“Give Everything Up.” -GGM William CC Chen

Parenting is humbling. When there seems to be no more time, attention, or energy left to give, that is when we are asked to give more. Push Hands is like parenting because you are always being tested. Playing, working, or struggling together depends on a secure root. Rootedness in push hands allows you to literally stand your ground. With your child, the root is a secure connection. It is love and safety. Sometimes testing the root is the only way to feel it, to know it is there… so pushing or pulling away from it, only to be overcome, provides reinforcement and reassurance. Staying in close contact, recommitting to your root, you both develop the skills of listening, setting limits, guiding, and redirecting.

You don’t do your best work by finishing one match but by proving your endurance to come back smiling, again and again, open to connect and play. Push Hands training is not about winning but being challenged and getting real feedback. It is being humbled that makes us good students, seek out better ways, give up old attachments and bad habits that are in our way. I have been told many times by experienced competitors, “You only lose if you quit.” It’s just a game and you can quit anytime. Our kids won’t let us quit.

As I write from my own experience and point of view I have to qualify my advice- it is much easier to talk about both situations in theory than to execute in practice. Tai chi is an art of relationship, perhaps then it is just as impossible to master as it is to be an expert parent. Wisdom is humbling. All you can do is to keep it in mind, and clear the way of obstacles so that it can come into play when the moment calls for it. It is not yours to keep and there is no guarantee that a rule translated to reality will ever work the same way twice. There are scripts for potty training just like there are techniques for self defense. You always have to make a choice and to respond in the moment, frequently abandoning and rewriting any prescribed plan.

When my daughter was very young, I thought a lot about the physical safety that martial arts (and dance forms too) have brought to our family through embodied wisdom. I have mapped the pathways and rounded out the edges of another body around mine up close and personally, of going into and out of the floor smoothly and silently. When lying in bed I would roll my baby daughter over my body from one side to the other in a wide embrace, thinking, “this is how I practice wave hands like clouds.” Supporting a toddler’s first steps, and then climbing, is a dance of providing just the slightest touch necessary to provide safety so she can find her own footing. Keeping one hand near her center as she climbs a ladder became a study of the dan tien. Supporting under her arms without yanking them became a partner drill for sensitivity. In my arms she expressed where she wanted to go and how she wanted to be held through her whole body, and adjusting my support beneath her became my rooting practice. All of this has been building a relationship that is still very physical. Now that she’s preschool aged, physical self defense skills and efficient carrying strategies are still important to avoid injury for both my husband and me, while we meet our daughter’s needs. Our skills as tai chi practitioners and parents are also taking on further dimensions of understanding.

Quality family time demands that we slow down. There are so many moving parts to attend to.

Safety first is a prerequisite to non violent practice, such as the ability to communicate in a gentle tone before breaking into a scream. Kindness to another is not always letting them have whatever they ask for, being a rug to walk over or a grinning yes man. An authoritative no may be the message of kindness and safety needed at that moment. Tai chi is called internal as opposed to the external kung fu. Another way to characterize this dichotomy would be authoritative- less scary, controlling, and dominating- versus authoritarian. The slowness in the tai chi form invites more somatic listening. Likewise the continuous contact in push hands and rules against striking invite us to communicate with more nuance and refinement versus striking games.

Be prepared to get back whatever you give. We learn through the real consequence of our actions more often and more quickly than by rule based disciplinary measures. For a child, a natural consequence of being too rough is that your friend doesn’t want to play anymore, while a scolding or a time out are rule based. In the push hands game, one consequence of using more force than is necessary, or twisting a finger to inflict pain, is that you have invited your partner to give this back to you. Abrupt escalation is an act of violence. I am not condoning retaliation or implying that anyone on our team should or would retaliate against a training partner who breaks the safety rules to inflict harm. Rather, that we can avoid prompting such a response.

The golden rule plays out in positive interactions as well, amplifying good examples, and this can be humbling. Your own good moves can and will be used against you, because your partner is learning all of your techniques as you go. They are learning where they were open to it, refuting it, and neutralizing your intention. Likewise my daughter has learned some of my best lines for redirection. When she wants to use my phone she says, “I just need to check the weather,” and when I start to brush her hair instead of screaming as she used to, lately she smiles and says, “I’ll do it later.” When children start to order around the grown ups in their lives, they are imitating behavior. They are giving back what they have been dealt.

Learning about limits for the first time, a clear, firm, “no,” needs to be deployed consistently but also sparingly. When our daughter was two we needed to set a clear limit against biting and pinching. So, the hard “no,” was reserved for these moments. If she were encountering hard “no’s,” everywhere, the message would get confused and create even more frustration. In push hands, in order to conserve effort and energy you can wait for your partner to give you an opening before you make your move, using speed and hardness only when it can be most effective- revealing to your partner their incorrect position or misstep. A winning technique should be executed at the precise moment your partner leaves an opening. This way will teach your partner their mistake and make the game stronger for both players.

This patient approach also conceals your best techniques, and keeps your strategy less predictable. Imagine trying to move your partner over and over again with more and more effort only to encounter an immovable root. Not only have you tired yourself out, you have given your partner every opportunity to study your strategy and how to use it against you. To save a clear and definitive no for hitting, biting, and eye gouging, misbehaviors like throwing food on the floor and avoiding bedtime can be treated with relative tolerance- acknowledgement, gentle reminders, reasoned explanation. Other inappropriate cries for attention like whining go ignored until she tries a better way to get what she wants, to avoid reinforcing a pattern. Rebellious infractions that have no consequence like wearing mismatched shoes or insisting on salsa with fruit salad can be embraced with a joyful “why not,” and also as a safe place to talk about limits. This is when I can let her win.

In push hands you can give yourself a handicap to improve your techniques. I can think of letting my daughter win like this kind of handicap: I’m still playing with her and challenging her to move me, but this time I’m not using my arms at all, I’m even standing on one leg with my eyes closed. When teaching the game of push hands to someone much smaller or less experienced, it is important to let them win in a way that reinforces good technique- whether by handicapping yourself or intentionally leaving openings and opportunities for them to seek and find. Sorting out what’s unacceptable and what’s tolerable demonstrates strategically picking your battles for your own self preservation, leaving energy to focus on the most important lessons we need at a certain time.

Our most important tool in relationship is listening. I encounter less resistance and my daughter takes a more confident step towards independence when her intention is heard and respected. For one to control, or to try and fix the other, is to separate into two and quit playing. If one person quits listening there is no more game. With a listening touch as I play, I first respond by helping my partner go where they want to go, so we do not lock horns in a power struggle. We are one unit.

I wouldn’t know if it is the same in Chinese, but the most common English name of the first movement in our matching set, “push,” seems a bit misleading. In the solo form, a preconceived image of push gives some people the idea of shoving their arms forward, or of leaning their torso into the direction. Instead, the action is to uproot- to control or unbalance another body’s center of gravity. To play well with gravity as your partner, and to move around direct opposition, search for the upwards vectors inside your own structure and the body mechanics of each movement.

Similarly the name of the game “push hands” is the literal translation of tui shou, and perhaps gives some people the wrong idea of how to play at first. For example, the hands will get fixed in one place as the person tries to lean into that point. Leaning is actually the beginning of falling and is ruled out once the root is tested. Testing the root can be done without any pushing and in fact without any hands. The refined sensitivity and adaptability of the hands can be developed in the wrist, forearms… in fact the point of contact could be anywhere on the arm or torso.

Other than pushing in direct opposition to an external pressure, there is another kind of internal pushing away from the ground. This requires expansion like the pushing that creates the surface tension of a bubble, or that allows a sprout to express up through the earth from the root. In the final position of “push,” the fingertips are delicately extending like petals. They are purposely sensitive like they are testing a fresh coat of paint to see if it has dried.

The practice of tai chi reveals that the power to uproot comes from the connection to the ground, accessible through a balanced, vital center, and intentional awareness reaching all the way to the tips of the fingers and toes. With this discipline you can train to stay soft and to use hardness only at the most effective moment.

Imagine you are digging to uproot a weed- you angle a shovel down, then cantilever up, and then toss the weighty earth up and out. Getting underneath, rooting down, is the first preparation phase for uprooting. As the shovel goes down sometimes it needs to seek a few times for the soft spot where there is give, working around rocks or other roots. Imagine pigs rooting around in the ground with their noses, or the intelligence of tree roots in a dry climate as they seek a source of water.

When the shovel angles up, perhaps sometimes the shovel sticks in the ground and even trips you because it was not the right moment to change direction. Or then, when attempting to toss a load of dirt that is too wet and weighty, notice if you stumble because your body goes along with the weight of the full shovel. Are you uprooting yourself in order to achieve your goal?

An analogy for uprooting yourself in life is when you want to improve your family’s status by getting a good job, but you are under pressure and no longer present at home. Or if you are trying to break up a fight by stepping between two people, and end up brawling on the ground for a dominant position. This is over investing in reaching an external goal to the point where the primary goal is sacrificed.

In push hands the primary goal is to maintain a dynamically balanced center. To move your partner from their spot is an external goal which can be distracting when not unified with the first primary objective.

Escalating rooting drills to apply them to moving step rules, stand at the edge of a circle and ask your partner to charge at you from the center- the goal is to stay inside the boundary and move the other person out. Upon making contact can you absorb their weight, adjust your stance and turn them outside of the circle? This type of turning is often called a crank, but to make the turning possible, the most important intention to activate the turn is ”Root Up!”

“Root up!” is a thought that helps use the simultaneous downward pressure in the lower part of the body to support upward movement. So that when the action lifts up, you sit back down at the same time. Then there is an expansive sensation in the torso, with the lower ribs staying down and the others above free to articulate.

This may seem like a counterintuitive play on words if you always think of rooting down. “Root up!” is a short cut to synthesize two opposite directions to make one whole action.

Coming soon, interviews with the people playing Push Hands Now.