Handle Big Problems Gently

Master Zhao Liang teaching me the basics of Push hands

Tai chi has always had a special place in my heart. I first learned of it as a freshman in High school while doing research for a school project on Taoism. I can still remember being fascinated by the gentle fluidity of its movements; they were so far from how I had begun to imagine martial arts, from friends who took karate and Tae Kwon Do, and the dozens of martial arts films I had been watching. As an art, Tai Chi manifested the attitudes of its spiritual foundations in Taoism; balanced and natural, nothing out of the ordinary; never striving or struggling, never particularly strong or particularly weak, but always somehow firmly rooted in natural, principled movement. As Lao Tzu said, "The Master doesn't try to be powerful; thus he is truly powerful. The ordinary man keeps reaching for power; thus he never has enough" The movements of tai chi seemed at once casual and filled with power, displaying the greatness of what Bruce Lee called “being nothing special”.

I had the great fortune of learning some of the basics of Tai Chi movement from friends of mine who practiced various forms of the art; one who studied Chen style, and another who studied Yang.
                It was during the end of my trip in China (staying with the latter of my two Tai Chi friends, mentioned in my last post) that I had the pleasure of meeting not just one yang-style instructor, his mother, but also her instructor, a man named Liang Zhao, whose father, Youbin Zhao, is a renowned master of the style.

I met him just a few days after my experience with Master Yan, in an apparently pre-arranged encounter in a park not far from where I was staying. The contrast in the nature of our meeting was blatant from the start.

                Master Zhao was  not nearly as imposing as the last martial artists I had met. Rather than formal dress, he wore blue jeans, a black windbreaker, and some New Balance sneakers. He had short black hair cut like a schoolboy’s, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, and a round, soft-featured face. He greeted me expressionlessly and shook my hand, and spoke distantly toward me in nearly perfect English. He looked like anyone I would have met on the street; nothing but good, relaxed posture could have even hinted at his training.

                I suppose this was a product of his training and its philosophy. Be natural, be real, and that will be what survives; the sharp edges, the extremes, are what gets removed by nature, while the moderate remains. Be ordinary. Be nothing special.

I am ashamed to admit I was initially skeptical of master Zhao’s capabilities; despite years of lessons of “don’t judge a book by its cover” throughout my martial arts training, I momentarily allowed myself to imagine that master Zhao was not the martial artist I had been expecting. Naturally, as we found a “quiet” (and I use this in relative terms, as there are no quiet places in the city in China) place to practice in the park, I found I was about as wrong as I could be. Master Zhao demonstrated a few Yang Style Tai Chi forms, one of which I remember learning in part from Nick, and then practiced several variations of pushing hands with Nick’s mother.

If you are not familiar with pushing hands, I would highly recommend looking into it. My knowledge of the training method is fairly limited, too, but my understanding is that it is a practiced employed most often in Tai Chi, of meeting hands with a partner and exchanging pressure and whole body force in an attempt to unbalance the other. For the beginner, emphasis is simply on learning to diffuse and redirect the power being exerted towards you, while at more advanced levels it becomes possible to manipulate the partner’s balance at will, and blend with their movements to unbalance them—sounds awfully Aikido, I know. While I could—and probably will—spend an entire blog entry on push hands, I’ll refrain and return to my experience with Master Zhao.

                Master Zhao politely asked that I demonstrate some of my martial arts training; he did this without a hint of the intimidating edge that Master Yan and his student had, but with a faint smile and a polite sort of awkwardness. I made my way through one of the forms I learned with the Nam Hong Son school, and another that I had learned as a red belt with the Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan. He then asked that I demonstrate some Aikido techniques on him, and show him some of the chin na (joint locks) used in the practice. I obliged, and rather than toss me across the park he watched with the same sort of quiet, innocuous politeness, occasionally mentioning that something was interesting, or very good, or what have you.

As politely as possible, I asked if I might practice push hands with him—Nick had told me this was a stretch, since my skill in Tai Chi was poor, and that I probably wouldn’t learn much from push hands until I was a bit more talented. I was willing to accept that reasoning, but, in a hard-headed dumb American sort of way, was eager to at least have my lack of skill proved to me.
                To my excitement, Master Zhao obliged. In fact, he gave me a private lesson in push hands that lasted long enough for Nick’s parents to get bored and sit on a bench nearby, while I struggled to maintain my balance and blend with Master Zhao’s movements. Without a single joint lock, or trip, without throwing a punch or kick or using fancy footwork, he managed to throw me off balance and have me almost throwing myself off balance time and time again. He used no excessive or extra force; he made no show of his technique, he didn’t laugh at me or try to prove a point. He just practiced, and moved, and did so with such a flowing, natural, and bodily-unified sort of power and subtlety that I was helpless against him but could never tell where the power came from.

At one point, while he shifted our hands toward me and began pushing me far off balance, I made a quick attempt at some evasive footwork to chance our distance and rearrange our spacing to my favor. For all my frantic movements, I produced a minimal change in our spacing, and Master Zhao accounted for this with a subtle shift of his shoulder, which sent me reeling off balance again. I shook my hand out in frustration; my shoulder was getting sore from the power of our exchange; clearly I was using the wrong muscle group.

Master Zhao looked at me plainly, his down-turned lips pulling back into round cheeks to give something close to a polite, neutral smile. “You don’t need all that.” He explained as I pushed forward to take his balance, watching him cast my force casually aside. “Handle big problems gently.”

I was struck immediately with a samurai maxim I had heard repeatedly in my Aikido and Karate training: “Handle matters of great importance as though they are trivial, handle trivial matters as though they are of great importance.”. It was all about mindset. If I could keep calm and not lose my mental composure, if I could look through the fear and flusteredness of being off-balance, I could find the simple, easy solution to reverse the technique. As the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi described, it is important to constantly maintain "ordinary mind", especially in times of great danger or importance, because this ordinary mind can make the best decisions, or, more appropriately, can step aside and let the body do what comes naturally (especially in the martial arts, this is usually the best solution).

Master Zhao guided me through the motions a few times, and I gradually began to get the feel for it; staying relaxed, reacting only how is necessary and no more, keeping myself from getting fancy or technical or revved up; just staying ordinary, nothing special.

We trained for some time, and invited Master Zhao out for lunch, wherein I had the pleasure of chatting with him about Chinese martial arts for some time, and even got a few more demonstrations in the restaurant.

Since our encounter, I have concentrated on dealing with big problems gently; whether they be at work, in my social life, or (especially) the martial arts. Practicing Aikido or Muay Thai, when confronted with a powerful or overblown attack, I try to mentally train myself to react the opposite way my body tells me to. If someone attacks hard with clenched muscles, I try to relax, and respond with even less effort than a weak attack. Naturally, some of the time I just get clobbered; this is to be expected; I’m not a master of Tai Chi or any other martial art. Yet once in a while it works the way I’m sure it’s supposed to; my attacker is caught entirely off guard, and is at the mercy of my next movement. They’re so geared up for the crashing impact or the rapid exchange of techniques, that the simple, effortless movement they meet instead (whatever it may be) is devastating. It’s worth a shot in your own practice. Don’t get fancy. Be nothing special. Handle big problems gently.

 

Until I can get my own videos uploaded, here is a clip from youtube of a Tai Chi demonstration by Master Zhao and his father, Youbin.