Push Hands Hohrr!! What Is It Good For?

[wayne hansen]

No difference between shifting weight left and right or back and fore
To say the 4 corners came out of cloud hands is the same as saying everything comes out of Wu chi

[Bao]

As most people do PH, there's no expression of the jins of Peng and lü, agreed. Peng is he, lü is Kai. The expression of these jins are not from rocking back and forth, but expressed by the spine and back.

[Steve James]

No difference between shifting weight left and right or back and fore

Well, whether one does a movement advancing or retreating, to the left or to the right, will make a difference. But, I think this is just a matter of what one means by different. "Advance, Retreat, Look left, Gaze right, and central equilibrium are fundamentals. They are part of the "13" "postures/etc" aren't they?

Anyway, I remember that John asked how one would use WHLC if the opponent threw a punch from the opposite direction (that the "form" is usually done in). I would say just do WHLC backwards or in the opposite direction. My point was that the principle of WHLC wasn't limited to, for example, being done to the right, or with the right hand on top first, or even done side-to-side. I think many would agree that such limitations would make the form ... less useful.

To say the 4 corners came out of cloud hands is the same as saying everything comes out of Wu chi

Ya know, I've seen some tcc styles where the first movements after the "commencement" are three moves that are very much like WHLC, but the feet are stationary. I can't recall the style, though. Otoh, I doubt that any one movement led to the creation of phs. I think one can turn most if not all the form movements into two-person exercises.

[wayne hansen]

Bao expression comes from the entire body
Steve form is form we align ourselves to our opponent

[Bao]

Bao expression comes from the entire body

That is also true. Jins are also expressions of different ways of moving the entire body. What might be similar below might not be similar above...

[origami_itto]

No difference between shifting weight left and right or back and fore
To say the 4 corners came out of cloud hands is the same as saying everything comes out of Wu chi

To be clear what I said was one theory is YLC did something called "cloudy hands" and from that the four SIDES were derived.

I've only seen this claim by one school and only on the internet, to be fair.

In my opinion you need what I think of as modern cloud hands plus their reverse, what some might call a positive and negative circle, and from those derive all of the hand methods in taijiquan.

[everything]

Other than choreography does anyone talk about sides and corners as in angles of attack and defense, side doors, front doors? Or is it just a weird Convention?

For example
Elbow and kao have various angles of attack, especially elbow of course.

pluck is pluck down but sides and corners makes no sense.

There is the "weak line" but could be at a corner or a right angle. Just depends.

[Bao]

Other than choreography does anyone talk about sides and corners as in angles of attack and defense, side doors, front doors? Or is it just a weird Convention?

For example
Elbow and kao have various angles of attack, especially elbow of course.
pluck is pluck down but sides and corners makes no sense.

It’s just from how they are traditionally put in the Bagua:

[everything]

Other than choreography does anyone talk about sides and corners as in angles of attack and defense, side doors, front doors? Or is it just a weird Convention?

For example
Elbow and kao have various angles of attack, especially elbow of course.
pluck is pluck down but sides and corners makes no sense.

It’s just from how they are traditionally put in the Bagua:

ah i forgot about the bagua diagram ... so..... nothing to do with anything practical like angles of attack. everything to do with philosophy. so basically more useless (but interesting) intellectual overlay.

some of the top reasons these arts are dead/dying:
- no one wants to do the actual work
- no one believes the actual work is worth doing
- people want to study ancient cosmology instead
- people have some kind of "orientalism" and "translation" fetish and get fixated on language, culture
- people want to make up new vocabulary instead
- people want to make up stupid new theories (theater etc. etc.) instead
- no one's ph deals with "punch in face" or leg trips
- it's more entertaining to log on to rsf and laugh at all this

let's talk about something, anything, else.

[origami_itto]

so basically more useless (but interesting) intellectual overlay.

Not at all. The arrangment and relationship between sides and corners is intricate, deep, and practical.

But, never mind all that, you're right. It's just useless intellectual wanking.

Actually, no, I can't.

So, the corners support the sides. Deficiencies in the side techniques are compensated for by the corner techniques.

You do the four sides or four directions or GST exercise and you're stationary, using peng lu ji an.

When, for example, your rollback is too big, it becomes a pull, hence the study of the corner techniques is known as the "da lu" or "big roll back". You incorporate stepping into the practice.

If your ward-off doesn't contain the proper quality of peng and it collapses, it automatically presents an elbow or shoulder. If you can't neutralize then split, whatever.

Taijiquan is a very sophisticated fighting system that literally nobody understands, mainly due to trying to shoehorn it into Western thinking.

[everything]

wut.

out of sheer boredeom at work, let's talk about it a little

let's say we do fixed step (so already totally artificial) push hands. you push, i ward off and roll-back and pull down. when I roll back, it doesn't go to any particularly precise angle.... so forget about sides and corners.

let's say we want to diagonal flying. machida does a similar move from his karate all the time. I'm too lazy to post more gifs right now. he definitely has to do this move from a particular angle (relative to the foot and chest and punch positioning of his opponent) - but it's too hard to say if it's side or corner.

let's say we use the shoulder to kao. again it depends on the other person's foot positioning. but let's be incredibly theoretical and say it's a square not diagonal positioning. so ideally our kao should be at a right angle to this person's chest. so that's not side or corner but straight forward.

on top of all that, to say it's yin inside yang, blah blah blah, is really just too much.



but if you're just saying that ward off can have a back up of elbow or kao, sure. but why don't we just say that WITHOUT the bagua diagram and the taiji diagram?

I like the actual stuff you're talking about. I do not at all like the intellectualism on top of it (except as an entirely separate thing on its own).

assuming we (people of rsf) like IMA and want to help it, I can't see how any of this helps. it will forever be LARP for effete intellectuals .

if mike tyson comes along and says "oh yeah this is what I needed to help my boxing", I'll reverse 180.

[windwalker]

so basically more useless (but interesting) intellectual overlay.

Not at all. The arrangment and relationship between sides and corners is intricate, deep, and practical.

But, never mind all that, you're right. It's just useless intellectual wanking.

Actually, no, I can't.

So, the corners support the sides. Deficiencies in the side techniques are compensated for by the corner techniques.

You do the four sides or four directions or GST exercise and you're stationary, using peng lu ji an.

When, for example, your rollback is too big, it becomes a pull, hence the study of the corner techniques is known as the "da lu" or "big roll back". You incorporate stepping into the practice.

If your ward-off doesn't contain the proper quality of peng and it collapses, it automatically presents an elbow or shoulder. If you can't neutralize then split, whatever.

Taijiquan is a very sophisticated fighting system that literally nobody understands, mainly due to trying to shoehorn it into Western thinking.

It is interesting how people don't seem to understand the naming of the arts are based on philosophical concepts.
Taiji, bagua, xingyi, all expressions of philosophical concepts put in martial context.

All judged by how well a practitioner adheres to the concepts in use as to whether they are really using or expressing the style in question.

Does it matter

Not really. Only if one is claiming to use or be a practitioner of said styles.

[Steve James]

You can't learn to apply from the diagram. But, the whole philosophical point of the diagram is the necessity of "changes." It is too complicated to explain because the changes (vectors of motion and ranges, for ex) are almost infinite. But, they can be simplified.

Put it like this, when the square reaches its limit, it reaches a corner. The limits can be/are forward/backward - left/right -and up/down (on the central axis).

There are those who could use terms like "cycles of creation and destruction" or even the theory of elements: i.e., water overcomes ..., wood overcomes ..., fire .... I know of others who refer to the Chinese zodiac animals.

Anyway, there are loads of different phs patterns, but it's often the case that it's taught: "A presses (Ji); B responds with An," but B has lots of ways to respond. The only (theoretically) incorrect response (in phs) would be to respond to Ji with Ji. It isn't necessary to understand or know the diagrams to figure that out.

[origami_itto]

wut.

out of sheer boredeom at work, let's talk about it a little

let's say we do fixed step (so already totally artificial) push hands. you push, i ward off and roll-back and pull down. when I roll back, it doesn't go to any particularly precise angle.... so forget about sides and corners.

let's say we want to diagonal flying. machida does a similar move from his karate all the time. I'm too lazy to post more gifs right now. he definitely has to do this move from a particular angle (relative to the foot and chest and punch positioning of his opponent) - but it's too hard to say if it's side or corner.

let's say we use the shoulder to kao. again it depends on the other person's foot positioning. but let's be incredibly theoretical and say it's a square not diagonal positioning. so ideally our kao should be at a right angle to this person's chest. so that's not side or corner but straight forward.

on top of all that, to say it's yin inside yang, blah blah blah, is really just too much.



but if you're just saying that ward off can have a back up of elbow or kao, sure. but why don't we just say that WITHOUT the bagua diagram and the taiji diagram?

I like the actual stuff you're talking about. I do not at all like the intellectualism on top of it (except as an entirely separate thing on its own).

assuming we (people of rsf) like IMA and want to help it, I can't see how any of this helps. it will forever be LARP for effete intellectuals .

if mike tyson comes along and says "oh yeah this is what I needed to help my boxing", I'll reverse 180.

You can represent and communicate an idea any way that it makes sense to you.

However, in the context of traditional Taijiquan and the body of writing and tradition concerning the subject, there are specific diagrams, relationships, and meanings that have been used to encode and transmit the teachings of the style. You can endeavor to understand them better or just make up your own from whole cloth, whatever suits your nature. I feel that it's better for my practice and path to clarify my understanding of their methods than to waste energy inventing something inferior.

[everything]

ah the "5 elements" is another one that makes absolutely no sense when you try to overlay the philosophy onto a practical art that had to do with using spears in a mass battlefield. wood is "crushing" because an arrow (made out of wood) is crushing? crossing is "earth"?

vs. "5 elements" from Japanese philosophy, Musashi, and so on is easy to see the practical connection and therefore more useful to connect the mental construct to the body. e.g., earth is "earthy" grounded up and down power. water fluid, flow, back and forth, waves. fire self explanatory. wind circular, evasive. void beyond everyday experience/senses.