Push Hands: Handbook for Non-competitive Tai Chi Practice with a Partner

by Herman Kauz

Argues that a cooperative approach to living is superior to a competive one, and offers instruction in a non-competitive form of the martial art

128 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1997

Reviews

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recently the people I play tai chi with began to pursue an interest in a form called push hands. Though push hands can be played competitively, my friends are more interested in its practice as a cooperative approach to training with a partner. I must admit I entered into all this feeling completely baffled and mystified. A friend loaned me a copy of Push-Hands: The Handbook for Non-Competitive Tai Chi Practice with a Partner by Herman Kauz. The first part of the book is a series of essays pertaining to push hands within a broad range of applications: competition, changing one’s thinking and behavior, seeing the world differently, the benefits of push hands practice, Taoism, and tai chi chuan. The second part of the book is an illustrated guide to the push hands forms. I found this part to be very frustrating and it intensified my belief that it is impossible to learn tai chi from a book. The third part of the book deals with general principles, stances, tactics, flexibility, timing and breathing. I was most impressed with Kauz’s discussion of the cyclical patterns of tai chi and the inevitability of reversal and return. Any movement that travels to its end must reverse itself. Sometimes the return is linear along the original path, but more often the return is circular. It all comes back. I suppose we can apply that to all sorts of things. Now I’ll just have to wait and see what this new realm of exploration is going to become.