Resistance is Futile

John Kells taught Pushing Hands right from the beginning. Sometimes you will not do that until you have learnt the Form.

Having experienced different approaches to Pushing Hands with practitioners of other styles, I value John's approach even more today.

Most seem to involve resistance at some point, then trying to force your push to one side. That is the point at which they become exposed. It becomes a game all about "winning" that can rapidly degenerate into a show of strength and little more than a wrestling match.

Pushing Hands is a training method. What are we training to do?

Accept.

This does not mean weakness. Acceptance means not to resist, especially in the Mind. In the beginning our training focused on taking in the other person's push as far as possible to empty it, making a "hole" and then turning. It is interesting to see how far each person will accept and at what point this all goes out of the window and stiff force is used. I include myself, using feedback from pushing with others.

At the point at which it becomes uncomfortable and we are going to lose our balance, we should still accept.

This is not about winning or losing, because that is missing the point.

It is a training method to work on a principle.