4A-B-C-D Beginning-Continuing-Developing-Achieving Sensing Hands (Push Hands)

The student usually takes these four courses on Sensing Hands in a continuous sequence, as the learning process is so organic—one skill emerging out of another. But like 1A Beginning Tai Chi, 4A Beginning Sensing Hands is radically self-nurturing and has a great power of opening one into a new world of liberating experience and skill. So even if it’s taken without any follow up of the remaining courses to develop those skills that are miniscule by comparison to what follows, that beginning is so much finer than a life without any of it that a decision to take the 4A cannot be overestimated, no matter what happens afterward. For as much as the Form can accomplish, it is only a solo exercise. Sensing Hands is always done with a partner; consequently, the stress relief and rooting and flexibility and strength and energy flow and on and on are all multiplied by being so stimulated with challenges in a situation you no longer can control like you do the solo. And the challenges are different with each partner! Sensing Hands is in some ways like doing the Form in contact with another person where, through the sensing of your hands (and much else, too) you yield when they push and push when they yield in such a developmentally creative way that a virtually infinite repertoire of exchanges unfolds over time, taking each person into realms of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual growth and relationship that blossom everything else they do into a kind of golden presence of tranquility, felicity, confidence, and love.

5A-D Beginning-Continuing-Developing-Achieving Form Application

Form Application means applying the Form to self-defense use. That is, what is the origin of, for example, The Crane Spreads Its Wings? With the use of premium protective equipment and the development of motion from the Form’s slow and soft character, gradually changing to full speed and full firmness, the effectiveness of movements are experienced by practicing them on each other. Because of the equipment there is no injury or trauma. But it is a fully experience-able use of body mechanics and chi energy, of timing and grace, of roots and balance, of relaxation and alertness, of not-doing and doing, that enables one—with one’s partners in the drills—to fully understand the origin of each movement and to experience its effectiveness safely. The result is liberation into a vastly improved practice of the Form, whether done for relaxation and stress release, health, energy, music of the spheres, dance, self-actualization, or self-defense. Better, for all of these things ! Nothing, it seems to be proved again and again, helps one progress in the Form’s many mansions of delight like Form Application.