Relax Is The Key

I think I have been told this many times. Relaxing is the key. The harder you try to achieve something, the harder it becomes for you to relax, and thus the harder it is for you to achieve your goal (because taiji is all about relaxing). So sometimes, it is better to just be accepting of whatever is thrown your way, accepting of what things are at the present. Don't push yourself, you might just move ahead on your own.

Don't Play With Your Food

I haven't reached a certain skill level in pushing hands, and thus continue to use some brute force whenever I push hands. However, because I am able to use less brute force than my opponent, I can still discern his force and thus am able to deflect or lead it away. However, I still use force because I usually let him come in too close, and once he is too close, I can no longer ward off his force without having to use a bit of my own. The moral of the story? Don't play with your food. When you can sense his force, immediately relax and then peng to ward off his force. Don't let him come in too close.

But if you always do this, you will only learn how to ward off using peng, which is not everything. Once in a while, you need to learn to let him in so that you can learn to stick to him and lead him away in a direction of your choice. When doing so, you need to realise that if you are unable to lead him away, you should just let him push you, so as to avoid using brute force.

By the way, the title is not meant to demean practice partners in pushing hands. Just that it is a common idiom and makes it easier to remember this point.

清能早达

What this means is that if you are clear about the process, you will be able to attain your goal earlier. Applied to taiji, if you are clear about what the principles of taiji mean and how it can be applied, you will be able to improve in taiji and attain a certain level of mastery earlier than those who don't fully understand the principles.

And maybe it is not just about being clear about the principles. Maybe you also need to be clear about your mistakes and your own weaknesses.

What Was I Thinking?

Wonder what I was thinking. When your opponent pulls, you follow. When he pushes, you peng. Wonder why I would get it messed up?

Relax Is Not Surrendering

A mistake that I make is in not making a distinction between relaxing and going limp (aka surrendering). When my opponent pushes, in order not to resist his force, I try to relax. But my form of relaxing is wrong, it is taking the strength out of my arm and going limp, thus allowing my opponent to come in. In a way, it is surrendering to the opponent.

Relaxing is not about going limp. If the contact is at the arm, relaxing is not about taking the strength out of the arm. While going limp means you are not resisting your opponent, you are surrendering to him, which is wrong as well. So how do you relax, and without letting your arm go limp, still avoid resisting your opponent's force?

I think the key is to relax the joints, such that when your opponent's force comes in, the different joints move in various amounts to absorb his force, and at the same time, the joints turn together to deflect his force and direct it towards a direction of your choice. There must always be peng at the point of contact so as to maintain contact. Even though your peng is outwards at the point of contact, yet because your other joints are moving to change the direction of your opponent's force, you are not resisting his force. Guess I will be paying more attention to this in the future.

Expressing Your Movements Revisited

My teacher is able to express his taiji movements very well. Each move is soft, yet you can see that there is meaning behind each move, that each move can easily turn into something that can be applied. While soft, each move hides the hardness inside. It takes a lot of practice to reach this stage, since you must have a strong foundation, understand the principles of taiji and study the application of each movement.

To reach there, you need to practise. While practising, imagine there is an opponent that you are shadow boxing with. Imagine how each movement is supposed to be a counter to your opponent's attack, how his attack/force should feel like and then imagine how each movement will affect your opponent.

But you also need to be careful not to focus too much on expressing your movements. If the application of each movement becomes too explicit, you end up showing too much hardness and lose the softness of taiji. You end up locking yourself into a certain application, rather than keeping your options open for flexible responses.

Moving Together Revisited

While on of the basics of taiji is to move the whole body together, which is usually best seen in the timing of the movement of the upper body tied in with the movement of the lower body, I think that is not enough. When I first started learning taiji, I was told that my hand and my leg must reach together. Once the leg stops moving, the hand must stop moving too. Once the leg changes direction, the hand must change direction too.

The aim of moving together is so that the force generated is the sum total of all the force generated by all the moving parts of your body, rather than just being limited to that force generated at a local part of your body. Which means that the force generated is the sum of the force generated by your legs, waist and arms, rather than just your arms.

However, even though my hand and leg reaches together, I still feel that my upper body and lower body are disjointed, that even though the appearance is that they are moving together, in actuality, they are not. I think the problem is because I have not been paying attention to how I can move my body together as a whole to generate the force that I need. The outer appearance is for hand and leg to reach at the same time. But the way to practise is to pay attention on how to channel the force generated by the different parts of the body towards a single point. I guess this will be something to work on in the practices ahead.

Losing Details

A common mistake that all of us make is losing details along the way. As we become familiar with our routines, with the movements, the small little moves, we start to grow complacent and skip details. After a while, we become used to not expressing those details (because they require too much attention) and end up losing them. But it is the details that makes taijiquan a practical art of self-defence, so when we start losing details, we also lose the ability to use taijiquan. So it is good to have someone (usually your teacher) point out to you that you have skipped some of the details.

Force On a Line, Force At a Point

Yet another inkling... this one is on how to lead your opponent's force away or use it back against him. When your opponent's force is not focused correctly, it is spread out over a line (or area) rather than at a point. When that happens, I think you should be able to use it against him by contacting his force at a single point, then rotating that contact point (so that you maintain contact at a single point at all times) in the direction that you want to lead him. In a way, your force is always focused at a point (ie. the point of contact) and you use that point of contact to decide on the direction of movement, while you use your opponent's force at that point of contact to maintain contact and decide the magnitude of the movement.

If his force is focused at a point, then you use that as the initial point of contact, and then you rotate that point of contact in the direction of your choice, bringing him to change his point of focus of his force along the way. The thing is to use his force to maintain contact and use his force to determine the magnitude of movement, while you are the one who decides on the direction of movement.

Inkling - Spiralling In and Out

Yet another inkling while walking home from taiji class... spiralling. To neutralise my opponent's force, how do I use spiralling? When he pushes, how do I spiral his force down from my arm to my legs and to the ground? When he pulls, how do I follow his force and spiral out?

Don't Grab

Another point brought up by my teacher. In pushing hands, we don't grab hold of our opponent. For example, we don't grab his wrist and pull. Instead, we use our hands to lock his arm and roll back. Why? Because when you grab, your hand becomes stiff, and that force can then be used against you. At the same time, you are unable to sense your opponent's force.

For example, if your opponent grabs your wrist and tried to pull you, all you need to do is relax, go with his force and at the same time, peng.

A Strong Stance

My teacher talked about the importance of having a strong stance today. In pushing hands, your legs must be strong so that you can achieve a strong stance, yet at the same time, your upper body must be relaxed. That way, you can sense your opponent's force, yet avoid being pushed around.

Of course, the important thing here is that your kua must be relaxed. Else you will end up being led around because your legs, though strong, are stiff.

Strong legs, relaxed kua, relaxed upper body.

Neverending

Yet another inkling... it is still about the always important question about how to peng. We have been told that power is generated from the legs, is controlled by the waist, and takes form in the arms. When we try to ward off our opponent's force, I guess this is the same. We need to use the force generated by our legs to ward off the opponent's force. I guess that this means that when his force comes, we need to move our legs (either forward or backwards), turn our kua accordingly to bring the force to our arms, and ward off his force. In order to do that, we cannot stop moving, for if we do, we will end up resisting.

So what does continuously moving mean? As we move our legs, our kua must move, and our arms must move. In a way, our forearm continues to turn outwards together with us moving our legs/kua. And it is not just our forearm, but our shoulder, our elbow, our forearm, our wrist, our hand. As we move our leg (for example, pushing from back to front), our whole arm spirals out. That may be the way in which neverending movement allows us to let the force generated by our legs to take form in our arms. Guess I will try this out and pay a bit more attention to this over the next few practices.

To Continue Or To Change

My teacher told me not to be afraid of using a bit of strength and resisting a bit when trying to peng. But when I follow what he said, my arms started to get tired again whenever I push hands with an opponent that uses more brute force. Yes, I am able to ward away his force, but I feel that I am missing something, that I have not fully grasped what my teacher meant when he said that it is okay to resist a bit when learning to peng.

When I push hands with my teacher, my arms get tired (he is able to draw me into using brute force). When I push hands with someone who uses brute force, my arms get tired. Only when I push with someone who is trying to relax, my arms don't get tired. Something must be wrong. My arms shouldn't get tired no matter who I push hands with. After all, taiji is about using the least amount of strength to defeat an opponent.

I have been following this advice for some time now, yet I don't seem to be making progress. Why? Is it due to a lack of practice? A lack of a good partner to explore with? A lack of reflection on mistakes? Am I not thinking hard enough? Or am I thinking along the wrong road? Do I continue to follow the advice in hope of a breakthrough in understanding? Or do I adopt a different approach, since this advice is not getting me anywhere?

Lost... wandering around in search of the truth...

Conserving Energy

No, this is not a post about saving the environment. It is about using the least amount of energy when applying taiji.

Taiji is about using the least amount of force to counter a larger force. It is not about not using force at all. If you don't use any force, you cannot move except to fall by gravity, though using zero force (aka falling by gravity) is also part of taiji since the least force you can use is zero.

How is that done? It means moving each muscle just the right amount to achieve the effect/movement that you desire, and not using those muscles that don't need to be used. Naturally, because we are not used to it and also because our joints are not very flexible, whenever we move a part of our body, some other part of the body will move along with it. The aim of practising taiji is thus to learn how to control our muscles and move them only when needed, and independent of each other, such that when one of them moves, it doesn't cause unnecessary muscles to move as well.

For example, when you turn your wrist, there is a natural tendency for you to move your shoulder as well, resulting in not just your wrist turning but your elbow moving inwards (if you are turning your wrist outwards). But with practice (actually, just conscious effort, which is 意), you will be able to turn your wrist without causing your elbow/shoulder to move. You are thus able to turn your wrist without wasting unnecessary energy (and thus you conserve your energy for other movements).

The more energy you conserve, the more energy you have for other things, which means you are able to wear down an opponent if you want (using little energy over a long period), or throw a stronger punch at him (using more energy within a short period).

It also means that we don't beat around the bush. We get straight to the point. We observe. Then we choose a course of action and move in. Even when we move to test an opponent's reaction, it is not a random move but a calculated one, in which we already know in our mind what reactions we are looking for, and once the opponent has reacted, we straight away move in. In this way, no energy is wasted doing anything that is not related to defeating the opponent.

I guess that's conserving energy at the tactical and strategic levels.

Expressing Each Movement

Yet something that I thought of when seeing my teacher do his taiji routine. Again, it is about adding meaning to the movements.

Each move has a meaning to it. Each circle has a meaning. Each circle is either used to ward off an attack, or divert force back at the opponent. Thus, even when it is a simple turning of the wrist, you must imagine yourself warding away your opponent's force. Even when you are opening your arms out to draw a circle, you must imagine being able to draw your opponent's force away. Every move in taiji must be given meaning (because every move has a meaning), else it will be an empty move and your routine will end up looking empty (lacking substance and meaning, what we call 空架).

Once you are able to instill meaning into each move, then you need to go into not being explicit about the meaning. Express the meaning behind each move without being too explicit as to what you are trying to achieve. Each move thus becomes a possibility rather than a fact, because you have opened up options without committing to any.

方中带圆，圆中有方

Another phrase that came into mind recently. "方中带圆，圆中有方", translated, it means "circles within straight lines, straight lines inside circles".

For example, even when pushing in a straight line, your hand spirals out, thus it is circles within a straight line. And when you use a circle to neutralise your opponent's force, looked at from the side, it is actually a straight line.

But looking it at an even higher level, there are circles within circles. For example, when neutralising your opponent's force with a circle (which is a straight line when viewed from the side), if you add in spirals within the circle, your circle will have a straight line that contains even more circles (spiral).

And thus taiji is all about circles.

Now to get down to really understanding and applying this...

圆化方进

I don't know why, but this phrase 圆化方进 kept showing up in my mind as I was driving home from pushing hands class today.

When pushing hands with my teacher, I felt that he was drawing out my strength until my arm grew tired. How? Maybe it is because he could sense my force and kept changing his force, so that no matter how I tried to move, he was always one step ahead and his force ended up at an angle to mine, causing my arm to flatten. In an attempt not to let my arm flatten, I tried to shift my force, and when I shifted, he sensed it and changed his angle of approach to continue to flatten my arm. In the end, in order not to let my arm become flattened, I kept changing my force trying to meet his, simply following and ended up continuously exerting force, and making my arm tired instead.

Maybe the trick is to draw circles, such that my force is always changing, rather than to try to react to his force and end up trailing behind.

Tired is Good

Realised something today, after practising taiji for a total of more than six hours. Tired is good. It makes you relax more, not because you want to but because you no longer have energy. So in order to practise, you have to find a way to be efficient with whatever energy you have left. Thus you try to find ways and means to move without excessive use of strength. For example, if my kua cannot sink down, usually I will use a bit more strength to force it down. But when I am tired, I can't afford to waste that energy. Instead, I try to find a way to sink my kua without having to use strength to force it. I try to relax it. In the end, I try to find a way to move using as little energy as possible (which means I waste as little energy as possible, leaving me with more energy to use when I need it.)

But that doesn't mean we should try to make ourselves tired before we start our taiji practice. Instead, we should keep practising taiji until we are tired. So I guess when my teacher said that he got a better understanding of taiji after he did four (or was it six?) sets of Yang-style 108 routine in a row, he probably meant this.

Hold Your Ground

There is a taiji saying, 虚则守，实则攻。What is means is that you hold your ground when your opponent doesn't use force, and when you sense him using force, that is when you attack. Why?

I have been pondering this for a while, and what I think is that when he doesn't use force, he is ready to react, and thus if you try to attack, you are actually walking into a trap. His force is empty, yet to take shape, and thus can be formed into any shape. Once you move, he can sense your attack and counter it by shaping his force accordingly.

However, once he has made a move, he has committed himself (his force now takes a certain shape), and thus if you can discern the magnitude and direction of his force, you will be able to neutralise it and utilise it against him.

Thus, before your opponent makes a move, you should hold your ground to see what he intends to do. Otherwise, you may end up walking into a trap. Once he has made a move, you must be ready to discern it and react to it.

Moving Together Part 2

One of the basic principles of taiji is for top and bottom to move together (上下相随). Being disjointed is a common mistake, and its disadvantage can be seen during pushing hands. And most of the time, I would say the mistake is because of an unresponsive kua.

For example, when our opponent pushes us, because our arm is more responsive compared to our kua, our arm moves back first before our kua moves. The result? Our arm appears limp and allows our opponent to move in. When our opponent moves back and presents an opening, our arm senses it first and move in, without waiting for our kua to catch up. The result? We are not pushing with our leg (whole body) but pushing with our arm muscles (aka brute force).

So the key is still to train up the kua to become responsive, and that means learning how to relax the kua and how to turn it. Which brings us back to the basic foundation skills.

Lack of Practice... Going Backwards

I haven't been able to practise much lately, due to work and tiredness from jet lag. And of course, without practice, I can't improve. In fact, I have gone backwards. A standard pushing hands session was strenuous for me... I ended up with muscles aches on my legs, something that I haven't felt for some time (at least, not this bad...) Just a week without practice, and my legs are no longer as strong.

I guess this goes to show the importance of foundation skills in taiji (and probably all martial arts). As the saying goes, 练拳不练功，到老一场空。(Essentially, if you practise martial arts without practising foundation skills, you will still not get anything after years of practice when you grow old.) I guess it is back to basics again.

Push On or Let Go

One of the things that I wonder about all the time. Once you have managed to get in close to your opponent and think he can no longer ward off your attack, do you push on, or do you let go?

How do you know that you have really got him, if you don't push on? But what if you really got him? Do you need to push on and make him fall just to make a point? Or is it better to just let go, knowing that you have already gotten him?

Turning My Kua 2

I have written about this before, but after looking at what my teacher was trying to show me, I think I have a better understanding of how to turn my kua.

The kua (both of them) are supposed to be turning inward circles (or outward circles). Just that they are starting at different points on the circle. For example, if the left side starts at the top and turns anticlockwise in, the right side should be starting at the bottom turning clockwise away.

The key to getting this done properly is to relax the kua, such that it is turning as smoothly as possible. At first, because you are not used to it, the circles will be very small (if they can be called circles at all) but after a while, once you have gotten used to relaxing your kua and turning it, the circles will get bigger (or so my teacher told me). This will be the new focus when I do my basic silk reeling exercises.

Moving the Joints

My teacher was talking about peng being turning the wrist and not the whole forearm yesterday, which led to the inkling. I thought a bit about it again today, and remember something that my teacher said before about moving the joints independent of each other. That is, when I want to move my wrist, I don't move my elbow. When I want to move my elbow, I don't move my wrist or my shoulder. Each joint should not move because another joint is moving. That is what relaxing the joints mean. They move independent of each other.

This is important because otherwise, when your opponent is able to move one of your joints, he is able to control the rest of your body. He becomes able to use an action at one part of your body to affect you as a whole, to cause you to move as he wants. If you are able to relax all your joints, when he acts upon a single joint, the action is restricted to that joint and you are still able to control the rest of your body. This is easier said than done, so I guess that is what practice is all about.

An Inkling

Just an inkling... my teacher keeps talking about getting the opponent's force onto the screwthread. Just what is this screwthread? Could it just be the successive turning of the wrist, forearm and then upper arm? Leading to the turning of the torso, kua, knee and ankle? Just a thought that I wanted to keep alive, as I ponder over it in the days to come.

Up Against The Wall

I think everyone has this feeling once in a while. Sometimes, we just run up against a wall. We may start to ask why are we doing this. Or where are things headed.

I try to practise taiji daily, yet I don't seem to be improving. I tell myself to relax when pushing hands, yet when I push hands with my teacher, my arms still get tired easily (which means I am using brute force still). Is all that practice really helping?

A totally unrelated blog (somewhere, forgot where...) helped me to think things through. Sometimes, when we go up against a wall, we should stop and not try to push on. It is time to review what has been done so far, to work on other things, before coming back to the wall and try to get past it.

In taiji terms, if I come up against a wall, it doesn't mean I stop practising. But maybe it is time to change the focus of practice (work on single moves, work on basics, etc.) before coming back to work on the full routine? Maybe it is time to focus on relaxing the kua rather than trying to discern the opponent's force?

Sometimes, the answer is not in answering the question. Because there may not be an answer. Just the question and the process of answering it.

Learning Self-Defence

A fellow pushing hands student was telling me that he intends to take up aikido to learn some grappling/chin-na techniques, so that he can deal with drunks (he comes across them once in a while in the course of his work). Although he has learnt some martial arts before, he tells me that everytime he encounters a drunk, he feels fear and doesn't dare to do anything. I don't understand his intention for learning aikido, but I think he is trying to get some experience and confidence in using grappling/locks/throws/etc against a partner before trying it out for real.

What I fear is that he will still find himself at square one. Fear.

At the end of the day, using martial arts in self-defence is very different from sparring with a partner in a controlled environment. I have written about learning self-defence (or rather, not being able to learn) through pushing hands. In self-defence, there are no rules. You may have all the confidence gained sparring with a partner, but once the rules change (or disappear, for that matter), how confident can you be that you will come out the winner?

What we learn in class improves our techniques. But to counter fear, to gain that confidence needed to face a real opponent in self-defence, you need more than technique. You need the right mentality.

Before you commit to the fight, ask yourself, are you willing to lose (and either end up hurt or worse)? If not, it is better to avoid the fight (which may mean "Run!") But sometimes, we cannot avoid a fight. That is when our daily life will determine if we can counter our fear. If we live each day to the fullest with no regrets, we can then enter the fight knowing that if we die, we die with no regrets.

Thus, we practise the techniques of self-defence in the classroom/dojo, but we practise the mentality of self-defence through our daily lives.

Performance at 慈济

We put up a performance today at Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation in Singapore. It started with a group performance of an excerpt of Yang style taijiquan.
Followed by a performance of Chen style taiji sword.
I think the takeaway from the performance is not the performance itself (though it did give all of us experience in performing in front of an audience), but the additional practice that we went through, which helped us to correct some of our mistakes. Another important takeaway is the ability to practise as a group, so that we follow each other rather than keep to our own individual rhythms.

How to Neutralise Force

A hint provided by my teacher on how to neutralise your opponent's force. You must not resist his force (that has been said so many times before that it is obvious) and you know that you have neutralised his force when you no longer feel it.

Of course, the next thing to do after neutralising his force, is what to do with it. How do you then deflect it away from you, and then back towards your opponent, or use it against him?