in tai chi today, we did just a bit of push hands...in a nutshell, you get in a certain position and try to get the other person off balance - either by pushing or deflecting the other person's push. our teacher was focusing on how to deflect when someone pushes by turning our torso, so, effectively, the person's own push knocks themselves off balance.
the one time me and my partner tried it, i tried to meet the push of the force with my own force. this caused me to go off balance. my teacher said i was meeting tension with tension, and that it would be better to meet the tension with yielding and let the person's own force work against them. basic yin and yang kind of stuff. when i tried it again, i was able to deflect the push and get the other person off balance.
since then the phrase "don't fight tension with tension" has really stuck with me. i often fight my own feelings of depression and anxiety, and try to overpower them. i don't think that works. struggling against these feelings, trying to force them away, is putting tension against tension. perhaps in tai chi style, the better approach is to yield to them - not in the sense of giving up, but in the sense of not attaching to them. one can't correct a problem caused by hyper-thinking by thinking even more or harder. so maybe i'll try just let it fly past me, like the guy in class did today...
Posted by Mike at April 20, 2004 04:43 PM