If Tai Chi Were Taught In Schools…

The world would be a different place.

At least three different people have shared this idea with me this week. From a dedicated practitioner now in her 70s, to a first time student in my YMCA class who works in NYC public schools, there is a sense of awe and urgency behind this statement. Their hope lies in people sharing a way to embody peace with the next generation. I assure them that this is a challenge I’m willing to accept because tai chi for kids can be playful, purposeful, creative, and challenging, as well as meditative. I am very lucky this year to have a group of 6th graders joining me once a week for a dive deep into the applications and philosophy underlying the forms we study.

Push hands is at the hub of my work, connecting spokes of skills and strategies across many disciplines. My simple wish is to share what I love to do and see the sport thrive. This wish is a bud on the growing edge of a bigger dream. Giving to the game gives us back the tools to practice safe touch and peaceful self defense. Embodied learning is the key needed to re-examine our options in social interactions and replace the cycle of bullying with a circle of belonging.

If Tai Chi Were Taught In Schools… schools would be different because kids would feel settled in their bodies and safe with each other. The world would be different because we would value the wisdom of moving like water…

For example, in another school many years ago, a 13 year old Jamaican boy in NYC said, “When I walk down the hall people walk straight into me on purpose, really hard to start fights with me, so I have to hit them.” My coach often recalls how he taught this student how to soften and slip through their shoulder strikes so that they were unable to hurt him after a few push hands lessons. Push hands gave him the alternative, to move past, redirect, and dissipate conflict. He had been moved out of his gifted classes in junior high, because of repeated fights, but after learning how to safely avoid fights with tai chi, he was able to get into a high school for gifted children.

What comes to mind when you picture self defense? In “self-defense” workshops I have been taught how to protect myself by escalating violence – like attacking someone in the throat with my phone and other ways to maim an attacker. This is almost always a bad strategy for most real life self defense situations, unless you live in a war zone. If you maim a random belligerent intoxicated person, you will likely end up going for a ride in a police car, or worse in an ambulance. The term “self defense” has been used to justify the current street fighting arms race.

Well intentioned parents want their children to learn to defend themselves, so they sign up for martial arts. People of all ages can learn to harness their own strength, think on their feet, and build confidence. They may also be weaponized with strikes, joint locks, and two leg take downs. It is by ruling out such dangerous attacks that push hands rules allow us to maximize the physical, mental, and social benefits of the exercise, while minimizing risk of injury. The focus is on the moment before a fight starts- with controlling the balance between two bodies. This is almost always enough to avoid an escalation of violence in most situations that someone who is not looking for trouble will find themselves in.

By slowing down and listening, meditative practices allow people of any age to shift habitual responses that they have to stress. Not only does tai chi promote relaxation and focus through mindful movement, it is grown from the root of relationship and interaction. The quiet internal dance of balancing yin and yang within oneself is experienced in relationship to the earth’s gravity and with each other. If you can stay calm and relaxed in a collision, or when someone is in your face, unnecessary injury can be avoided.

In push hands play kids experience how they lose balance when they get tense, and in order to win they open up to learning the essential principle of tai chi. To win you need to “root” or stand your ground by redirecting force. This gives them a reason to keep working on learning the form over and over again. Play invites curiosity and responsible risk taking. Push hands gives meaning and purpose to every warm up and technique that makes up our class. The same goes for applying sword technique to fencing games with padded safety swords.

The games we play fall into four main categories. First, tournament style fixed step push hands- brief instructions are on the pushhandsnow.com homepage. The next category comprises push hands games that have been modified to focus on specific skills, often by handicapping one or both players in a specific way. So, if the fixed step rules are the control group, we can think of this set of games as an experimental group- Experimental Games. Third, I can’t leave out many Hybrid Games have been co-created with the students, to “tai-chi-ify” other playground and team building games.  Finally, I used to introduce Peace Games first as a prerequisite to competitive play- these were developed as a Tai Chi for kids curriculum by Marilyn Cooper in 1999. They are mostly cooperative, or at least subverting our usual notions of competition.

Fixed Step Push Hands: We warm up with partner drills which might illustrate a concept like sticking or neutralizing, or the two person application of a movement from the form. More importantly than teaching different techniques, my responsibility is to bring the group’s attention to safety issues before we start, and as situations arise. Every strategy to win can also be reconsidered as a strategy to keep you and your partner safe. One important learning strategy I emphasize is that in order to learn more it is necessary to lose a lot- and if you are willing to accept a loss you won’t fall down, or at least will be able to soften into a safe fall. I also facilitate sharing and reflection, to highlight techniques that students have discovered through experimentation with their partners.

Especially since some students in my group have prior martial arts experience, this game has become quite sophisticated very quickly, with students learning to maximize the potential of their own individual abilities. For example, a flexible dancer is able to play from a very low stance that her partners cannot match. One of my new students this year gave me a great tip that simplified my defense. Their arm drag was unbeatable, time after time their partner could not push without getting pulled past them. I took the opportunity to teach the class my favorite arm drag technique which frustrated a few students because it is more complicated, less direct, and more likely to put you in a precarious position. That same week I had a training session with Max Chen, an expert in competitive martial arts, where he only gave me two moves to drill over and over again. My student’s version of the arm drag was one of them. A few weeks later I used this deceptively simple response to maximize ability to quickly yield and redirect when I won the World Cup in Taipei, Taiwan.

Experimental Games: Some examples of handicaps are to play with one arm, with closed hands, or with “feather touch” as my kids call it. This semester the experimental game we focused on was “the line game” or “ruler of the gold”, which introduces the concept of moving step push hands. When the feet are no longer fixed in one place in this game, you need to constantly regain a good starting stance in relation to a moving target. All of the games that I have introduced have been tested with my training partners and coaches and are essential parts of my training for competitive push hands. My students have created fantastic variations on some of the games that include characters and role play. One of their greatest endeavors has been to create a three person game.

Hybrid Games: Ask my students how to add tai chi postures or push hands into any playground or icebreaker game and watch the magic happen. This kind of constructive play is like picking up the building blocks, turning them around and trying to fit them together into new forms. It is not only making the tai chi fun, it is empowering the students to hold the tools of tai chi in their own hands. Imagine if any problem is “tai-chi-ified,” that would mean it would require being calm, patient, and observant.

Peace Games: My first semester teaching tai chi at Blue School I brought in The Peace Games Manual that  Marilyn Cooper developed over twelve years of co-creation with her students from Kindergarten to 7th grade. My 5th grade students were learning how to play the games but really only opened their minds and hearts to be fully present when they made the connection to their unit on activism, and the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde. This became a turning point for our class because now the play also had purpose. The Peace Games were created as a form of peace building and activism, in direct response to the school shooting at Columbine. Not only have the games themselves, like “turtle races” and “come here, go away” become a shared vocabulary among me and my students, the message behind them and their history resonates and lives on as Cooper intended them “for the 21st Century.”

Imagine if there were teams and tournaments between schools. How many more opportunities would we have to learn and exchange experiences? Imagine more families playing together. What conversations would open up? Wether competitive or not, tai chi is a living art, informed by Chinese culture, tradition, and ancient philosophy, but also today’s living innovators who can’t help playing, tinkering, and experimenting inside this discipline.  The future of tai chi depends on people finding deep personal meaning in their experience at any age- be it focus, health, responsibility, or just fun. The future of our children depends on integrating mindful practice with peaceful intention for the benefit of ourselves, each other, and our capacity to work together to address the problems facing our times.