Many years ago I sustained a fairly serious injury to my left knee, and as a result it’s a little weaker than my right knee. Therefore, I’ve been practicing more with my left foot back when doing tuishou than with my right foot back, to compensate. Lately I’ve found that I actually do better with my left foot back than the right. Does this mean it’s recovered? No, I think it just means I get more practice in that position.

“Merge your energy with that of your opponent,” Teacher X told us as I practiced with the UPS guy. I guess it’s the only way to manipulate them.

Last Saturday at 2/28 park was brilliant. The weather was perfect. A really old guy sat watching us practice, the same guy from last time. I keep meaning to ask Teacher X who he is, and then forgetting. I was practicing with UPS Guy yet again, and doing pretty badly, when Teacher X told me to forget about what was going on in front and concentrate on pushing “the skin of his back” instead.

It was like night and day. Using this mindset, I didn’t get all bothered about what was going on with all the hands and elbows and shoulders; it didn’t matter. All I had to worry about was the skin of his back, just that, and suddenly it all became so simple and easy. Of course, visualizing oneself in the same way is harder, and I didn’t do so well with that. But I was pretty happy to have gotten at least that one idea down.

UPS Guy also had some advice. Actually, it wasn’t new advice. People are always telling me to “relax” and pushing will become easier. However, we were talking about just what that word meant, and I realized that it wasn’t just to relax your muscles, though it also does mean that. However, in this context it primarily means to put your body into a more comfortable, stable position, even if that means tightening and moving through less comfortable positions on the way there. For example, if I am being twisted and pushed by someone, I could either relax like a rag doll, but ideally just returning to a stable “default” position instead of resisting or just relaxing works much better.

I will have to look into this idea more carefully in the future.

Since construction has completely enveloped the opera hall veranda, and the staff didn’t much like our tromping on the grass in the park at CKS Hall, Teacher X decided to move our weekend practice sessions to 2/28 Park, formerly Taipei New Park. The park is a traditional arena for pushhands and other martial arts groups to train, in the shade under the trees on nice, flat (if dusty) ground.

Our group was easily identifiable by our purple uniforms. Later, Little Mountain Pig told me he doesn’t think we should wear uniforms, as he says it causes other people to be hesitant about engaging us. Pig almost never wears his own uniform, though. He says he’s “not the uniform type” and simply let his wear out. I suspect he places a certain amount of value in the fact that he’s been studying so long he’s worn his uniforms out, and doesn’t want to be seen as a newbie student. I could be wrong, but he seems keen on assuming a teacher-brother” role in the group, especially since he fell out with Little Qin.

Teacher X was talking about a guy wearing a red shirt leading a nearby group. “He loves to brag,” he said, telling us how the guy boasted that he was then-President Clinton’s Tai-chi advisor when all he really did was make a weekend trip to the US. I wondered if there was some history there, as the guy was almost near enough to hear what Teacher X was saying. It’s not really my business, though, so I didn’t ask any further.

Nearby drink machines ate my money like the stock market, so, unlike the average US house buyer, I decided not to give them any more and went out of the park to a 7-Eleven for water. Pig said the water fountains in the park were safe to drink from, but I decided to play it safe for now.

I pushed with the UPS guy and Yang Qing-feng, who hasn’t shown up in a while. NL Guy and Mr. V were there as well, grappling around with each other. Although the ground is level and smooth, every gust of wind blew up a miniature sandstorm that left us coughing.

I felt a lot more on display at the park than I usually do at other practice locations. Although I didn’t catch anyone staring openly, I got the feeling that people were curious about us. I’ve heard many stories about outrageous challenges and fights going down in the park between rival groups. “Some of those guys will stop at nothing to make sure you lose a bout,” Teacher X told me, which explained a little how Weeble was so interested in practicing there. Still, practicing with other groups could be educational.

Teacher X is climbing Yushan this weekend, though, so no class. He wasn’t at Sun Yat-sen Hall last night, either. I’m sure the other students will go, but I probably won’t. The weather’s supposed to be crappy, anyway.