Tui Shou – Push Hands

Complete home study course

Greetings,
Welcome to the special on-line Tui Shou or Push Hands course produced by Michael Gilman. This will be one of the most comprehensive Push Hands courses yet taught. My plan is to take you through the entire Yang style Push Hands curriculum with no thought to time or space. We will start with warm ups, basic principles, basic stances, and basic ideas about what we will attempt to accomplish.

The next step will be to explore what is known as two hands practice, where both participants use one arm. The two broad categories are fixed or active stepping. In each of these there are subcategories like direction (horizontal and vertical), energies (peng, lu, ghee, and an for instance), and ideas of what we want to accomplish with each part of each movement. We will start with fixed step and then look at moving steps.

We will then study four hands (each participant use both arms). We will start with the traditional Yang family style fixed practice,then study the other popular style that tends to be more fluid and allow more ease in moving and changing. After fixed we will add moving steps.

Following four hands we will look at Da Lu and figure out how the corners and supporting energies add to our enjoyment and proficiency.

The last section will focus on free style and tournament play. This is where we let go of thinking about the basics and just let our bodies take over. I will add tips I have gleaned from being a Grand Champion competitor and tournament judge, referee, and promoter.

As with all my other online classes, there are companion videos available to enhance your learning experience. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments. I look forward to working on this with you.

Push Hands is a feeling art. It is difficult to write about the skills of joining, sticking, leading, etc., if you have never experienced them before or pushed with an experienced player. If you can have a training partner near to practice with it, will certainly make all the information real and much easier to understand. So let’s get started.

Also, if you are an instructor or a member of a school that plays Push Hands, you might be interested in my article entitled “Push Hands for Fun and Profit” in the Featured Articles section of this site.

 

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