Master Tse’s Taiji Fist #61

Level V Taijiquan 唯有五陰並五陽 pt 3

During Tui Shou 推手 we need to be relaxed and grounded, then we can feel our opponent’s energy and respond in the right way.  If they push us, we take or receive it and then we divert it back to them. This is the right way for most people to respond because we need to learn how to receive their energy and learn how to divert and change the energy, rather than opposing it all the time. To learn how to do this might take a lot of practice.  Practising our forms many times makes our legs stronger and helps us to relax out upper body. We also need to develop power and this is based on the standard of our forms. The lower our stances are and the more we repeat them in our forms then our power will develop, but this takes years of practice. Tui Shou with many different people, big, small, tall, short, strong, gentle, fast and slow helps us to develop our control of energy and how to use it well.  Eventually after just one touch you will know how to use the opponent’s energy and they will lose their balance or even fly away. When you reach a high level you do not even need to touch them to know their position and so you can make them fall straight away. Whatever position, how we move and whatever skill we choose all enable us to use less energy to face a stronger energy. We can do this then we have reached 5 Yin and 5 Yang