Defining Tai Chi Push-Hands

A lot of would-be cognoscenti will watch someone's Taiji form and say that 'it's empty' because that's a well-known buzz-phrase and it shows that you're 'in the know'. The original point of the phrase is that someone is doing an external parody of the form and is not constantly moving the body by manipulating the jin.

The Taiji form training is supposed to be preliminary and part of the training for push hands. Taiji push hands is supposed to be a close encounter which practices using the manipulation of jin between 2 people. Without that jin it is 'empty' and only an external parody.

Using the jin or trying to use it doesn't mean that you are somehow 'unbeatable'. So now we have people like Mario Napoli who has come up with the idea that if you out-muscle, out-wrestle, get-under-quickly-and-push-upward, etc., then your Tai Chi must be good. It's flabbergasting that supposed 'teachers' got this far in the CMC group without being stopped.

A lot of people use 'push hands' as a mild 'status indicator'. It's a safe format to contest with someone and impress them that you know something about Tai Chi. In many (if not most) cases, that has unfortunately become what push hands is ... a safe format to exercise your ego.

But without the focus on jin, an odd thing begins to happen. First of all, the contest becomes by necessity one of muscle and local strength (even if you only use '4 ounces' and you use local strength, it's not Tai Chi). The next step for the aggressive ones is to see how assertive and strong they can get without admitting to the other guy that what they're doing may not be Taiji at all. This is the common problem. In fact, the 'rules' at the Tai Chi Tournaments do nothing to foster good Taiji, they are simply rules to keep the local strength down to acceptable levels.

It's hard to push hands if you are really trying to push hands with jin and the other guy is simply trying to win. You're doing 2 different things. I've been in many contests where the muscle use continues to escalate and escalate because winning is so important. The question I always have in mind is 'if the other guy is not really doing push hands anymore, what happens if I suddenly inject things that are not push hands?' In a couple of very violent cases I have proved to my satisfaction that the other guy was willing to escalate strength and aggressiveness, but he never thought that he might get hurt doing it. He liked Taiji because he could impose himself on others (while humiliating them and establishing the pecking order), but he didn't like it when he wasn't in control and the situation turned nasty. In other words, it's a bully's game. Right now there are a lot of bullies doing push-hands because it's safe for them. But it's not Tai Chi push hands, it's a parody of it.

To be fair, I spoke with someone well-known in the tournament hierarchy and he defended the tournaments as getting better and better and excluding the extraneous non-taiji stuff (Don Miller's name was mentioned). This person also told me that the Mario's and the Don Miller's and their crowds actually represent a minority in the Taiji community and the tournament community and that I may be making too big of a deal of it. Point taken.

Anyone else got comments?

Mike Sigman

This is obvious. Why bring it up?

These people will always be there. In some places they are big part of community some places small part. In NYC there is much pretend Tai Chi Chuan. One has to be smart to find gold in the sand.

This brings back a memory. I first got introduced to the taji form and practice a few years back- it changed my life hurrah and it was a limited introduction, to say the least.

I learned about push-hands to this extent- you were supposed to use the principles practiced in the form to unbalance yr. opponent by being as relaxed as possible, finding his center(of mass) and giving him a gentle shove. In light of recent exposure, thats no more taiji than is clog-dancing, but hell, its still a fascinating and subtle game to play with a partner.

so anyway, taiji was all the rage among my freaky, street-level freinds- and we began to try this thing out. predictably it was frustrating and usually devolved into knocking heads until the beer arrived.

one day, this kid turns up and wants to do 'push-hands', and he's nice and relaxed and quick and boom! he reaches down, grabs my leg and gives it a yank. i moved a step, and he says, 'i win!'

???? win? who said anything about winning? it just went downhill from there-he 'cheated' in every way and cared only about making my feet move. in retrospect, this guy had obviously been a part of something linked to this tournamant push-hands thing. a big fat waste of time.

anyway, that's my story.

Carl

Because a lot of beginners don't know that. They see someone like Mario Napoli or Don Miller claiming to be 'national champions' (there has never been a national tournament, only a bunch of tournaments with fancy names) so they think maybe that muscle and push-shoving is somehow part of Tai Chi. It's easy, if you have basic skills, to take advantage of a neophyte and claim that what you are doing is Taiji.

In Chen Village one year, a shuai jiao (sort of like judo) player won his weight division with only shuai jiao. A lot of people thought it was funny (not many of the Chinese martial arts are fully up to snuff after the cultural revolution and the best players seldom enter tournaments because they know the tournament stuff is NOT really Taiji). However, none of the Taiji people thought that because the shuai jiao guy won that he was an 'expert in Taiji' nor did the shuai jiao guy think that what he had done was Taiji. Only in areas of ignorance (like the U.S., the UK, etc.,etc.) can you get a guy using muscle and technique against low-level players who will then think that proves his 'Tai Chi' is good.

Regards,

Mike Sigman

Sure, and this is the ego-centered crap that Mario calls push hands. Mario doesn't know Taiji... he knows buzzwords and aggression. Give him a chance to get in a real fight and he dodges. He can't defend to us how what he does is push hands (it's pseudo-fighting but with a safety net)... he can't fight after he shoots his mouth off.

Mike Sigman