Temporary Break

I will be taking a temporary break from my taiji lessons in Singapore as I go to Japan for a year. And now I am faced with a dilemma.

If I don't practise pushing hands for a year, I will definitely drop back to square one after a year of not practising.

If I find a place to practise pushing hands while in Japan, it means learning from a new teacher. If I follow what the new teacher teaches, my current teacher in Singapore may not like it. If I continue to do what my current teacher taught me while under the new teacher, the new teacher may not like it.

It is between a rock and a hard place...

Uniform Force

On a circle, every point is the same. That should have given me a clue about how force should be like. My teacher was telling us the other day that force should be the same along my arm, ie. the force at my wrist should be the same as the force at my elbow. One cannot be heavier (or lighter) than the other. Also, when pushing an opponent using two arms, both arms must push with the same force.

In the first case, if a part of your arm is lighter than another, it is an opening for your opponent to move in.

In the latter, if the force from both arms are the same, there is no opening for the opponent to escape towards.

Inkling - Moving With Your Opponent

An inkling again, this time about how to move with your opponent. Taiji teaches us not to resist our opponent, to move with his force. I see two ways to do this.

One is to let him push you around. Once he overcomes inertia, you move. You continue moving as long as he can push harder than the force acting back against him (either friction or any additional force you may put on him). It is like pushing a wooden block. It is easier to move a wooden block on wheels (less friction) compared to the wooden block by itself on a flat surface. In this case, your opponent will feel whatever force that is resisting him (which, if you are not resisting him, is purely friction alone) since by the laws of physics, any force will have an equal and opposite force acting on it. He will feel less force if your kua is relaxed (due to less friction), and theoretically (meaning "impossible") he will feel like he is pushing nothing if there is no friction in your kua.

The other way is to sense his force, then on your own, move in his intended direction. This is like pushing a wooden block that seems to predict your force and moves away from you on its own. In this case, depending on how well you sense your opponent's force, your opponent will feel whatever left-over force after the two forces interact (if you move away with less force than him). If you use more force to move away, you end up losing contact. If you use exactly the same force as your opponent, he will feel like he is pushing nothing.

While the latter may feel like you are not resisting your opponent, my inkling is that that is actually the same as letting go (going limp). When taiji talks about "不丢不顶", it means not to intentionally use force, whether to resist your opponent or to run away from him. Being relaxed "松" and moving with your opponent's force "随" means letting him push you, then using your kua to change the direction of motion to achieve your intended effect.

Relax is a State of the Mind

Once again, the question about being relaxed comes up. I have written before that being relaxed is a state of mind. When your mind is relaxed, you don't have the "fight or flight" mentality, and thus you are able to see more options (other than the two basic ones). This mentality manifests itself in your body, in that your body doesn't stiffen up from tension. Your body is thus relaxed, and when your opponent moves, you are able to sense his movement (direction and magnitude) and through a relaxed state of mind, see the options available to counter his movement.

A common mistake is to equate the relaxed body to mean a relaxed state of mind. When the mind is all tensed up trying to tell the body to relax, the body is necessarily going to be the opposite. So the more tensed up your mind is trying to get your body to relax, the harder it is to relax. And then it becomes easy to fall into the trap of "letting go (or going limp)" aka "丢". It becomes a vicious cycle because going limp won't stop your opponent, so your mind become more tensed.

So being relaxed starts with the mind, and that is why taiji is so focused on using intention, "用意不用力".When your mind is relaxed, your body will listen to your mind's commands instead of reacting to instincts, and you are then in control of the situation to change it to suit your needs.

Inkling - Hiding Your Force, Opening Possibilities

Another inkling, this one about hiding your force. When your force takes shape (which means it has direction and magnitude), your opponent can sense it and use it against you. Your force becomes a corner sticking out. To avoid this, you have to hide your force. It must become like an arc, in which every point is the same, there is no corner sticking out. By having no corners, each point on the arc has the possibility of becoming a corner. By not presenting force, you open up possibilities for the force to appear as, when and where it is needed.

Push With Back Leg Part 3

I have written about what I felt about pushing with the back leg before. Recently, I realised that I have been getting it wrong. All the while, I had thought that pushing with the back leg meant that when I am pushing forward, all the force should come from my back leg. Instead, that doesn't generate force to my arms, and cause the problem of stiffening my kua.

After some thought, and talking to my teacher, I realised that to push with the back leg doesn't mean the back leg pushes with a constant magnitude of force throughout. As your weight slowly shifts in front, the front leg takes on more weight, and the back leg should push with less force. Pushing with the back leg is actually a gradual shifting of the weight from back leg to front leg. The reverse (when shifting weight from front to back leg) is the same, of course. This helps you to move your centre of gravity properly and thus allows you to bring your weight to bear.

Power From Stance Training

Power comes from the legs. This is something common to all martial arts. Weak legs, weak stance, and you cannot generate force. Which is why it is important to train the strength of your legs. And all seem to agree that the way to do it is via stance training. It can be static (zhan zhuang) or dynamic (adopting a low stance when practising taiji routines). So don't rush through your routines, use them to practise your stances and from it, build up and learn to generate the force from your legs.

Balance, Weight and Steps

How you distribute your weight determines your balance. After all, it affects the position of your centre of gravity which effectively determines if you are in equilibrium or not (balance or off-balance). However, one often overlooked point is how your lack of balance can affect your steps.

When taking a step, if your balance is off, you will fall towards where your centre of gravity is. This affects where your step actually lands, since it may not land where it is intended. Which is why we need to place our weight on one leg before we step forward with the other leg. That way, we are stable when taking a step, and our step lands where we want it to be.

Turn Here, Turn There

Yet another inkling after thinking about my experience pushing hands with my teacher. It is about how to neutralise your opponent's force and use it back against him.

For example, when your arm comes into contact with your opponent's arm during pushing hands, turn your arm towards him in one direction until you meet resistance. Once you meet resistance, use that to stick to his arm, and then change the direction of turning your arm, all the while still turning towards him. If you meet resistance again, change direction. The thing is to change direction when you meet resistance, all the while your arm is turning in towards him.

A Joke... Or An Insult?

The opening move in taiji is a very simple movement, yet very difficult to master. From the opening move, one can see if a practitioner is able to achieve all the requirements of taiji, such as the body moving as a whole, relaxing the body, not using brute strength, moving continuously, etc.

During one of our classes, a senior student of my teacher was sharing with another student (quite new to taiji, but he has practised Japanese martial arts for decades) that we have been practising the opening move for about 3 years now (though it is more like 30 years for the senior student...) Hearing that, the new student declared that he would master the opening move in 3 months.

I don't know how to treat this statement. Should I take it as a joke? Or an insult? If a person thinks he can master something that we have been practising for 3 (or 30) years, is he belittling our effort, or belittling the difficulty of what we are trying to learn? Or is he so full of himself that he thinks he can do in months what others takes years to do?

I, for one, would think that he should know the importance of training. That as a practitioner of martial arts himself, he should know that there is no short cut. To be good at something, you need to put in effort to train in it. So I was quite shock at his statement. And if he knows the importance of training, would he then make his statement in jest? Or did he mean more than what he said?

Being Relaxed and Accepting Defeat

I keep writing about being relaxed. And I think that is really the key when facing an opponent.

In taiji, we are told to be relaxed. Relaxed is not a state of the body. It is a state of mind that brings about a state of body. It is no use trying to relax the body if your mind is not relaxed. If you are worried or afraid or angry or anxious, it will show in your actions.

Recently, a practitioner of Japanese martial arts was talking about what he learnt. It got me to recall what I myself know about Japanese martial arts, having trained in them before as well as having my own intimate relationship with Japan and things Japanese, including their way of life and their mentality. In Japanese martial arts, they advocate 覚悟, which when translated goes something like being aware of the consequences and ready to accept those consequences. In bushido (武士道) terms, it means being ready to die for a cause.

I think they all refer to the same thing. It means being ready to accept defeat (and the consequences that comes with it, including, at times, death). When you are ready to accept defeat, your mind is no longer cluttered by fear, anger or other emotions. Your senses are then heightened because your mind is at a different (higher) state of awareness. In a way, your mind is now sharper and thus you react faster. You can still be defeated if you never trained hard enough (because your body cannot achieve what your mind tells it to do) but you are otherwise at the peak of your performance.

Don't Let the "Balloon" Flatten

A common mistake, which I came to realise when pushing hands with my teacher, is that I let my "balloon" flatten. This "balloon" is my peng, and when I let it flatten, I mean my elbow bends more than it should, creating a corner instead of the arc/circle that is required in taiji.

Sounds hard to understand? An illustration: When I push, my arm is slightly bent to create an arc. When I hit resistance (my opponent's force resisting back), my teacher taught me to relax and then continue to push. But the mistake is in the relaxing part. What my teacher meant was to relax the kua and then continue to push using the strength of my legs. What I did was to relax my arms (lessening my peng) and allow my opponent's strength to move in, bending my arms a bit more than it should, creating a corner when it should only be slightly curved. When my arms are bent too much, I cannot push properly with my legs, and in order to straighten my arms a bit, I end up having to use muscular strength, and that is when my opponent can use my muscular strength against me.

So the lesson here is that when your opponent uses force, relax the kua, don't let your "balloon" flatten, and then continue to push with your back leg. By relaxing your kua, you draw your opponent's force out, straightening his force so that you can then use it against him.

Gauging Your Opponent

My teacher would tell us that the moment he contacts another person's hand, he knows how good that person is, and whether he can defeat his opponent or not.

I think I was able to experience something similar the other day. I was pushing hands with someone whom I have not met before. Although I was not able to come to any conclusions when our hands first touched, within one circle, I knew what I could do and what I should not try. I owe it to my teacher for teaching me the right mentality, which is to be relaxed and to be willing to lose. By going in with that mindset, I was able to discern just how good my opponent was and thus react accordingly.

You Have The Answer... Again

Yes, the important thing is to reflect, because that is one way to learn. And sometimes, you will find that you have the answer within yourself, if only you take the time to think and look for it.

Like today, when I was thinking about how to handle an opponent if he refuses to move his legs, pushing and pulling using only his arm muscles. It was a question that I was thinking about as I was walking, and I was going to ask my teacher the next time I see him. Then the answer came to me. If he doesn't change his stance, then use that against him. Move him perpendicular to the line joining his two feet. Either lead him forward or push him back along that perpendicular line, and he will fall. His unmoving stance will actually work against him.

Pushing Beyond Balance

There are two ways to push a person beyond his balance.

One is to push him until he is at the brink of balance, and continue pushing till he is beyond and loses balance.

The other is the lead him to move until his brink of balance, and then push him slightly to make his lose his balance.

The first way uses more force, the second is about listening to his force and guiding it towards the desired direction. In the first way, the push is the main tool. In the second, the push is the finishing touch.

There is a third way, which is to lead him to move till his brink of balance, and continue to lead him to move beyond his balance. In this case, there is no push.

You can easily replace push with pull in the above three examples.

Teaching As Reflection

I have talked about teaching being a means of learning before.

Teaching is a means of reflection.

After a long break from helping my teacher lead some of his classes, I went back again today to help out. Instead of the students that I used to lead, I helped with a group of newcomers. This gave me a chance to see those older students that I used to practise with. It made me feel ashamed and enlightened. Their mistakes were mine, and I am guilty of causing them to make those mistakes. They copied my mistakes when I made them, and continued to make those mistakes without being corrected.

The student is the teacher's reflection. The student's mistake is the teacher's. I have written about that before. In a class, the one who learns the most is actually the teacher. The student learns only from his own mistakes (as pointed out by the teacher) but the teachers learns from the mistakes of all his students.

When you lead a class, you need to be correct in your own moves. And that is why I appreciate my teacher for giving me the opportunity to help him lead some of his classes. I learn a lot more helping him lead his classes compared to when I practise on my own.

Drawing Out The Force

When two hands come into contact and don't move as both try not to use force, it is still resisting. Not moving because both are not using force is not relaxing. It is still resisting, albeit using minimum force.

My teacher is able to draw out force. No matter how relaxed and how much I try to avoid using force, once my hand comes into contact with his, he can draw out my force and then start to move me, at his choosing. When we both don't use force, our hands are just in contact. Then, he uses peng and draws out my force, I use a bit of force and he uses it back against me.

If I had used force from the onset, he would have of course used it against me. But even when I try not to use force, he is able to draw out my force. That is what a master in taiji is about.

Don't Push

It may sound weird, but that was what my teacher told me. He told me not to push. I think what he meant was not to focus on pushing, since he continued on to tell me to focus on neutralising my opponent's force. I think the lesson here is to focus on listening to my opponent's force and then try to neutralise it, rather than try to use it against him. So I think that will be my focus for a while, to try to figure out my opponent's force and how to neutralise it. After all, if I push back, things can sometimes become rough...

Pushing Hands is Not About Accommodating... (Huh??!!)

After telling me that pushing hands is about pushing the hands, the same fellow student told me that he cannot accommodate what I tell him when we were pushing hands. The context was: I was trying to tell him where he should place his hands so as to counter my push when we were practising two-hands pushing hands, so that we can work on drawing the circles first.

As I said, he probably did more years of taiji than me and thus know what he was talking about... but still, isn't taiji about trying to follow your opponent, and from there counter him? Isn't taiji about accommodating to your opponent (舍己从人)? But still, there is still a lesson to learn here.

Pushing hands is not about learning how to push someone. We can easily do that, just by you pushing me and I pushing you. Pushing hands is about learning how to sense your opponent's and your own force. I think the important thing when learning pushing hands is to know why you are even learning it in the first place. If the objective is to be able to push someone, you will learn how to push people. If your objective is to learn how to sense force, you will learn how to sense force and use it against your opponent.

And of course, if your objective is to learn to push but mine is to learn to sense your force, while you may be able to push me around at first, I will soon be able too use your force against you. The more I let you push me, there more I learn how to sense your force and eventually use it against you. If you never let your opponent push you, you will not know how to sense force.

Pushing Hands Means to Push the Hand (Huh??!!)

Life is really about learning, and we continue to learn new things each day.

Like today, when a fellow pushing hands student told me that pushing hands is about pushing the hand. Thus, I am not supposed to push anywhere else except the hands... of course, the definition of hand (手) here is a bit wide, it includes the arm (手臂) as well. So if his hand moves down, I am supposed to follow. I am not supposed to push his chest even when he leaves a big opening, because I am supposed to follow (随) and his hand has moved down.

I tried saying that taiji is about not giving up and not resisting (不丢不顶), but that seemed to fall on deaf ears since my fellow student was quite certain that he is correct. Well, he is older than me and probably learnt taiji for a longer period than me, even though he is new to the pushing hands class. I guess that gives him the right to say things like he knows what he is talking about and doesn't need to listen to others.

It reminded me of the famous Zen lesson. When your cup is full, you cannot receive anymore. When we come into class with pre-conceived notions about what is right and wrong, we cannot learn what the teacher has to offer.

One thing positive that I learnt. I learnt how to push with my back leg better. It is still something that I don't do well but I am slowly progressing. And I must thank my fellow student for that. He was the one who pointed to me how to push with my back leg better.

After 3 Months

3 months not training (much) set me back by a lot (I think). My teacher has yet to comment but I think he is just trying not to discourage me. A lot of catching up to do...

What did I do for the last 3 months?
Silk-reeling exercise for about 15min each session, plus some other basic movements for 5min, total 20min of training each time.
Trained about 3 sessions each week, after averaging out. Sometimes I trained daily for 2 weeks, sometimes I missed one whole week of training.
Zero pushing hands... no one to push hands with.
I think I can count the number of times I practised routines... maybe 4 times of Chen style and 4 times of Yang style...

The other day during pushing hands class, I sort of lost control. My partner was using force and I was returning it to him. He then told me not to use force to push him... and then he started using more force, so it felt to him that I was pushing harder. Then he got a bit rough (elbow, two-handed arm lock, grabbing) which was okay at first. But he kept saying I was using brute force to push him. Every once in a while he tried to use two hands (we were doing single-hand push hands) so in the end I also used two hands and pushed him. This got him a bit mad, he became real rough, tried to throw me and when I didn't fall but instead sprung back towards him, I did a double-handed push on his stomach quite unintentionally. But the end result is the same. I hit him when I should not have.

Lesson here? When things start getting rough, break off. Find another partner. No point ending up sparring. That is not pushing hands.

A lot of catching up to do... and a lot of distractions to take me away from focusing on the training...

Enjoying the Practice

Everytime I see my wife's drum teacher teaching drums, I am reminded that it is important to enjoy what you are practising. He is totally enjoying his drum lessons. He enjoys what he does, running around teaching Japanese drums to students, organising Japanese drum performances and performing in front of a crowd with his students. He enjoys the drumming experience, seeking not to control it but rather to flow with it. And thus creates greatness (so great that he was even given the opportunity to perform with Kitaro in Singapore when Kitaro was here in 2010).

I guess I can learn from this. I have been trying very hard to control my movements, so much so that they become something other than the smoothness of taiji. Yin and yang no longer flow into one another, instead becoming abrupt, jerky transitions. Maybe it is time to just let go of correcting the movements and just go with the flow?

Retaining Students

I was watching another taiji class practising the other day (while waiting for my wife to finish her drum lesson) and it set me thinking. Why is this taiji class here so big? Why is it that some of my teacher's classes are large while some are small?

Looking at this other class, I guess I have the answer.

It is not about the teacher. It is about his students. If the senior students are willing to help out and teach the new students, the class size will grow. Because a single teacher can only teach that many at a go, especially if they are all of varying levels. But the more helpers (senior students) that he has, the more people his class can accommodate. And when you are able to customise your class to meet individual (or almost individual) needs, people will stay because they feel that they are learning/getting something out of their time spent.

The question then is how to get the senior students to help. They need to stay committed (they need to turn up for every class), and sometimes, that is a hard thing to do. Especially since the teacher is obliged to turn up for class (he is being paid to do so) but the senior students are not obliged to teach (they are obliged to turn up for class being they need to respect the teacher's time for showing up).

One (Hand) Versus Two (Hands)

Sometimes, when you are doing single-hand pushing hands, do you inadvertently use the other hand as well? Ending in you using two hands against an opponent who is only using one hand?

Being a guy who likes to observe the rules, I would say that using two hands when doing single-hand pushing hand is against the rule and thus is a no-no. But at the same time, I don't think it is fair to say that we should totally avoid it. Because sometimes, we can't.

For example, sometimes your opponent is a bit rough and uses more dangerous moves, and the only way to counter him (and avoiding getting injured) is to use two hands. In such cases, I think we should. Pushing hands is after all a practice and it is not worth getting injured.

But if the reason for using two hands is because we cannot avoid being pushed by our opponent (who is using one hand), and we want to avoid being pushed (aka losing), then I feel that it is wrong to use two hands. After all, pushing hands is practice, we should not be afraid of losing. If our fear of losing (or our need to win) is so great, maybe we shouldn't be pushing hands.

Important To Be Correct

I was thinking through what my teacher said, and plus a bit of inferring from past experience. The result? I realised the importance of being correct when teaching.

What am I trying to say?

The important thing when teaching is not being able to demonstrate the difficult moves. It is in being correct in every move that you demonstrate. Because your student will imitate your every move, it is all the more important that their example is correct. Thus, a teacher/instructor must be able to perform each move, simple or difficult, correctly. That is so much more important than being able to do difficult moves. For example, being able to perform the basic stances correctly (meeting all requirements with regards to body, distance between the feet, etc), rather than being able to jump and flip. It is important to be able to correctly perform each move, big or small, rather than being fanciful.

Nervous (aka Lack of Confidence)

I tried again today, but still failed. And after thinking about it, I think I know why I failed.

It was not because of lack of practice. I had a year to prepare.

It was not because of lack of guidance, my teacher provided plenty of that.

It was because I was too nervous during the actual exam. Even before I entered the grounds, I was feeling nervous. I was so nervous since last night, I had difficulty sleeping. I was so nervous, I couldn't find appetite to eat until I grew so hungry I had to grab something. I was nervous when entering the exam ground, I was nervous in front of the examiners. I was nervous and rushed through my routines, wanting to get out of there as soon as I can. I was so nervous, I forgot the most important thing about taiji: staying calm.

My teacher said my routine was so different from what I usually do during practice, that he felt nervous for me watching from the side.

The cause of this nervousness? Lack of confidence, that is the conclusion I came to after reflecting.

I never suffer from this during practice. I am confident in front of my teacher because I know I have put in effort to correct the mistakes that he pointed out. I am confident that I have not let his teachings gone to waste.

But in front of others, I lost confidence. I lost confidence because I wasn't sure if what I am doing is acceptable to others, I am not sure if they appreciate what I am doing (I know this has some link to the need to answer to myself and not to others, but I will leave that discussion to some other day). I didn't have confidence in myself, in what I was doing. I was so concerned about passing that I lost sight of the need to be ready to lose. And thus, the nervousness.

The way ahead? Practise practise practise until I am so good, even I cannot dispute my own worth. Continue to seek the guidance of my teacher. And also, find opportunities to practise in front of others, to perform, so that good or bad, I put myself up for criticism, that I learn to accept criticism and from there learn about how others view my routines. In summary, practise a lot, follow my teacher's guidance and listen to the criticism given by others.

Hopefully, in a few years time when I try again, I would have gained the confidence in myself and remove the nervousness.

Neutralise and Move In

My teacher was telling us about how he moves in while neutralising his opponent's force. I was thinking, how do you do that without resisting? After all, if his force is moving towards you, how do you neutralise his force, yet move in towards him at the same time?

Maybe it has to do with the spiralling of the arm? As his force comes in, you spiral your arm so that you draw his force in. As he tries to prevent himself from being drawn in a direction that he doesn't want to go, he will pull back a bit. That may be the chance for you to move in. Or so I think...

Another Inkling

How to absorb an opponent's force and use it against him? Maybe the key lies in drawing him beyond the force provided by the legs, such that he uses local muscular force (ie. the arms muscles) instead of moving his body as a whole. Maybe the key is to draw him in, and once he stops using the force from moving his body as a whole and relies on the local muscular force of his arms, that is the time to return his force?

The Learning Process

The Chinese verb for acquiring a new skill is 学習, which comes from the word for learning (学) and practising (習). The important thing in not just to learn, but to practise as well. Sometimes, it is not that the teacher is not teaching, but because the student has not been practising, there is nothing new for the teacher to teach. Thus, if you think you are stagnant in your learning, maybe it is time to ask yourself if you have been practising enough?

Firm Base, Relaxed Body

My teacher again emphasised the importance of a firm base (strong stance) but warned against being rigid. The stance must be firm, but the kua must be relaxed so that the body can move in response to an outside force.

Still, the important thing is a pair of strong legs to achieve that strong stance. And strong stance doesn't mean low stance, though it starts out that way.