Step By Step

I have yet to learn moving stance pushing hands. Instead, all my pushing hands lessons are fixed stance pushing hands. It is because my teacher has yet to teach moving stance pushing hands, even though I have been learning from him for years. Not because he cannot teach it, but because he feels we are not ready.

To him, fixed stance pushing hands is the fundamental. If you can't even get the fundamental right, there is no point moving to moving stance pushing hands, which is more about application. Why? Because why moving stance pushing hands allow you to escape (by moving away) if you are unable to neutralise your opponent's force, you do not have that luxury in fixed stance pushing hands. In fixed stance, you really need to be able to neutralise your opponent's force.

So he feels that if he teaches moving stance pushing hands now, people who are unable to truly neutralise force will never be able to pick it up. They can just run away. They end up learning the wrong thing. They end up learning how to push, but not how to neutralise. Against a true taiji practitioner, they will not be able to hold their ground. That is why he continues to stress on fixed stance pushing hands, so that we get our fundamentals right, so that we learn how to truly neutralise force, before we learn more on application.

It is step-by-step, but that is the only way we will get anywhere. If you try to move on to the next step without properly taking the current one, you just lose your balance and fall.