a late start, about half the class showed up late. (This is unusual, normally only a third of the class shows up late.) Once we were all warmed up we did some form work. Then we moved into Centering, from Centering we went to Double Push Hands and then finished the day with the Rollback and Press routine. While all this was going on I noticed a few things worth talking about.

Lately I’ve had the class do some work on Fa Jin. Since this can be rather stressful first thing in the morning it was suggested to me that I add some whole body limbering to the warm up. I have tried various things and right now we are doing the first part of the solo form. This serves the purpose and it gets some much needed practice of the solo form into the Push Hands class. The solo form is anodyne for so many issues in the practice of Taijiquan that I really wish I had the time in class to do the entire form every week.

This week it looked pretty good, there were only small errors in what people were doing. I want the group to work on coordinating the breath with the physical movements. This is a vital adjunct to the Fa Jin training we do since correct breathing is so important to correct Fa Jin. In particular we are working on Four Gates Breathing in conjunction with the form. This type of breathing directly supports the Fa Jin patterns we use to train power so we can attack the training of Fa Jin on multiple tracks by emphasizing this within Solo form practice.

I got the opportunity to work with several people and I want to highlight what I learned from each of them. They represent a challenge on many levels for me as a teacher and practitioner of Taijiquan. Integration of the body into a cohesive unit is one of the fundamental objectives of Taijiquan. Learning to connect the great power in the legs through the waist and to the upper body is an abiding challenge for each practitioner. When I worked with Mark, Ariana and Dan this past class I got to see the effect that integration of the body can have one’s Push Hands.

Mark

Mark is a good challenge for me. He has a strong root, good coordination of tactics and can neutralize very effectively. He is also physically powerful so he is one of small group of people I use as a barometer of where my skills are currently. He has been a very interesting person to watch over the last few years because of his abilities very obvious maturation. Lately (The last year or so, this is Taiji time we’re talking about.) when he and I have worked together practicing Centering I have noticed that he has the habit of moving continuously. I mentioned this to him and he replied that it is a tactic he seized upon when he works with me. He had discovered that the continuous movement made it more difficult for me to find and exploit any opportunity to uproot him. Now strictly speaking moving with out a specific purpose is contrary to Taiji principles. Remember the classic saying; “When my opponent does not move, I do not move. When my opponent moves, I move first.” I was having a hard time getting the better of him while he used this new tactic so I couldn’t really say much, it did, however, nag at me. The classics exist as a body of information to serve as guide lines for our practice. The advice contained in them is time tested for usefulness. So I needed to spend some time thinking about what he was doing so I could find a solution.

If I come up against a tactic that works well against me I have come to treat it as a good thing. Finding something you can’t beat is a growth opportunity. (My younger selves found it threatening. The path to enlightenment can be long.) Time spent in reflection on my taiji is always time well spent so I found myself kicking around concepts on how to kick Mark’s… I mean deal with his challenge. I also like to ground my thinking in the classics so I can start out on sound footing. So if I want to validate the classical concept of not moving without purpose and apply it my particular situation with this tactic of Mark’s I needed a new interpretation of the classic to apply. Also I wanted to apply the right dictum to the situation. So I decided the concepts of movement and stillness were the chief area I had to resolve to learn to deal with the conundrum that Mark was presenting me. Since we accept as a given in Taijiquan that power/motion is generated in the legs, controlled by the waist and manifested by the hands I thought the answer must be found in the control portion of what Mark was doing. Also I kept coming back to the fact that Mark was always in motion once we started centering.  I decided I needed to take advantage of the fact that he moved constantly. The classics pointed to this idea as the solution. I also thought that since Mark’s rooting and neutralization are quite good I had to disrupt his structure in such a way as to cause catastrophic (pardon the term) collapse. (I couldn’t pick away at what he was doing, slowly limiting his options for movement until he ran out of space to neutralize. That kind of tactic can work but it works best on an opponent who does not have much of an offensive repertoire, remember I stated earlier that Mark is a fairly well balanced taiji player. I couldn’t try to finesse him into position while ignoring his on offensive potential.) I needed to approach the situation from a different perspective, I needed a paradigm shift. Much like James T. Kirk, I needed to change the rules of the game in order to win.

I needed to find stillness within the motion.

This wasn’t a eureka moment, it took a while for the idea to percolate through the ol’ think melon. (Thinkin’ ain’t my strong suit.) It also required lots of time getting a feel for what Mark did during centering. Eventually I came up with the following tactic.

Usually when I push hands with someone I tend to be defensive. I expose myself less and I have time to figure the person out. The defensive strategy uses Na Jin to stay in contact with the opponent and very little change in my stance if I can avoid it. The change I introduced into what I did with Mark was this; I starting moving with him. I hoped that if I was very careful with Listening Jin I could synchronize our movements. Once we were synchronized we would essentially stop moving relative to each other. Think of it this way if you are on bus and the bus is moving you can get up and change seats without any difficulty. You and the bus are traveling together with the same speed and direction; you are at rest (still) relative to each other. If you or the bus changes speed; you bump into the seat in front or behind you. Same thing with Mark during Centering, if I could stay in synchronization with him I could achieve a state of relative stillness that the classics insist is necessary.

Fine, you say, you’re in synch with your opponent now what? Well, here is where things get interesting.

Once I got to this synchronization I was able to return things to basic Push Hands doctrine; Listen, Follow, Connect and Adhere. I was able to feel out the weaknesses in structure and momentum that were available and exploit them. Just like our hypothetical bus rider, Mark was bounced around a bit.

Huzzah for me!

One very important factor in all of this was that I had to review my own movement patterns and refine them for a greater level of Dan Tian control. It required that I move my awareness down into my Dan Tian. Many of you will find this an elementary idea and I agree. We always assume that our conscious intent is in the Dan Tian and on our opponent. But I had to discover this anew to get the tactic to work. The feeling was very reminiscent of the feeling of Taiji Ball qigong and many of the actual physical movements I employed against Mark were segments of the motion one uses in Taiji Ball qigong to change direction. It was very neat to link up these complimentary aspects of our training on an experiential level for me.

I was really pleased with this whole thing because it made me shake up my thinking on the classics. Just like any good poetry the classics are dense with meaning. As my experience and thinking evolves so does my understanding of Taijiquan, which is all to the good. (The sad thing was that two weeks later Mark had changed what he was doing and now I have to go through the whole process all over again.)

Ariana

Ariana was my next partner in Centering. She presents me with an interesting puzzle with two basic issues that I have with her push hands. First, she has a tendency to not use her waist, so there is a break in her power. Because her upper and lower bodies don’t connect through her waist she has much less available energy at her disposal. It is interesting that defensively she is more cohesive than when she is on the offense. This lack of power causes her to break at the waist and to use her arms more than is proper for Taijiquan. Second, she has not yet made the jump to coordinating both her arms offensively. In techniques like Wild Horses Shear Manes and Single Whip it is easy to spot the unity of purpose that unites the arms into a single endeavor. It is a very common thing amongst taiji players who find it easier to perform single arm techniques.

Let’s examine a common situation that has been mentioned in class on several occasions.

Suppose two people are facing each other, preparing to do Centering, both have their right legs forward. Let’s call the people Jeff and Ariana for ease of identification. They begin their round and techniques are exchanged, at one point Jeff commits the error of over extending a push with his forward (right) are and Ariana counters with Wild Horses Shear Manes. Performing Wild Horses correctly in this instance calls for her to Control Jeff’s right wrist with her left hand and to slide her right hand and forearm under Jeff’s right arm until her right arm is pressed against his torso with her elbow under Jeff’s shoulder. Once both her arms are in the correct position she will rotate her waist to her right. This rotation in theory should pull her right arm back and push her left arm forward. Since Jeff’s arm is caught up in Ariana’s arms his arm becomes a lever that will force his torso to move and break his root.

What actually happened was that Ariana would get it half right. She would pull with the arm under the Jeff’s shoulder, but neglect to push with the other arm that controlled his wrist. The result was that she did not succeed in breaking Jeff’s root or in putting him into an urgent position. The root cause is that her Dan Tian or waist was not involved in the action to the necessary extant.

Since there is a great deal of this problem in the all the students it leads me to one obvious conclusion. I am not teaching the material correctly. If one student has something wrong it may be her fault; if 75% of the students have something wrong then it is my fault. So I am thinking about ways to reinforce this issue in the group and I hope to have something ready for the next class. We’ll see how things go.

During the course of our match together Ariana did nail me with a good Kao or shoulder stroke. It almost knocked me on my butt and I didn’t have a clue that she was going to do it. So this says to me that she can connect to her root and she can time and place an attack to good effect. I mention this because Ariana, like most of us who practice Taijiquan, has things she does correctly and things that need work. It is a good idea not to forget the former while you are trying to fix the latter.

Dan

My last partner for Push Hands was Dan. It was a very interesting match. Dan has grown increasingly challenging lately. I think he is really starting to come together in terms of his skill set. He has always been strong but lately his root and neutralization skills have improved. His endurance had previously been an issue since he would frequently become winded during Centering, but that has improved as well. I think the big difference in Dan is that he seems much stronger than I seem to remember him being only a short time ago. That feeling coupled with his improved root and neutralizations points to his starting the integration of his body into a whole system. This integration is necessary for the Eight Energies to manifest fully in our techniques. It allows the proper kinetic expression of our intent. One of the most common critiques when people test Taijiquan at YMAA is that their spine/chest is stiff. Not much behind that complaint in frequency is that their upper and lower bodies are not connected. Usually people fix the spine and chest first. Once that part of the body is working correctly the disconnect between the legs and the upper body can be seen. As people progress through the training integrating the body becomes more and more important. Lacking this integration the deeper levels of abilities can not be attained. I believe that Dan has started this integration process and his seemingly abrupt increase in strength is a symptom of it.

I hope that you see that the connection of Dan Tian or waist control is the link between these individuals; by integrating his body into a whole unit Mark is able to generate a very challenging level of skill. So much so that I need to spend time analyzing his technique to try to circumvent it. Interestingly enough my solution to the strategy Mark was employing, constant Dan Tian motion was a deeper immersion into the concept for myself. Only by getting to the same level was I then able to use Listening Jin to find any weakness in what he was doing. Ariana on the other hand had her efforts and very real skill short circuited because the lack of integration between her upper and lower bodies, through the Dan Tian, denied her the power needed to capitalize on possibilities she saw. I haven’t yet found the best way to deal with Dan. The only real skill I’ve been able to attribute to myself is if there is a weakness I can spot it given enough time. I’ll figure Dan out eventually. Then we can all go through the cycle of tactic and counter stroke all over again.

Truthfully I spent a lot of time in class that Saturday getting my butt kicked. Mark, Dan and Ariana all found weaknesses to exploit and helped me learn where I need to improve. Wouldn’t have it any other way, I learn from my students/classmates all the time.

Life is good.