Time flies so quickly when you're in the flow of doing push hands with like-minded people. Today I had the pleasure of practicing free, moving-step push hands with Lou doing his Wing Chun sticky-hands. He moved as he would if he were doing his Wing Chun (albeit very slowly) and I moved as I would doing T'ai Chi Ch'uan and the results were harmonious flow. Words usually conjure up knee-jerk images so it is hard to describe the paradoxical level of "peace" that can be felt through such fear/ego-free push hands exercises. So much so that time flies very quickly. Although we were practicing martial/self-defense arts (which if you want to think about it is controlled violence) we were both relaxed and ego-less enough to listen and harmonize with each others movements. The intent not being on "hitting" your opponent but on the ebb and flow of the movement and tuning into your partner. A series of expansions and neutralizations that have a multitude of unforseen possibilities. I think it opened both our minds - living in the unpredictability of the moment - and freed us up in our respective arts. To reach this trust contract, we both have to have an experienced, respectful, appreciation of the beauty of the movement that underlies our arts and that we need to trust each other enough to paradoxically drop our defenses - in order to improve our martial -defense abilities. This has been common in my experiences of doing push hands with interested others.
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