Awareness & Growth through Taichi Push Hands

Masks required, there will be opportunities to practice push hands, which requires physical touch, but you can choose to continue with solo practice if you prefer.

• What’s your body’s response when it senses a threat?
• How does that impact your next action?
• When is that beneficial, and when is that harmful, in your life going the way you want?

In this workshop, I will show you how to accept another person’s intention, and then add your own without it feeling like a struggle or fight for either of you, starting in the physical sense, and then expanding it to the intellectual, emotional, and relational sense.

I lived in China for 5 years, studying kungfu. Two of those years was spent learning taichi and push hands. After coming back to the US, I continued my push hands practice, and then also started my self-development, which led me to being a coach.

Let me tell you, there are so many similarities between how to handle yourself in a physically oppositional situation, like push-hands, and when you’re in a conversation with someone who has different ideas from you. They are both oppositional in nature, the same automatic responses show up in our bodies and emotions.

At the same time, there is an unmistakable mind-body connection in each of us. Western society tends to separate the mind from the body, but I’ve found that you can learn mental skills by practicing physical/somatic skills, and vice-versa.

The aim is to expose you to a physically oppositional situation, so you get to experience your physical sensations and reactions. Those are the same reactions that happen in a conversation. Then through practicing further (I will hold these workshops multiple times, and if there’s enough interest I will create a 3-month course), I will show you how to accept another person’s intention, and then add your own without it feeling like a struggle or fight for either of you.

In this workshop, I will lead you through some basic taichi and qigong warmups and exercises and then basic partnered taichi push hands forms. After that, we may open it up to freeform push hands play. After the 2 hours of practice of the physical form, I invite you to join me for brunch/lunch at a nearby restaurant where we will discuss how it all applies to the intellectual/emotional realm as well.

I’m so proud and excited to share with you two of the most meaningful practices in my life, presented together. I hope that you get as much out of it as I have over the years, they have both transformed my life in immeasurable ways.

Host or Publisher Coach Steve Yang