The Wonderful Hands of Tai Chi

Tai Chi's "Wonderful Hand."
Chang Cheung-hsing's "Message of His Discovery of the General Theory of Tai Chi Ch'uan."

"Totally Yin with Yang is "Soft Hand".
Totally Yang without Yin is "Hard Hand".
10% Yin with 90% Yang is "Hard Rod Hand".
20% Yin with 80% Yang is "Combat Hand".
30% Yin with 70% Yang is "Rigid Hand".
40% Yin with 60% Yang may be classified as "Good Hand".
Only 50% Yang beautifully matched with 50% Yin, without being partial to either Yin or Yang, is regarded as "Wonderful Hand".
The execution of "Wonderful Hand: is an expression of Tai Chi.
When all images and forms are completely neutralized, things once again return to their original state of "nothingness." "
- Cloud Hands, Inc. Tai Chi Chuan: The Technique of Power, p 75. By Cloud Hands Inc., 2003. 290 pages. ISBN: 0974201308. VSCL.

My teacher, Sifu Knack, once spoke of "Blood Hand." It is when you punch so hard that the blood of your opponent is on your fist.


Hands, Touching, Grasping

Push Hands in Tai Chi Chuan

Pushing Hands

Sticking Hands, Sensing Hands (Tui Shou), Push Hands    

I look forward to meeting and practicing Pushing Hands with a person in Red Bluff, California.  Let's meet up!  Contact me by email.  

"Push Hands is a relaxed, two-person sparring exercise that one may begin upon completion the Tai Chi Short Form. It may be considered as the bridge between the Form and fighting practice. Three specific techniques are emphasized: sticking--maintaining light contact with an opponent; listening--sensing the magnitude and direction of an opponent's force; andyielding--responding to an opponent's force partially by giving way, and partially by controlling or guiding its direction. The ultimate goal of the training is to reduce the amount of force needed to neutralize attacks, so that one may defeat speed and strength with skill."
- Chu Tai Chi, New York

"Pushing hands trains these technical principles in ever increasing complexity of patterns. At first students work basic patterns, then patterns with moving steps coordinated in different directions, patterns at differing heights (high, middle, low and combinations) and then finally different styles of "freestyle" push hands, which lead into sparring that combines closing and distancing strategies with long, medium and short range techniques. These exchanges are characterized as "question and answer" sessions between training partners; the person pushing is asking a question, the person receiving the push answers with their response. The answers should be "soft," without resistance or stiffness. The students hope to learn to not fight back when pushed nor retreat before anticipated force, but rather to allow the strength and direction of the push to determine their answer. The intent thereby is for the students to condition themselves and their reflexes to the point that they can meet an incoming force in softness, move with it until they determine its intent and then allow it to exhaust itself or redirect it into a harmless direction. The degree to which students maintain their balance while observing these requirements determines the appropriateness of their "answers." The expression used in some Tai Chi schools to describe this is "Give up oneself to follow another." The eventual goal for self-defense purposes is to achieve meeting the force, determining its direction and effectively redirecting it in as short a time as possible, with examples provided of seemingly instantaneous redirections at the highest levels of kung fu by traditional teachers. Pushing hands also teaches students safety habits in regard to their own vital areas, especially acupressure points, as well as introducing them to the principles of chin na and some aspects of the manipulative therapy or tui na also taught in traditional Tai Chi Chuan schools. At a certain point, pushing hands begins to take on aspects of qigong (chi kung), as the students learn to coordinate their movements in attack and defense with their breathing."
-  Pushing Hands in Wikipedia


Push Hands Exercises and Play in Tai Chi Chuan

T'ai Chi Ch'uan (Taijiquan) - Cloud Hands Website

"Because it's interactive, push hands may be the highest expression of tai chi chuan.  Every lesson it teaches applies equally to the martial arts and life. The two main things you have to deal with in life are interaction and change - the things that produce the most stress and trauma. When you deal with these successfully, you feel like you're on cloud nine. Likewise, when you practice push hands successfully, you feel exhilarated."
-  Chris Luth, On Push Hands

Toughen Up! Tai Chi'ers

Johanna Zorya makes an enthusiastic and hard-hitting case for putting the Quan back in Taiji. She asks for us to drop down and give her 20 push ups, really do some fighting, toss out all the wimpy Qigong fluff and pointless choreography of forms ... it's time for us to get tougher. We need to return to our roots of iron inside cotton. We need to float like a butterfly (be in better shape for moving with speed) and sting like a bee (smack the suckers to the wall). No more of this New Age genteel softness, dancing with fans, grasping sparrow's tails like Audubon Society bird lovers, or limp wristed old fogies brushing lint off the knees of our floppy pants. She is fighting mad about the topic and uses the full frontal fighter's rhetoric to slap our weak, soft, overly relaxed minds around the debate room.

If fighting interests you then the first step is to engage in a rigorous and daily physical training program that will improve your fitness and conditioning. I would recommend that Tai Chi Chuan players use conventional strength training techniques (weightlifting) to get stronger, conventional cardio-vascular training techniques (walking, running, cycling, rope skipping, fast martial forms, stepping, etc.)to increase endurance and speed, and a variety of techniques for increasing flexibility (yoga, mat exercises, stretching, pilates, etc.). They need to eat properly, get adequate rest, and keep a positive mental attitude. Real fighters must be tough, and be able to fight on when in pain or injured and when they are very tired. Real fighters must have considerable aggressiveness, some meanness, and a willingness to hurt their opponent. Fighters need quickness, fast reflexes, speed, and enough aerobic capacity to move quickly even when tired. Finally, fighters need to learn techniques of fighting - both offensive and defensive techniques, by sparring with other martial artists. If you train hard to fight, you will be in great condition and highly fit, even if you never fight.

I don't think that Tai Chi as practiced by most people would be useful or effective in real fighting situations. However, our real opponent nowadays, an actual opponent that hurts, maims, and kills millions of people, is unrelenting stress. "Fighting" stress requires learning new skills. Tai Chi, even without the Chuan, combined with other types of exercise, can help some of us "fight" stress. Real fighting or extremely complex and long forms, however, might increase stress for many people; and, therefore, they probably should be avoided by people "fighting" stress. Choose your battles wisely.

As for regular full speed fighting and getting hurt ... for me, at 61, this is not high on my agenda. However, practicing Tai Chi as a fighting art, and thinking of having a fighting opponent while practicing, and pushing hands and sparring a bit every once in a while, does greatly enhance the value of my practice. I also think hitting bags is great fun and useful for developing some fighting skills. I add a kick boxing class once a week to pump up the jam.

On the whole, I agree many of the points of Johanna Zorya.

Put up your dukes, Johanna, let's mix it up! Yeah!! ;-)

Johanna's background includes in Chen Tai Chi Chuan and the practice of silk reeling.