Glue the hands
by Shang Lee
A quote from my teacher about push hands:
人在浆糊，身不由己。
For the non-chinese speaking community, the usual phrase is this:
人在江湖，身不由己。
This means that when you’re in the thick of things, you may not have a choice in your actions. My teacher changed the meaning to mean that when you’re glued, you will follow the person who has “glued” you.
I never understood how my teacher manage to glue to my hand, or the more common phrase used is “stick”. I don’t feel it, until it’s too late, then I really feel the glue.
In today’s push hands class, I manage to find out more about this glue. A well known theory* about Tai Ji is that we can actually use the opponent’s strength to counter his attack. Well, to actually do that, you have to know where that strength is coming from. So you’ve got to “listen” to the strength, which is where a lot of our push hands training is actually focused on.
Today, I found out that you not only have to listen to that strength, but you need to keep following that strength, so that you can keep the contact, so that you can keep listening. Now, the purpose of this follow through, is to actually return his strength. If the contact is broken, even by a little, you lose the ability to listen, which in turn making you lose the ability to redirect the strength. Ultimately, you lose out on using the opponent’s strength altogether.
I was able to test this out today and it made a difference because the other guy was feeling muscle tired after a few minutes. That guy was strong, so i guess if i did it correctly, it was all his strength he was pushing, and I manage to return it back to him. However, although I can sometimes do it with my right hand, my left hand wasn’t doing it at all. It shows because the length of time that the other guy’s hand feels tired is longer when we were both using our left hands. Also, I can feel that I’m using more muscle strength with my left hand.
On top of the left hand right hand difference, it appears that although I can do it with single handed push hands, I couldn’t do it with the double hands, which is a bit strange as well.
I guess I’ll just have to keep on experimenting to see what’s missing.
* I’m still calling it a theory because I can’t apply it. There are 2 schools of thought here. Some believe you can really use soft to overcome the hard. Others think that it’s physically impossible to not use strength at all. I’m edging more towards the former theory.
Alternatively, you can subscribe through RSS.
REMEMBER, if you think this post can help others in their journey, do share the love.
Related posts:
I’m with you. Not using physical strength seems so much harder, but what you can achieve if you can do it!
My take is that you can’t really move your body without using some muscle. The trick is that you can create a great deal more force with energy than you can with pure muscle. Too much muscle and you block the energy path, too little and you loose your structure, which in turn blocks the energy path. It’s all about balance. At least that’s what I think.
John
@John: Good point. I’m no medic, so i’m not sure which muscle is supposed to be used. My understanding (now) is to focus on the joints rather than muscle. I.e. adjust the joints (shoulder socket, shoulder blades, elbow, wrist, fingers, kua, knee, ankle, toes, neck, the spine-in-betweens) until the energy path is unblocked rather than adjusting the muscles. I think this is the leap in mindset that we need. I’m not sure how to adjust the muscle to achieve this, but don’t think we can do it without using muscle. It’s just a different emphasis.