Push Hands A Whole-Body Experience

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Push Hands A Whole-Body Experience

“	<div class="flexinode-body flexinode-1"> Author: Paul Crompton <div class="flexinode-textarea-5"><div class="form-item"> Article: [IMG]images/articles/PUSH_LEAD.jpg[/IMG] As you follow the photographs in this article, remember to move slowly and in a relaxed way. Initially, it is preferable to understand the mechanics of what you are doing rather than trying to be soft or yielding. Once you have learned the movements themselves, you can bring in other aspects. Wrists Your partner stands in front of you in the same position as yourself, close enough for you to assume the posture shown in photo 1. The back of your right wrist rests against your right wrist. Push forward off your back foot. Neither person moves her feet from the floor. Your partner, keeping contact with the back of your wrist, shifts her weight backward (photo 2). When you find that going further forward in an upright posture would cause you to overbalance, stop moving and let her push you back. Do this a number of times until you are familiar with the movement. When you push, do not do so out of aggression. Simply take part in the physical motion. Your ankles carry the movement. The soles of the feet remain completely in touch with the ground. Don't go up onto your toes or back on your heels. You move back and forth in a straight line. Keep your wrists joined. Your partner pushes forward. This time take your right wrist a little away to your left as you move back, turning your waist and trunk a little to the left also. In fact, your body turns as a whole, not in separate pieces (see photos 3-4). As you reach the limit, or loss-of-balance point, turn to the right to face forward again and rest your palm on your partner's wrist. You then push forward, and your partner retreats, turning to her right and returning to the center to begin the cycle again. Always remember that winning and losing are unimportant. The interplay of yin and yang is what we want to discover. Take up the positions shown in photo 5. The player on the left - L - is raising her right arm to show the position of the woman on the right - R - more clearly, with regard to the cupped hand on L's elbow. In fact, L would hold her arm lower. R places her right hand on L's wrist and her left on her elbow. This hand positioning controls punching and elbowing by L and is a useful pointer in self-defense application. [IMG]images/articles/push2.jpg[/IMG] R pushes forward with both palms at the same time. Once again, use the straight line at first for simplicity's sake. L yields and at the limit of the push turns her right wrist as before, but this time she brings her left palm to R's right elbow (see photos 6-7). Here we have shown L raising her arm high. It could be low or in between. In photos 8-10 we show a continuation of this exercise in which both players are moving in varied directions, purely for experiment's sake and to get the feel of the possibilities. This introductory part is fundamental. It should be repeated often. It contains two pillars of push hands movement - ward off and push. Ward off is presenting your arm to your partner, in this case to allow her to push. We then move on to two more pillars: roll back and press. Assume the position as shown in photo 11. R pushes and L yields to her right and back. Instead of cupping the elbow as before, L brings her left arm across with her turn (photo 12) so that the forearm catches R around or just above the elbow joint. R is turned away a little to her left. R brings her left palm to rest snugly and more or less at right angles on her right palm, the heels of the hands meeting. She presses back down the center again (see photo 13). L has rolled back - her first movement - and R has begun to press. As R presses, she is in touch with L's right wrist. L brings her left palm across to rest lightly on R's wrists and turns away to her left. As she turns, she slides her right palm to R's elbow and turns her left palm through 90 degrees to end up as in photo 14. She pushes once again, and R meets this action by beginning to roll back (photo 15). She continues to move through the same sequence in reverse as L turns her push into a press (photo 16). The whole movement traces an elongated figure eight through a horizontal plane. R is taken to her left, back to the center, forward to her right, back to the center, yielding to her left, back to the center, yielding to her right, and back to the center. In push hands we try to never lose contact with the partner. As we go on we hope to become more and more sensitive to our partner's every movement. This is achieved by sensing, mainly through the palms of the hands, the other's constantly changing point of balance. Do not be confused by the new arrangement of arms and legs. Just let it flow, and the arms will take care of themselves. Then go through everything you have tried up to now with the left foot and left arm leading. Confusion may be the order of the day at first, but it will help your understanding of push hands if you and your partner sort it out together. Having gone through all these combinations, you will have quite an array of different movements in your repertoire. We can move on. In photo 17, R has pushed L and this time L brings her left hand right under both of R's arms and is bending her wrist upward a little so that she can press to her left and take R's arms away in that direction. As she does so she slides her right hand back to her right side and stands ready to push R. R is ready to repeat the same action in response (photo 18). You will realize that now she is not going to push R's forward right arm, as in all the previous movements, but her rear left arm. Palms of the Hands When you touch your partner, your beginner's mind is intent on pushing and all that it conjures up. But we do not want that. We are looking rather for the touch associated with a mother or someone who likes animals. The love - which is a feeling - works in harmony with the body. Untrained and alone, the body will just push. With care it will push more sensitively, and with an alert mind you will not forget so quickly. Soles of the Feet Far away from the appreciative hand are the soles of the feet. In general, they are far less noticed than the hands, but since we push from them we should pay more attention to them. Some people stand rocked back on their soles. Others stand falling inward onto their arches, and still others stand on the sides of their feet or rocked forward. Becoming more aware of the soles of the feet improves the balance in push hands and helps one remember that pushing originates there and not in the arm muscles. Elbows In tai chi the elbow is never fully extended. This avoids tension and also leaves you some "push" in reserve. An arm that is still bent has some extension left in it; an extended arm has none. The position of the elbows is something that makes a lot of difference in basic push hands but even more in more advanced push hands. As a rule we aim to keep the elbows down - not contracted down but naturally allowed to drop. When you put your hands on your partner's arms, you let your elbows down. With elbows down you can transmit the force that comes from your legs and back more easily through your arms and into your palms. In more advanced techniques your partner will push your body or pull you by the elbow. It is much more difficult for your partner to reach your body if the elbows are down. It is also harder for the other to disturb your balance. The Knees In tai chi a lot is demanded from the knees and thigh muscles. With time your thigh muscles will become strong through this training - strong but not bulky. Through constantly stretching and releasing the thighs a high standard of muscle quality is reached. Even elderly tai chi students have excellent flexibility in this region of the body. An oft-mentioned rule in tai chi is that we aim not to let the knee come forward beyond the toes when we bend the leg. If you take up the standard push hands posture and begin to bend your leg more and more so that the knee extends beyond the toes, you will begin to experience a lot of strain at the knee. When you push back with your bent leg to return to a more comfortable position, you will find it more difficult than following the rule of not going beyond the toes' position. If your partner were to pull you forward from the beyond-the-toes position, you would find it nearly impossible to recover your balance, as your center of gravity would be too far extended. Shoulders More than ten muscles are attached to the scapula from different directions. The shoulder, therefore, is a big center of activity, tension, and relaxation. When you are pushing hands, you should try to let the shoulder blades move freely over your rib cage and not fix the muscles. When you are pushed at the wrist and elbow, allow the blades to move down as you lead your partner away. Training in this method will give you a surprising degree of mobility that can be tested by a small experiment. Take the standard posture and let your arm be pushed as usual. Instead of retreating with the trunk and arm combined, just let the arm itself move back in a curve. Allow your shoulder blade to carry the movement. Then try the same action but ask your partner to push up at a 45-degree angle. As he does so, keep your legs and body still and take your shoulder blade up, round and down. To let the shoulders become more free, use an exercise of raising, rotating and lowering them. Hips, Abdomen, and Waist Since I seem to be saying that everything is important, how can anything be important The point is, each region of the body is important as it comes into play. Loosening and freedom in waist movement is vital in tai chi form and push hands. In Zen training and in Chinese writings on meditation, as well as in the Tai Chi Classics, the abdominal region is often stressed. The Japanese refer to the hara and the Chinese to the tan tien, and both mean either a specific point in the abdomen or the general area. When you perform the exercises or techniques described in this article you always need some waist-abdominal movement, however slight, since each movement requires the body to move as a whole. Learn about the waist by turning slowly to avoid injuring the lower back. Some schools of tai chi teach a tucking in of the sacrum. But this may be a misinterpretation of the instruction to lower the sacrum. What was meant to be achieved through relaxation people accomplish through tension, tucking the sacrum forward. Unless you have analyzed your own movements, you may not be aware of how much action the lower part of the trunk can produce. If you sit on a chair with your feet flat on the floor and extend both arms forward at shoulder level, you can try turning your trunk-waist to the right. If your arms move only a few degrees, your present possibility is small. If you manage, say, 70 degrees, it is fine. Then try extending your arms with scapula movement only. Depending on your size, you can move the fingertips forward some nine-to-15 inches without moving the body. The instructions for the back and head are simple: keep them naturally straight, if possible relaxing the lower part of the back. In most styles of tai chi the back is held upright and the head straight on top of it, eyes horizontal. This is the position for the standard posture and in 99 percent of the movements this posture is to be maintained. Otherwise the balance is more easily lost. Take, for instance, a situation in which you push forward with both hands or are pulled by a partner. The usual, untrained action is to lean forward. This means that the head, the heaviest part of the body by volume, goes beyond the center of gravity. The balance is therefore strongly upset in a forward direction. The rest of the body follows the head, as night follows day. If, instead, you move the whole body forward, keeping an upright posture, your position with respect to your balance is unchanged, even though you have moved forward. Try it and find out. The point about keeping the eyes forward is simple: you can see. If you follow the pointers explained above, your push hands will improve along the right lines. If not, the simplicity of push hands will be lost on you forever.	”