"It is time these high level skills where made available to those who want to study them" - Sifu Clear

Qi Development Through Internal Push Hands for Health & Combat

The secret to this training is immediate feedback from your partner.

We will use Clear’s Internal Push Hands to rapidly increase your rate of development in the art.

By working with a partner this practice allows you to make sure you are practiing your Tai Chi correctly and make the micro-adjustments necessary to build these skills to a very high level.

We will work on developing several skills for both health and combat including:

• The Three Powers (heaven, earth & man)
• Internal (hidden) Fa Jing & Dim Mak
• How to lower blood pressure & heart rate
• How to build bone density
• Tai Chi Iron Body (Steel Wrapped in Cotton) and More…

I can’t stress enough the importance of this feedback and partner work in order to gain the real benefits Tai Chi has to offer.

Lesson 1: Wu Chi & Energy Building Alignment

Clear’s internal push hands is practiced while you are standing in a very correct Wu Chi posture.

Wu Chi is an excellent energy building posture that can be used as a solo standing practice. When you add the partner work taught in this lesson your speed of development will increase exponetially.

Get started right now!

Lesson 1: Wu Chi & Energy Building Alignment is available free in the Qi Development guide.

One of the questions I am most frequently asked, is how do you practice by yourself?

There are no hard and fast rules for practicing by yourself, as each person will approach it differently. I will share with you some of the ways and aspects that I work on by myself.

Sung (Relaxation)

To work on my relaxation, I tend to favor squats. Specifically wall squats. In order for you to succeed in a good wall squat, you must be completely relaxed. Sigung Richard E. Clear has written a book on Chi Energy, Activation, and Cultivation which outlines how to perform a good wall squat. I would strongly recommend it.

This being said, the goal is to work up to 10 squats. If you are holding any tension at all, it will tend to pull you over. So, complete relaxation is a must.

Also, I will work the sets emphasizing sung.

Movement

I try to incorporate the principles of Tai Chi movements in my day to day routine. here are some examples of how I do that. If I am shopping and I find something I need on the top shelf, I think of “rise and fall” to reach it.

Here is how this works. In “rise and fall”, the movement comes from the wrist. When it comes from the wrist, it does not introduce tension into the shoulder. Think of how you open a door. The movement comes from the wrist. When I reach for something, I let the movement come from the wrist. I tell our students to imagine that you have balloons tied to your wrist, and it is the balloons that raise your arm. I also think about whether or not my body is moving as a whole. Ideally, I want my body to power the movement of my arms and legs. The classics mention that nothing moves unless the core moves.

Structure

Checking your structure can be a little difficult on your own, but here is how I do it. As I perform each individual move in the set, I pause before I move to the next one. Let me use” Wild Horse Tosses Mane” as an example. After I transition into” Wild Horse”, I pause. During this time, I check to see if I am holding tension anywhere. If I am, I try and locate it and then melt it out. Next I will pick up my rear leg. If I have to shift my weight to pick my leg up, that tells me that I wasn’t where I needed to be. As a result, my structure would reflect this. I use techniques like these on each and every move as I progress through the set.

Also, I use other moves such as “Brush Knee” or “Wild Horse” to move objects or open doors, etc. Keeping in mind and checking for breaks in my structure.

Slowness

Slowness is pretty straight forward. I work on doing the set(s) as slow as I possibly can. If I am working on (Tai Chi) walking, I go slow so as to make sure I am getting the needed flexion in my feet. The main thing I try to remember and work on is the slowness, this allows me to make and feel all of the micro-adjustments that need to happen. And deliberateness, in that when I make the move(s) they are happening when they need to and not before.

Push Hands

While I can’t answer for everyone else, I can give you some examples of how I do it. The following is just one example of how I work on structure and root.

If I am working on my structure or checking to see if my “root” rises, I will push against a door frame or wall. If my structure is off, I will end up pushing myself off. It is then just a matter of finding and making the needed corrections.

To see if my root rises, I push and then suddenly let go. My object is to make sure my root stays down. If I feel it rise after I let go, I send it back down and start the process over. In this way, I am training my root to stay down.

Sensitivity

Here is just one of the many ways I work on my sensitivity. My personal favorite, is the use of a shopping cart.

Here is how this works, when I am shopping, I put my hands lightly on the outside of the cart. I can’t use force to turn the cart, so what I do is “listen” to what is happening between the wheels and floor. I use what I feel to turn the cart. In this way, I can work on my sensitivity.

There are countless other ways to incorporate Tai Chi into your daily routine, But I leave that to you to find. Searching for answers/ self -improvement, is also the mark of a good student.

…is almost here.

Vol 3 is coming to Clear’s Tai Chi Online next week.

Join Now and begin studying Volumes 1 & 2 right away.

And as a member you will instantly gain access to Volumes 4 & 5 as soon as they become available in Nov & Dec.

Plus you’ll gain access to Clear’s Tai Chi Level 1 & 2 with 70 Tai Chi lessons already available and new lessons added every week.

Click here for details.

If you haven’t already read the previous post on rooting on your own, you’ll want to read it now. It sets out the fundamentals for how to drop root.

Sometimes, when you are practicing by yourself, it can be difficult to tell whether you’ve gotten a deep root. A partner can check you to see how deep your root is. At the same time you can learn to sense your partner’s root.

Without Structure Rooting is a Waste of Time

Before you really get into working with root, you will need to work on your structure. You can use push hands exercises to help you get your structure so that it is very correct. If your structure is off, it will still be easy for someone to move you even if you have a deep root. And this is true for the martial applications of root as well as for push hands exercises.

Be Strong & Soft

To do this exercise well, you will need a very specific quality of touch when you put your hands on your partner. It should be soft, with little exertion, but with a substantial amount of strength.

Think of the way a very strong 200 pound man would pick up a baby. There’s not a lot of exertion going on. It’s 200 pounds against the baby’s weight. The man is also very gentle with the child as well. It’s a very soft touch.

To begin…

Stand in Clear’s Internal Push Hands stance facing each other. Put your hands on each other above the waist and below the neckline with that strong-yet-soft quality of touch.

1. Person A drops their root until they are below person B.
2. Then Person A stops and stays exactly where they are.
3. Person B now drops their root until they are below person A.
4. Person B then stops and stays exactly where they are while person A drops below them.
5. Continue taking turns. One person at a time until one person cannot go deep enough to get below the other.

How do I know if my root is below the other person?

Eventually you will be able to feel where someone’s root is and this drill will build your ability to do that. However for beginners this can seem next to impossible.

Here is a simple way to check and see who is lower:

If someone pushes, whoever has the higher root will move.

When it’s your turn, drop and relax until you think you might be below your partner. Then simply push them. If you are lower they will move easily.

If they do not move easily you still need to relax and drop more.

Do not actually move your partner when you push them.

Remember the purpose of this game is to drop lower and lower. Not to move your partner.

Push enough to see if you can easily move them but not enough that they have to step. This way they can then continue with their turn.

Building these skills is hard work

Once you have both dropped your root as deeply as possible, you can break off your practice with your partner. Spend a few days practicing on your own and learning to more deeply drop your root and then practice with your partner again.

It takes physical strength to really drop your root so you will need to multiple practice sessions with a partner over time to develop a deep and strong root.

Remember to go slow. This is about rooting and sensing, not about winning a game.

As I wrote in my last post, it is very important for Tai Chi practice to keep your back straight. In fact, it’s foundational to many other aspects of the art.

Unfortunately one of the most common problems I see in Tai Chi players who have more than 15 years in the art is incorrect alignment in the lower back.

A Quick Fix

Here’s a quick way to straighten your lower back.

Put your heels against the wall and then put your back up against it. Now straighten your back against the wall until there is no space between your back and the wall. Reach around and try to put your hand or your fingers between your back and the wall.

If there is space there, even if you can only get a finger in there, it means your back is not completely straight.

Make adjustments until your back is straight. Then step away from the wall. Learn what this feels like and practice until you can maintain this alignment throughout your set.

Quick Fix #2

Another way to help straighten out the lower back is to lay down on a flat floor and put your feet up on a chair so that your thighs are perpendicular to the floor.

This will straighten out the lower back like in the last exercise. Pay close attention to what this feels like and then use your Tai Chi set to practice this alignment.

There are a number of ways to achieve this correct alignment

Many people have this curve in their back. As a result, over the years, various styles of Tai Chi have developed methods for helping beginners to straighten their lower backs.

Kung Fu

As they were devloping Kung Fu, Shaolin monks simply had students tuck in their pelvis. This created the needed posture.

However, it didn’t work well with other aspects of Tai Chi because it was often done in a very hard and stiff way rather than soft and relaxed the way that Tai Chi is supposed to be practiced. Tucking your pelvis will certainly help you get your back straight, but you’ll need to work on relaxation as well.

Chen Style

Chen style has practitioners keeping their thighs almost parallel to the ground. Try it out. You will notice that this produces similar results to the second exercise above.

However, unless you have thighs with a lot of strength and endurance, this will be very difficult to practice for long periods of time. You can build up this endurance, but at first you’re going to have sore legs a lot.

Wu Style

Another way to achieve this correct alignment is the slight forward lean seen in Wu style. By leaning forward slightly the Wu style practitioner is bring the lower back into alignment and creating this correct spinal alignment.

Yang Style

Yang style relies heavily on deep relaxation. Yang practitioners let the lower back relax, unhinge & hang. This lets gravity do the work pulling the lower back gently into alignment.

Other methods

If you have a different method of straightening your back, or other ways to help beginners learn to maintain this alignment please post them below.

Best of wishes on your Tai Chi practice.

You should keep your back straight.

Most people have a slight curve in their spine. Below the neck, the spine curves outward and then on the back side of the belly, the spine curves back inward. Over time, this curved shape increases.

Poor posture is one of the leading causes of lower back pain.

While it’s good to avoid being a hunchback – and this is probably what grandma was going for – in your Tai Chi practice it is very important to keep your back straight, especially your lower back.

Incorrect alignment can separate the upper and lower body.

The slight arch or gap in the back that most people have is a real problem for Tai Chi practice. It separates the top of your body from the bottom.

As a martial art, Tai Chi uses the weight and the strength of the entire body against opponents. It’s not just the force of the arm that counts in Tai Chi. It’s connection of the arm to the body to the legs and feet, and on into the ground.

The Lower Back is very important for Tai Chi whole body connection.

When Tai Chi is practiced correctly, the opponents find themselves encountering not simply the force of a possibly very small opponent, but the force of the ground itself. They might have thought that they could easily shove their opponent, but it’s very hard to move the ground. With proper body connection, this is exactly the challenge that a Tai Chi artist sets up for an attacker. When the lower back is not kept straight, this body connection is completely lost.

This whole body connection is also important for energetic purposes.

Keeping your lower back straight is an important part of the Wu Chi posture. If you are doing it correctly, this posture opens up the macrocosmic and microcosmic orbits – two important channels of energetic flow through the body. Many of the health benefits of Tai Chi are based on this flow.

So keep your lower back straight. It’s foundational to the art.

In the my post, I’ll discuss some ways of straightening your lower back.

In the last 15 years our ability to share information has exploded. Between books, videos & youtube it’s easier than ever to find or publish information on almost any topic.

Unfortunately the quality of Tai Chi information has not caught up with the ability to share it. Misleading information is spread faster and knowing what to look for and what to avoid can be difficult.

To make matters worse this situation is perpetuated by many senior Tai Chi masters who do not want to impart any real skill to their students.

Here are 5 common ways Tai Chi masters hide information.

1) Overwhelming

Have you ever been to a seminar and learned a whole bunch of stuff but a week later you can’t remember much of anything?

This is a common byproduct of the seminar format. In a large event with a variety of teachers and lots of great information it becomes very difficult to focus on any one thing long enough to properly retain it.

Unscrupulous Tai Chi Masters know this and use it to their advantage by demonstrating a skill extensively and moving to the next topic without giving students enough time to practice that skill. This allows the teacher to look very impressive without actually teaching anything the students will remember in a couple weeks.

There are a couple ways to minimize the effects of overwhelming.

First, take notes whenever possible. The process of writing the information down will help a lot and if you review your notes in the days following the seminar you will retain a lot more information.

The second is to focus on flavor and not technique. Don’t try to memorize the forms, drills or techniques that a teacher is showing. Instead, focus on the quality of their movement, their body state and principles they are using in every technique they show.

2) Omitting

Leaving out vital pieces of information is another common tactic used by teachers who don’t want to impart skill to their students.

There are many ways to do this. A common one is simply not correcting basic postural errors.

For example the most common error we see among 20 year Tai Chi practitioners is that the lower back is out of alignment. This will separate the upper and lower body making all advanced skills impossible and it will cause lower back pain over time.

To keep students from realizing they are missing information Omitting is often combined with Misdirection.

3) Misdirection

One of the most common methods of misdirection (although there are many others) is the Tai Chi sets.

Students are often taught the choreography with very little instruction on what skills they should practice while doing the set. Questions are answered cryptically and with the implication that the student simply needs to practice the set more.

This leads to the belief that if students just practice the set enough someday they will have great skill with Tai Chi. Unfortunately without being taught those skills and shown how to practice them while doing the set these students are doing a lot of work for very little gain.

4) Misinformation

Also known as: Outright lies.

Unfortunately this is all to common. Here are a couple examples:

1) “The lower Dan Tien is the storage place for all the chi in the body.”

This is a half truth. If you dig deep enough you’ll find that the lower Dan Tien is a temporary storage place for excess chi.

If you do a lot of Chi Kung to build energy and then try to store it all in the lower Dan Tien a lot of it will dissipate and you are doing a lot of work for only a fraction of the benefit.

The long term storage place for chi is in the bone marrow.

2) Another common lie that Sigung Clear and several of his senior students have seen live is that “root is not important.”

One of the skills we train very early is the ability to look at someone and see or feel what they are doing with their root / center. So when you see a master use root to perform a skill and then he tells you he is not it becomes hard to take him seriously.

5) Over-Complication

This can be a problem in any complex field with a specialized vocabulary. For example it is fairly easy for a doctor, a physicist or a lawyer to speak in a way that only another skilled professional in their field can understand.

Everyone else in the room is impressed but clueless.

A skilled lawyer can spend hours spouting gibberish and sound very impressive as long as there’s not a more ethical lawyer in the room to call them on it.

Unfortunately Tai Chi is the same.

There is a lot in Tai Chi that can be explained clearly and simply. However many teachers choose not to.

The solution.

The solution is simple. We need more highly skilled Tai Chi players in the west. Knowledgeable teachers who share openly so that these amazing health, healing & self protection benefits can be experienced by everybody.

To achieve this goal we publish new information twice a week on our website, we have an extensive video catalog and we hold workshops on a semi regular basis.

And tomorrow we will announce an exciting new project where you can learn beginning to advanced Tai Chi online.

But more on that tomorrow…

There is one more piece that is essential.

In-fact it is the most important part of the solution.

The most important piece is you.

Do the work. Learn advanced internal skills and become a shining example of what is possible with quality Tai Chi.

With your help we can make sure that quality internal arts flourish in the 21st century.

Push hands is a game, and like most games, its easy to get caught up in winning. 

When you’re playing a game, it feels like the point is to win. However, the real point of push hands is to develop Tai Chi skill.

First by correcting your structure and then later on through developing your sensitivity.

Play against yourself

Since push hands is really about development and not about winning, in reality you are only ever playing against yourself.

Focus on being completely relaxed, aligned, rooted and on breathing deeply. Once you are doing these well, focus on developing your sensitivity.

Test your opponent & yourself

You will need to test your opponent with your hands to see what’s going on inside them. But the point is to develop sensitivity rather than to try to push them.

My experience of playing push hands against an advanced senior master is much the same as my experience of playing against a beginning Tai Chi student. This is because in both situations, I am doing the same thing. I am trying to develop my sensitivity, my sense of what is going on in their body.

If I find that I’m getting pushed a lot, I will talk to the person I’m working with and ask questions to try to figure out a neutralization for what they are doing.

Investing in loss

Maybe once in 30 or 40 games, I will play competitively just to see where things are at. But in general, if I’m getting pushed a bit, I don’t worry about it. If I lose a bit, it doesn’t really matter as long as I learn something.

In order to develop my Tai Chi practice, I am investing in loss.

Don’t forget to check out our 10 Minute guide to Internal Power Training and learn the basics of how to build internal structure and sensitivity

Sometimes students want to learn Tai Chi through creativity, exploration and experimentation rather than through direct training of techniques.

There are some advantages to this method of study. I have personally learned to do things through my own experimentation. When you learn something this way, you really own it. You know how to do it well and it becomes yours in a way that knowledge that comes through direct training never quite achieves.

Unfortunately, there is a serious drawback to this method of learning:

Time.

Experimental learning can be very time consuming. It can take many months to figure out just one or two new things through experimentation. In contrast, you might learn 50 to 100 things through direct instruction in the same time it would take you to learn 1 or 2 through experimentation.

Because of this, I focus my training on learning from skilled Tai Chi practitioners. When it comes to Tai Chi there is a huge body of knowledge available from knowledgeable instructors.

Why reinvent a wheel that works very well already?

It is a lot smarter use of time to train in the art than to try to reinvent the art.

While there is something to be gained from doing some exploration, would you rather have a doctor who had tried to learn everything in his field through his own scientific observation, or would you prefer a doctor who draws on the huge body of scientific knowledge available and then gains more knowledge through experience & educated research.

There is a lot of room in Tai Chi for creativity and experimentation. However, this creativity should be based on solid Tai Chi knowledge rather than uneducated guesswork.

How do you know if what your learning is really Tai Chi?

This seems like a simple question on the surface. Look for the forms. If someone is doing Wild Horse Tosses Mane or one or another of the many Tai Chi forms, then it must be a part of the art.

Unfortunately, the answer is more complicated than that.

I had the privilege of training with Liu Ji Fa, one of the family heads in China. For his entire life, he has only studied Tai Chi.

However, when he is showing the combat applications of his art, it is not always recognizable as such. If an observer was not highly trained in Tai Chi, many of Liu Ji Fa’s applications would look a lot more like Silat than what people commonly associate with Tai Chi.

Compounding the problem is the fact that many people these days have trained in more than one art. I myself have trained in Silat, Tai Chi Chuan, Systema and other arts as well and many other people, devoted students of the martial arts, have done the same.

However, when it comes to preserving a particular martial art, I am a purist. I have seen too many cases where well-meaning people have tried to explain one art form in light of another and have ended up only watering down both arts into something that is actually quite ineffective for combat purposes or, in the case of Tai Chi, for health applications as well.

Although cross-pollination can be worthwhile at times, when it comes to practicing and teaching a particular martial art, I am very careful to preserve the art in the form it has been given to me.

Hear are 3 strategies for determining if something really is Tai Chi or not.

1) Read the classics.

The classics contain the principles and strategy of Tai Chi. If you understand the classics in depth then it will become much easier to look at a persons movement or applications and understand if its Tai Chi or not.

2) Compare it to the form.

Tai Chi physical applications work best when they are done exactly like the form. If you need to change a movement from how it appears in the form to make it work then it’s probably not Tai Chi.

3) Ask Questions.

Ask lots of questions. Compare and contrast the answers you get and evaluate them in light of the classics and the forms.

And last, train hard and always be willing to learn.