Yes,
all valid points and after all it's just push hands right?...
One point to note is Patrick Kelly's experience of Pushing with Ma on his visit to New Zealand. He of cousre, was not Ma's student but had studied 20 years with Huang Xingxian .
The qoute bellow is taken from his own web we site.
Master Ma was generous enough to do some free pushing with me, and I found his excellence to be in the realm of the Yi or Deep Mind. Though I had made this aspect of Taiji my speciality, I had no chance to match this 93 year old man with almost 80 years experience. I asked him my weaknesses, and one that he mentioned was that I kept my arms too close to my body, giving the partner more chance to attack. Later when I showed a video of Master Ma to my teacher Master Huang, his first comment was that Master Ma kept his arms to far out! Obviously from this it is clear that both methods can be made to work. Personally I believe that it is better to practice short - where one mistake is not fatal - and use it long in serious circumstances.
I find it pretty interesting reading the posts on this thread on Ma and comparing with the Horikawa Kodo _Daito-ryu therad running at the same time on this Forum.
The following from a post by INterloper on that pretty interesting thread...
Here's a tidbit from Stan Pranin's Daito-ryu book -- a snip of an interview with Horikawa's wife and a couple of his students:
"Mrs. Horikawa: During practice, Horikawa would apply aiki and keep it applied for minutes on end while he was speaking, so it was pretty rough on his partner!
Morishita: Yes, because you weren't able to move at all. And gradually it would become difficult to breathe. It was as if you were being pressed with cotton so that you couldn't move. It wasn't that it was excruciatingly painful, so much as that you simply could not move at all."
"Iida: It was as if your body was being pressed deep inside, so it was very tiring. To people looking on from a distance it must have seemed fake, so Horikawa Sensei would call them over and say, 'Touch him.'
Mrs. Horikawa: Then he would say [to his uke], 'Try to escape.' He would pin with only one finger, but his uke would absolutely not be able to budge.
[snippage]
Iida: His way of applying techniques was very soft. They didn't even seem like techniques. They were what could be called true kukinage (air throws). In other words, you couldn't see any power being put into the techniques. Not being able to move and not being able to figure out why, well, it's hard to believe.
Morishita: His hands were very soft, as if they weren't doing anything."
I guess martial arts are something that has to be felt to fully experience it much more than it just be seen. Really we are all doing our best to get better at this stuff.
I guess I wish when people saw the Ma footage that has now started turning up they dwelt less on the 'its a put on' and focused more on the 'how does he do that'?
But again you can talk about and write about this stuff but you won't really get anywhere..... really you have to just do it.
regards
.