push hands
Getting sick of getting sick
I hate getting sick, despite what I understand in why do we get sick. I always feel that time getting sick is time wasted. And I would rather get sick on a weekday than on a weekend. A weekday, I can get a doctor’s certification and I don’t have to go to work. On a [...]
Drawing small circles
The smaller the circle, the smaller the mind. 圈子小，人生圈子也小。
When doing Tai Ji, or when pushing hands, it reflects the way you see life itself. When we are afraid of making mistakes, when we are not confident in ourselves, these feelings will show in your Tai Chi, even to the untrained eye. For instance, the hands [...]
When you push, just push
A common habit when practising, is to make the adjustments while carrying out an action. In the context of Tai Chi, you might have seen people bobbing up and down, or pushing forward with various hand gestures, looking very awkward as though their clothes just don’t fit them. Then one day, my teacher said,
“When you [...]
Awakened by a beginner
Everybody’s a beginner at some point in their life. And the goal of the beginner? To be the opposite of a beginner - to be an expert. While everyone is a beginner at some point, they do so with the aim of not being one in the future. Unfortunately, life’s lessons are not always delivered [...]
Fear of feedback
I recently attended a “leadership” course, where you’re asked to play games in a group setting to demonstrate your leadership, or the lack of it, in a controlled environment. We navigated a small island with a “hot-from-the-oven” navigation skills and a 20-years-old topographical map.
I actually enjoyed the navigation part as it brought me out to [...]
Move like earth
The Earth moves at 40,270 km/h, and yet we don’t feel it. Maybe because we’re standing too far away from the spinning axis - 6,371 kilometers too far! Now, if we extend the same theory to our own bodies, assuming my hand is 1 meter away from my spinning axis, I would need to “spin” [...]
Emotion beats logic, but only emotion can beat emotion
When I said learning less everyday, I didn’t think that emotions played a big part. I know that the more I learn, I seem to know less about the world around me. Maybe my tag line should read “learning less about the world everyday”, but that’s not true either. I wanted to learn the way [...]
Follow and borrow
Out of the 100 rounds of push hands I did, I “felt” 2 follows and 0 borrows. And realised the distinction between them.
When pushing hands, the message is always to “listen” to the intent of the force, but feeling it with your hands. If you know the intent of the force, you will know where [...]
Form without substance
I’ve been doing the Sun style form since my first lesson with my current teacher. After learning the whole form, it’s been doing it over and over again. The one consistent message which keeps coming through is this - my form lacks substance.
I’ve been trying to figure out what this “substance” is. I think it’s [...]
The lure of anticipation
My work requires me to anticipate on a daily basis - more commonly known as “risk management” in the industry. It’s a nice sounding term but it cracks the brain, literally. We need to come up with scenarios, however unlikely, so that we have a system in place which is robust enough to deal with [...]
