Attacking

The reason partner work in Tai Chi is far more important than solo work is because the difficulty for most people is not developing energy but letting it out communicatively. Communication requires a connective passage – a conduit – to be established, and then for energy to be passed back and forth through that conduit. In a way the difficult part of the process is the beginning bit – creating the conduit – making the connexion. It is this that requires heart and the qualities that accompany and define heart such as openness, generosity and courage. To maintain a connexion and a communication requires stamina, patience, loyalty, concentration, and the ability to actively listen – to give energy with your listening so that the other person feels good about their giving. To finish and end a communication requires an incisive and decisive ruthlessness – the ability to be connected without being attached, and hence the ability to disconnect when the time is right in such a way that neither of you are left bleeding energy into a void that was the other. Heart is involved and required in each stage, beginning, middle and end, because it is the heart that governs connexion, even its correct severance.

The problem with pushing hands is its continuous nature – the fact that it tends to be all middle. It is important to practice the applications as well so that each of you has experience at making that initial bite into the other persons energy and spirit, and also the final deadly blow which shakes and explodes your energy into their visceral cavity. The postures gather energy during the yielding phase and then direct that energy during the attacking phase. Without a powerful attack the preceding yield lacks meaning and incentive. And without ensuring each of your postures, either in your solo practice or in the partner work, ends to some degree explosively and brutally (if only in the mind) then you wont develop power and your spirit wont be gradually shaking free from the shackles of mind and body.

Try practising an explosive Form every now and then. To do this stamp the foot down hard on the final attacking step of each posture and let the waist shudder into both leg and the attacking arm. Let out a sharp sound from the mouth at the same time – we often use Pah! with an explosive p, but any short shout will do (if you feel inclined to scream then you're probably overdoing it). The stamping foot shakes up and loosens your body energy, making more of it available for your attacks. If nothing else this approach is invigorating and nicely cuts through the deadly grind of Tai Chi.