Tai Chi Push Hands

Harrogate's Tai Chi Push Hands class is a space for a dynamic exchange of balance, awareness, and mindful practice, where sensitivity, structure, and flow take precedence over force.

Tai Chi Push Hands

Tai Chi Push Hands is where the art truly comes alive—awareness, softness and subtle structure. It’s not about brute force but rather sensing, yielding, and redirecting, all wrapped in a mindful, two-person practice.

"Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it."
Lao Tzu, Dao De Jing

In essence, Tai Chi form and Push Hands are inseparable—while the form provides the foundation, Push Hands brings it to life. Together, they cultivate balance, structure, softness and awareness, allowing Tai Chi to move beyond exercise into something far more powerful. Developing the Shen Fa (body method) of Tai Chi Chuan, that in turn allows efficient whole body power and the ability to disturb an opponents balance while protecting your own.

Four Fixed Methods

Push Hands Class

Testing Root

Testing The Form

Push Hands is where the solo practice of the form is tested. It takes the internal principles and tests them in motion with a partner. In this shared practice, you discover whether your movements are truly rooted, your structure aligned, your responses soft and your mind in the moment. From pushing hands we understand our "insufficiencies and excesses" and return those lessons to refine the form.

Lessons For Life

There is, of course, a broader lesson in all this. Tai Chi, like so many classical disciplines, has an uncanny way of bleeding into other aspects of life. The principles that govern good push hands—yielding without collapsing, structure without rigidity, responsiveness without aggression—apply as much to social interactions, business negotiations, and daily stresses as they do to Push Hands and martial training.

Tai Chi Form, Principle & Meditation

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More About Pushing Hands

Physical - Push hands is a practice with many benefits most obvious are the physical. Strengthening the legs, relaxation of the upper body, reinforcing Tai Chi structure and an elastic whole body strength. The elasticicty comes from the interaction and training of the miofascia the network of connective tissue that literally holds us together. The practice exercises and develops our awareness of this connective tissue.

Awareness - When practicing the form our attention at least in the early stages is very much focused on ourselves, but when we push hands as well as using our senses to check what is happening in our own body we need to be aware of somebody elses interaction and take our awareness out to them as well!

Balance - In the form, gravity is our guide to training our balance as we move from posture to posture. Pushing hands provides an environment where your partner is endevouring to discover and gently disrupt your balance while you use softness and structure to return to equilibrium. Indeed trying to find your partner's center teaches you much about your own.

Mind - The mind is critical in the practice of push hands it must be focused without gaps, but gentle and adaptable. Many of the axioms that we apply to Tai Chi and push hands in particular such as "to not insist and not resist", or "to give up the self to follow others" ultimately are much more mental than physical training.

It is important to realise that when we are studying pushing hands we are a team. It's not a matter of win or lose! Many of the skills that we seek to make subconcious are quite subtle and in the early stages require the correct inputs to allow you to feel and develop those skills. Many of the patterns can be easily broken by a change of angle or ward off energies and no one in the exchange makes the progress that they should.

As the training partner it is time to give up the self and follow others. If you have to insist and resist in a fixed training pattern the Tai Chi mind needs more work or the doors to higher skill will remain firmly locked.

Si Zheng Tui, or the four fixed methods, trains the critical grasp sparrows tail sequence, from the form, of ward off, roll back, press and push and can be done with both fixed steps and movement. It emphasises the more horizontal movement of Cheng Man Ching's art and teaches much about the use of the core skills of Tai Chi. Can you maintain your relaxation and root, while trying to find your partners?

"In Tai Chi your arms do not move except as part of your body. If they act independently the exercise is worthless"
Cheng Man Ching

There are many lessons to be learned from practice of this pattern and though it may seem simple once you "get" it! Diligent practice will unlock many skills and attributes vital to the Tai Chi exponent.

Da Lu, or great rollback adds in the next four forces from the form pluck, split, elbow, and shoulder and a very useful footwork pattern. This is more obviously related to fighting skills and contains techniques and footwork to extricate you from problem situations.

The individual techniques are very powerful and work well at close range when you balance has been taken or your center is no longer locked on to that of your opponent. The foot work is also very practical and provides ways to move with many opposition techniques to reduce their effectiveness. All in all a vital pattern for the Tai Chi practitioner.

There are a number of patterns that we practice in Cheng Man Ching's Tai Chi Chuan in addition to Si Zheng Tui and Da Lu. In most Malaysian Cheng Man Ching schools there are patterns of movement designed to help students prepare for the types of movement found in free style pushing hands. We also teach these and find them valuable for exploring many of the lessons of the form!

They range from deceptively simple single push hands patterns to double hand patterns that train the basics of dealing with the most common types and directions of force delivered in free pushing hands. Teaching solid fundamentals such as rooting, elbow control, using softness to overcome strength and returning the opponents force so that defence becomes counter!

At some point the practitioner will be intro to the flowing fun of freestyle push hands. This is generally practiced first with fixed step before moving onto to moving step as the practitioner becomes more comfortable with the practice. Many people use this as an excuse to get stuck into a good old grapple and I have certainly been guilty of that myself.

However to get the most out of the practice we should continue to work with our partner and even if they are giving you hard force to deal with, relax, root, turn and neutralise while looking for opportunities to complete the circle!

Competetive pushing hands is an avenue that many Tai Chi practitioners are drawn to, myself included, at some stage in their Tai Chi journey! While it may not lead to the highest level of skills it certainly trains formidable, root, strength, stamina and forward momentum! Despite how it often appears to spectators there is also a surprising amount of awareness work going on as you constantly work to find the weakness in your opponent while hiding your own!

This said it is not a core part of what we practice but if anyone is interested in competetive training just drop me a message and we should be able to sort something out for you.

LOCATION, TIME, PRICE

Bamboo Forest Studio
Grainholt
Grainbeck Lane
Killinghall
Harrogate
North Yorkshire
HG3 2AA

Saturday, 10:10 - 11:10

Price, £8 per class, discounts on multiple classes

Contact to book