Due to lack of sleep and possibly other things, I was tired all day Wednesday. Looking out at the heavy rain, I thought I should skip class that night.

But the rain stopped, and I often feel better after a good practice, so I decided to go. It was 8:30 and a few students had already arrived. I did a little warming up but wasn’t in the mood for forms just yet and just watched other people push. Yang Qing-feng arrived and began working on the sword form, so I got my sword out and walked over to an unpopulated part of the square to practice the sword form. Immediately, the dancing women, who were sitting around on the stage talking, rushed out to retake their ground I had so inconsiderately infringed upon. I sat on the edge of the stage while they went through song after song.

Eventually they got tired and left, so I could get at least one form practice in before doing some pushing. I didn’t do much strenuous pushing as I was too tired, but it went fairly well. Not-from-China Guy and I did our usual shoving match. Mr. You found it hard to find any points to push me, and even Qing-feng, who usually has no trouble pushing me over, gave me a good bout. I’m finding that relaxing my shoulders and arms, as well as lowering my stance very useful. Now I just need to be able to do that with my lower back.

At one point I noticed that everyone had gathered around to watch Teacher Xu instruct Mr. V on pushing. Mr. V was going at him again and again, almost in a languid kind of frenzy, trying to understand some point or another.

We went until after 10:30, and I did actually feel quite a bit better afterwards. The more I do this, the more I’m convinced that there is more to us than physically meets the eye, that the exchange of energy between beings is important in our existence. It’s hard to pinpoint, just a feeling, but I’m hoping to find out more about it.

Only Not From HK Guy was at the park when I arrived last night. He was busy doing slow forms, so I busied myself with sword practice. Mr. You appeared, and then Teacher Xu, his son, and the rest of the students in a group walked over from another area of the park where they had congregated before.

I leaned against the railing and did vertical sit ups while Mr. You and NFHK guy pushed at each other. After a while Mr. You called me over to push with NFHK, saying, “You’ve got to try this out on TC.” We lined up, and NFHK reared back and gave me a big shove. That’s your big discovery? I thought. We lined up again and I gave him the same. Mr. You laughed, saying, “You see, he can do that, too!” I just shrugged. Anyone can do that, after all.

“I practice three times a week, so it’s natural that I am improving faster than you,” NFHK told me as we resumed. My session with him was actually pretty good after that. I learned that, as he tends to go for shoulders and long reaches, all I have to do is let my shoulders go limp and lower my stance, and he has nothing to push. From there all I have to do is twist around, he he goes flying. The only problem is knowing what he is going to do before he actually does it.

Actually, I’ve found that with most sports, and even other things, being able to see a moment into the future is a useful skill. The best athletes I’ve seen seem to know exactly what’s going to happen before it does. The world-class badminton matches I’ve watched are straight out of H.G. Wells, in that the players get into position to hit a ball that hasn’t even been sent over the net yet.

As usual, what works with one opponent doesn’t work with another, I found when pushing with Mr. You later. His performance and tactics differ every time, it seems. Last night he was all about the quick shove, but I could see he was getting ready to do it well before he did, as he would tense up. The shoulder-relaxing thing didn’t work so well because he tends to go for torso push points. It seems everyone is a different language to learn.

I sat for a while on the curb watching the Tree Root Master teach his little group of followers. It seemed all about meeting force with force, but I have to admit he does have a great grasp of angles.

Teacher Xu told me about using leverage to gain the upper hand in a bout. “You have to make your opponent into a straight line,” he said, “so you can get the leverage to push him over.” He called over the interior designer I pushed with last week. He had been practicing with the tree root group, and we started pushing. It went well enough at first, but he quickly got frustrated and began shoving violently with all his force. If I had to guess, I’d say he was working through a fair bit of anger. It was easy enough to deal with for a while, but it quickly got repetitive and boring. I was tired, but I went along with it until he exhausted himself.

“Think of your opponent as very light, like air,” Teacher Xu told me as the other students were leaving. “Overreaction only gives him the advantage. You must move so that even a mosquito can’t quite land on you,” he added, quoting the Jing Lun, which is sort of the bible of Tai-chi. “If you overreact you won’t be able to take over his power and use it against him.”

Due to rain and other obligations, I missed last week’s class. The weather cleared this week, though. As I arrived at the park, Mr. You and another student, the guy I keep thinking is from China but who is not (notice a pattern here?) were practicing sword forms together. I went over and did my forms a little self consciously, as Mr. You was apparently teaching the other students, and I didn’t want to hear “You see TC over there? That. Don’t do that.”

Many other students arrived, pairing up as they went. Everywhere I could hear them trying to instruct each other. It was like a room full of actors, all convinced that they were Obi-wan Kenobi and the other guy was poor, deluded Darth Vader.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Anyway, first up was Mr. You, who was more aggressive this time. I’m beginning to be able to deal better with overt aggression without responding in kind, though I still have a long way to go in that respect. I tried to focus on moving by relaxing certain muscles rather than by constricting others. Mixed results. I was also very tired, as I’d stayed up until 6:30am that morning and only gotten a few hours’ sleep.

Next up was the little new guy, though he’s not so new any more. Like everyone else, he was full of ideas about why I suck at Tuishou. Fair enough. He tired himself out very quickly, as he is still in the “shove as hard as you can” category of pushing. I wondered aloud if maybe he should put the energy before push instead of afterwards, but I was really only talking to myself. It does seem to work better that way, I find.

He told me not to grab his arms. “That’s the most dangerous thing you can do,” he said. I bit my tongue and agreed, yes, it could be very dangerous. Sort of like flailing around in an epileptic frenzy trying to overwhelm your opponent with pure fury, I thought, for that was what he was doing. “If I go fast, you’re easier to push!” he said, not realizing that I was stepping back on purpose for fear of someone getting hurt. Afterwards he told me that he actually worked for a living, unlike the rest of the students, of whom quite a few are apparently nuclear physicists.

I pushed with another student before being passed off to a guy who previously seemed unwilling to practice with me, an interior decorator from Taichung. He started out smoothly but got more and more frustrated as he tried to push me over. In the end he was yanking me back and forth as hard as he could. I laughed, saying “You call this Tuishou?” in my best (Chinese version of) Dr. Henry Jones, Sr’s voice.

“If your opponent is flexible, press them over,” said Teacher Xu later. “If they’re not, just lower your stance and change position, as well as theirs, from your feet up.” He demonstrated several times. As he spoke of focus and intent controlling our energy, I was again reminded of Star Wars (it was that kind of evening, I guess) when they talk about The Force, do or do not, there is no try, etc. Ironically, force is exactly what you’re not supposed to use in Tai-chi.

“Your energy is focused in different ways for weapons,” Teacher Xu went on. “For empty hand form, your focus is just outside your fingertips.” He pushed a student over easily to demonstrate. “For, say, sword, your energy is focused and projected further away.” He then made a similar movement, but this time the student went flying back a good 15 feet. “It all depends on what you mean to do.”

I’m translating focus/intent (yi4nian4/意念) rather loosely here, of course. I understand that there’s a bit of debate on this, but although Teacher Xu does a pretty good job of explaining it in Chinese, I do a poorer job of explaining it in in English. In any case, it seems that with such focus or intent (or moxie!), you have access to a greater power than you normally would have. It’s part psychological, part physical, and possibly part something else. But I don’t want to get into any kind of metaphysical discussion here. If it works, it works. All I can hope to do is understand it slightly better than I do now.

As I was practicing last Wednesday, Tuishou seemed much like a chess game, with all of the various feints and dodges and runarounds involved. The more I’m able to “see” what’s going on in the exchange of energy, the more I’m able to feel what’s going to happen. I suppose it’s kind of like most sports, in anticipating what’s going to happen next and being ready for it. But since Tuishou places such emphasis on internal maneuvering, it’s even more important.

Pushing with Mr. You went well. He’s back to his usual gentle self, distracting his opponent by actually explaining what he is doing at the time. My next bout was with The Guy Who is Not from Hong Kong, and that went poorly. He grabs his opponent and will not let go, and does not budge an inch, locked into position and pushing forward with all his might. Of course, I’m not up to dealing with that for long, and it quickly became a meaningless wrestling match.

Teacher Xu reiterated the concept of using soft to deal with hard, Yin to deal with Yang, Yang to deal with Yin, etc. It makes a lot of sense intellectually, but I’m having trouble putting it into practice. I need to unlearn a lot of things I previously took as practical laws of physics. This, I suppose, is one of the reasons weightlifting is bad training for Tuishou, i.e. it’s using direct and opposite force to deal with another force rather than deflecting and/or absorbing it. In other words, it trains your muscles to do exactly what they shouldn’t do in Tuishou.

He also warned against keeping your opponent away by blocking with your hands. This is something I’m extremely guilty of, and I’ll have to rid myself of this bad habit as well. Truth be told, most of the students do this, however. It will be a challenge to “lose” those particular defenses while everyone else is using them. But I’m already the worst student in the class; what harm could it do? It’s not like I have any kind of reputation to uphold.