The TaiChi Pushhands Resource

The TaiChi Pushhands Resource on the Web!

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Chinese Internal Martial Arts embrace a certain philosophy and quality of movement that is entirely different than other Martial Art styles.  The philosophical and spiritual underpinning of TaiChi Chuan and the other Chinese Internal Martial Arts is the Taoist philosophy/religion.  Taoism is a relatively unknown spiritual path in the East.  The written cannon of Taoist thought specifically states in its “genesis” passage that “The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao”.  What this means is that if you say the Tao is this, then it cannot be that.  If you say the Tao is that, then it cannot be this.  Instead, Tao is really this, that, the other and the 10,000 things (everything). 

The first differentiation of Taoism is the Yin Yang symbol that is so famous in both Eastern and Western modern thought.  The Chinese name for the Yin Yang symbol is “Tai Ji” (also spelled “Tai Chi”).  One translation is “the Grand Ultimate”.  Unfortunately, this does not quite describe what it fully encompasses.  Again, when you label something, you are explicitly saying that it is not something else.  This is the limitation of language in describing the Tao.  Western thinkers can think of the Tao as God (in some ways).  God it taught as ineffable, unknowable, mysterious.  The sames holds for the Tao.

The concept of Yin Yang (or Tai Ji) describes what happens when the Tao is differentiated or more specifically described or in the case of TaiChi Pushhands, movement begins.  For example, you cannot describe lightness without darkness.  You cannot describe beauty without ugliness.  You cannot have happiness without sadness.  Each part is integral to the other.  For example, what is the difference between and angel and a demon?  Well it depends on your point of view.  The angel you prayed to in order to help destroy your enemies is, is the demon attacking you if you belong to this enemy.  Part of the difficulty of understanding Taoist principles is that you must realize that you cannot have one without the other.  We cannot know and embrace peace without first knowing war.  Understanding and coming to terms with this Dichotomy is critical to acceptance of others and living at peace with yourself.

In the art of Tai Chi Pushhands, we are in movement with another person.  Ultimately we cannot control the thoughts and movements of the other person.  One person might use strength at a certain moment and another person must accept this movement and yet at the same time not be dominated by that movement.  A balance between softness and hardness must be reached.  The practitioner must be able to accept the dichotomy that they cannot be too soft or to hard.  Understanding that softness, retreating and yielding are just a differentiations of the whole and cannot be known without their corresponding opposites of hardness, advancing and leading, will yield a better understanding of Taoist philosophy. Being able to balance these qualities while dealing with the unknown of another person’s movement can be challenging and is part and parcel of Tai Chi Pushhands theory and skill.

This integral relationship between Tai Chi Pushhands and Taoism cannot be ignored.  I remember when I was a teenager and I began the practice of Tai Chi Pushhands.  I was at the time a baptised and confirmed Episcopalian. Once I began the practice of Tai Chi Chuan I began a conversion to Taoism.  I could not progress without this acceptance of Taoist thought and integration of Taoist practices into my Pushhands practice and my life.  Pushhands became a microcosm of life and how to work through its hurdles.  While I am not suggesting that you must convert to Taoism to succeed in your Pushhands practice, I do think it is a must that Taoist principles be integrated into your practice in order to progress.  Any thoughts?

I was very surprised to find a few days ago that the domain name, www.movingpushhands.com, was available.  I snapped it up right then and there.  I had already begun working on www.pushhands.com just a couple of weeks ago but I had purchased that domain back in 1998.  I have done things with the site over the years but nothing major for the most part.  I recently started to learn a great deal about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  This is what lets your site be found more easily in the search engines, Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. for certain keywords.  My hope is to help popularize the great Art of Taichi Pushhands with the help of SEO.

I have been practicing Pushhands for over 23 years.  In a twist of fate, I even began practicing Moving Pushhands first and then moved back to stationary of some of the basic exercises.  At the time I started learning it, I was into other styles of Kung Fu and did not know that the Moving Pushhands was even part of TaiChi!  Over the years, I have found that a lot of people ignore Moving Pushhands in their Pushhands practice.  This is very dangerous.  Stationary Pushhands can give a person a false sense of accomplishment.  Maintaining your root while Moving around with a person is much more difficult and also closer to actual use in a real situation.

This site will be tied together heavily with the www.pushhands.com site and yet will remain separate and dedicated to the practice of Moving Pushhands.  I find it harder and harder to find people willing to practice Moving Pushhands.  The practice requires a good amount of strength, wind, speed, concentration, and balance.  This is not because it is a rough and tumble sport but because maintaining softness and yet having Peng with a moving opponent can require you to move a great deal.  Even just 3 minutes of Moving Pushhands can feel to some people like running 10 miles.  This can only be overcome by continued practice.  As you practice Moving Pushhands more and more, you will feel where you can relax more and more and then you will be able to push for longer and longer times.

You will find all over our two Pushhands site, reference to our Tuesday Night Pushhands Gathering.  This is locate in Takoma Park, MD and occurs from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.  Anyone and everyone is invited.  We regularly have as much as 3 to 20 or more Pushhers.  This is a rare find for Pushhands and everyone interested should try to attend!

Finding compatible and capable Pushhands partners is extremely difficult.  Most practitioners come and go and few are dedicated to spend the time Pushhing that is needed to develop good skills.  This has always been a problem for me that I have never known how to deal with.  I have my weekly Pushhands Gathering.  I have my close Pushhands partners that I can meet with fairly frequently but it never seems to be enough.  Recently, circumstances have caused me to start using the Metro (Subway) to commute to work and back home.  While not the most enjoyable of traveling methods, you can change it around by using the time to practice your rooting and balance while the train is starting, stopping and rumbling around.  During those rush hour times when everyone is grabbing for the nearest pole or handle so they are not thrown around, the Pushhands practitioner can use this time to practice rooting.  Effectively the jarring movement of the train can come out of nowhere, similar to a push, and you must know how to lower your root and not resist the changes in direction too much or you will over compensate and be thrown the other direction.  This can of course be done on any moving platform, a bus or a boat for example. 

Relaxing the ankles and sinking the root.  Relaxing the leg muscles and not tensing the Kua (hips) all help with this skill.  Most of the time that people practice Pushhands with a partner, the concentration is on the upper body and the relaxation there.  While this is of course a very large part of the game, take some of the sensations from this practice to your next Pushhands practice and instead concentrate on the lower body relaxation also.  You will be amazed by how you notice all the tension you were holding in your lower body.  There is a dichotomy (something with seemingly contradictory qualities) there where you need to hold yourself upright and accept the force of the incoming push while at the same time being relaxed.  Pushhands in its basic principles is all about how you can mentally, physically and energetically overcome this dichotomy.

Give this a try when you have the time and post a comment.  I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this.  Keep on Pushhing!

Pushhands

Unfortunately, I was unable to make the Tuesday Night Pushhands Gathering in Takoma Park, MD.  Very few things keep me away from my Tuesday Pushhands Night.  I am able to push most any day of the week but how often do you get some 15 or more people lined up to push through!?  Not often!  So what kept me away?  Well, I thought it might fit into a very appropriate Blog about Pushhands Etiquette.

Etiquette in Pushhands?  What is that you might ask?  Well, really it is common sense.  Pushhands involves the close proximity of two person while they are exercising, sweating and breathing hard all over each other.  If this doesn’t qualify as a Public health Hazard, I don’t know what will.  Basically, I was diagnosed a few days ago with Strep Throat.  While I have been on Antibiotics for 3 days, it would be ill advised of me to come and Push with everyone and infect them all.  So one of the most basic rules of Pushhands Etiquette is to avoid pushing when you have a communicable disease.

Another one of the most common lapses in proper Etiquette is the in regards to the clothing worn to push in.  It is recommended that you wear whatever clothing makes you comfortable, up to a degree of course.  Wearing “Tank Tops”, where you under arms are exposed, is not very nice.  While it may feel good to wear, there is nothing worse then sticking your hand into a smelly, wet and sweaty under arm in the middle of pushhands. We recommend that you bring a short sleeve T shirt to push in.  The sleeves should go down to the middle of the upper arm.  The best practice is to bring 2 short sleeve T shirts so that you have an extra one when you get too sweaty or one rips.

The last of the major Etiquette mistakes is in the area of hygiene.  Keep in mind the close proximity to your fellow pusher that you will be maintaining during you pushhing session.  Your breath is very noticeable during this time.  Taking some breath freshener, brushing your teeth beforehand, or avoiding smelly foods all can help in the regard. You should also pay attention to the last time you have taken a bath!  I can’t count the number of people I have pushhed with that smelled horrible!  Like they had not taken a bath in several days!  All of these things should remain in the forefront of your thoughts as you prepare for your session.  I even used to take showers before going to practice which seemed weird to many people but is perfectly understandable from this light.

All of these Etiquette recommendations boil down to listening to your partner.  One of the basic principles of Pushhands.  Think about what it must be like to push with you.  Did you bring a towel to wipe off that excess sweat?  What else could you do to make the session more comfortable for your fellow practitioners.    While most of us can see that this is common sense, you would be surprised by the number of Tank Top wearing hard labor workers who just ate a curry dish, come to push and think nothing of it!

Let’s all enjoy pleasant pushhing in every sensory direction!  Enjoy!

-Pushhands

Hello my fellow Pushers.  For those of you who love Pushhands and also like to keep themselves teched up, this post is for you!  I have found a Wordpress Blog theme off og the Internet for free that automaticaly formats the Pushhands Blog for the iPhone and iTouch.  This is very cool!  Please take a look at this new format and let me know how you think it looks.

Now I can update this Blog from my iPhone and view it from my iPhone.  Two totally uncessesary function!  Yeah!

-Pushhands

Hey all you Pushers out there!  Welcome to the Under Construction www.pushhands.com site.  Hopefully soon to be your source for TaiChi Pushhands information on the web.  I am new to Blogging so bear with me while I learn the ropes.  So this will be the first attempt at posting pictures and video files onto a Blog.  These pictures were taken Tuesday, August 1st, 2009.  This was a pretty good size group for a Tuesday Night Pushhands Gathering.  I believe at the max, we had 16 pushers present yesterday.  There was at least 13 present throughout the entire 2 hour session.  The time period is from 7:00pm until 9:00pm so many people come and go throughout that time period.

I took a few pictures with my iPhone.  I also have the new version that let’s you do video and we have a short video about the Tuesday Night Pushhands Gathering by Kenny.  Kenny is a student at Wu Shen Tao Health & Martial Arts (http://www.wushentao.com).  Paul Ramos, the Head Instructor, has been the extremely generous host of our Pushhands Gathering for over 20 years.  Paul was out of town yesterday as he was traveling to Europe to serve as a judge at a Chinese Martial Arts tournament in Germany!  Way cool!

Please take a look at the picture and video and post your comments.  Please pass the word about www.pushhands.com!  There will be forms created for notifying people of Pushhands related events soon.   Changes are occurring rapidly so keep checking back often!  Thanks!

- Pushhands

Hello fellow Pushers!  In my previous post, I spoke about how long I have sat on this wonderful domain, pushhands.com, without making any use of it.  One of the things that I promised my Chinese Fung Fu Master, Master Liu XiaoLing, was that I would help to spread and popularize Chinese Martial Arts.  I made this pledge to him when I became his formal disciple back in 1993.  I have since, taught TaiChi classes all over the Washington, DC area but have really not helped to spread the popularity of the art.  I feel that I now have the tools to help with this task.

How, you may wonder can I help?  Well,  recently I have gained a whole lot of experience with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  This is the art of making sure that you a listed within the first page or two of the popular Search Engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing.  While I am just beginning, give this a try and go to one of these Search Engines and search for “Pushhands”.  While I am not listed as number 1, I plan to be soon! 

I will be Blogging some about this subject in the future.  I can already hear some complaining about this as it has nothing to do with Pushhands or Chinese Martial Arts.  Au Contrair, it is extremely important that we drive visitors to this web site in order to help get the name “Pushhands” better known in the communities across the world.  Most of the earlier work on this site will deal mainly with the SEO efforts as getting the site popular and having visitor participation in Blogging, Forums and Theory discussions will be integral to the site’s success.  So please bear with me as we try to get the word out.  Please pass the word to your friends and workout partners.  Many changes will be happening over the next few weeks and we would love to have you come back and check things out!

-Pushhands

Welcome to Pushhands.com!  This domain was originally purchased on July 10th, 1998.  That is over 10 years ago!  All that time, I have sat on the domain name and not put it to any use.  I have been ashamed of myself over the years.  The main reason that I purchased the domain name was to help popularize the art of TaiChi Pushhands.  I have been practicing TaiChi Pushhands since 1986.  I truly love the challenges of this beautiful art.  I have recently had to bone up on Web Design and Search Engine Optimization at my current job and decided to apply this knowledge to Pushhands.com in the hopes of building a good source for Pushhands collaboration on the web.

I would love to have this be a collaborative effort (as all good Pushhands training really is).  I will be having an Events section on this site where I will post any events, schools, videos, etc. that have to do with TaiChi Pushhands.  Just email me the details of the Event and I will get it posted ASAP.
I plan to put a forum on the site soon too in order to foster discussion about TaiChi Pushhands.  I believe there is too much isolation in the Pushhands community.  We need to reach out to each other and try to meet.  The best way a Pusher can talk to you is through the unspoken communication of sticking.

Please check back on the site as part become active over the next couple of weeks.  Please Comment and participate where you can.  I would love to hear from you!  As always, please come to the open Tuesday Night Pushhands Gathering.  See the main page for more information!  Welcome!