sensing hands
At the heart of Taijiquan is connection – sticking, adhering, joining, following. Jue Shou (Sensing Hands) focuses on developing the skills needed to establish, maintain, and refine that connection. The basic energies (jin) included in Sensing Hands:
- Stick-Adhere Energy [ Zhan-Nian Jin ]
- Listening Energy [ Ting Jin ]
- Comprehending Energy [ Dong Jin ]
- Receiving Energy [ Zou Jin ]
- Neutralizing Energy [ Hua Jin ]
This study also includes some basic mechanical skills that must be mastered in order to keep connection fully alive. Resting in & supporting, pivoting, rolling, transferring and exchanging are the tools used to maintain the point of contact. Articulate comfort with these skills can be seen as a pre-requisite to studying the push hands syllabus material – or as a practice in and of itself.
“We can never touch just one thing; we always touch two at the same instant, an object and ourselves, and it is in the simultaneous interplay between these two contiguities that the internal sense of self – different from both the collection of body parts and the collection of external objects — is encountered.” – Deane Juhan