PUSH SERIES #2: Configuration Doesn't Matter

“Show some sympathy, and some taste”

— Mick Jagger (Sympathy For The Devil)

“清風細雨”

(soft breeze, fine rain)

— Trad poetry adopted as a Tai Chi training maxim

[NOTE: If you haven’t yet read the full text intro to the first clip in this mini-series, at the original Push Series #1 post, please do so before continuing here]

Here’s the next in my ongoing series of small-scale kuzushi drill interactions. I call them drills because there are of course boundaries - no head butting, striking, etc. And yet, within the boundaries of a certain decorum, there’s an infinite freedom of experimentation with principles. That freedom is like the special kind of infinity that exists in the real number range between any two integers, like 4, 4.1, 4.15, 4.2, etc. You can go infinitely deep even within strict limits.

Kuzushi is a term sometimes used in Japanese martial arts. Literally it’s something like collapsing somebody. In practice it has two components: a moment ‘taking the opponent’s balance’ followed by a finishing move of your choice - takedown, push, joint lock, strike, etc. To us Tai Chi people, the first phase of ‘taking the balance’ should be the more interesting. And “fixed step” push hands, artificial though it obviously is in every way, is actually a good training tool to work on the sensitivity needed for taking or controlling someone’s balance.

Master Sagawa Yukiyoshi relentlessly stressed this, saying basically: First use no strength at all to control or destroy his balance. After that, the throw or whatever is the easy part. However, many teachers prefer to demonstrate the second, finishing phase, because it looks dramatic and brings in students. But I was scolded by my teacher to always emphasize the first phase, of softly taking his balance. And that’s what these mini ‘push’ clips mainly show.

Here’s a clip of me working with a very experienced and skilled gentleman, who also outweighs me. Those are my basic criteria in all these clips. Though it looks gentle I assure you that he’s sincerely trying to blast me back all the time, nor will he be moved unless I’ve taken his balance and he’s knocked away (moves his foot, that’s our visible signal that your balance has been destroyed or controlled in this work).

Video with transcript below: