Meditations of Violence

Yes, dear reader, it seems I am the last kid (blogger) on the block to read Meditations on Violence, A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sgt. Rory Miller. Many of my fellow bloggers have recommended it but it wasn't until I got hold of it myself that I understood why.

Sgt. Rory is a good writer. He understand his audience really well. His audience is made up mostly of tough-guy martial artists who train a lot, and not so tough-guy martial artists who also train a lot. He talks to us as if we were a bunch of girls sitting around in our nighties at a pajama party. In walks Sgt. Rory with his big boots, body armor, sim-guns, SWAT team-prison guard experience, with talk of predators and the monkey dance. With bravado and humor, he kindly offers to set us straight.

This book makes you meditate on violence. I particularly like his discussion of what happens to your body when you are attacked--What he calls the hormone cocktail. He says we lose dexterity and coordination and not just the ability the think or plan but the ability to see, hear and feel. Our sense of time becomes distorted and we can even freeze up.

Reading this book makes us think hard on the value of our martial arts training. Different types of training serve wildly different purposes. Of course this is obvious, we don't do muscle building to get good at push-hands, we don't cultivate weakness to win wrestling competitions, and we don't practice butterfly kicks unless we have an appetite for showing off. But no doubt, readers will find justifications for doing the practices they already enjoy--Even though he blind sides you with smart quips like this one:

Experience, in my opinion, could not give rise to a new martial art. Given the idiosyncratic nature and the improbability of surviving enough high-end encounters, it would be hard to come up with guiding principles or even a core of reliable techniques. I am painfully aware that things that worked in one instant have failed utterly in others.

There we have it, from the tough guy of all tough guys, the professionals' professional, the marital arts trainers' trainer! Martial arts can not have been created by people with real life fighting experience. Go ahead, bite down on this bullet, I know it hurts.

Still he unwittingly makes a great case for Chinese internal martial arts training. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that the main reason internal martial arts were created was for fighting (an idea my regular readers know I find ridiculous).

In a fight for our lives we fall under the influence of adrenaline and we become very strong. Mark one down for cultivating weakness! Don't waste your time cultivating strength, in a real fight you'll be really, really strong-- automatically...autonomicly.

You will also lose your sensitivity to pain, so external conditioning, training to take blows, is also a waste of time. Sgt. Rory doesn't totally reject conditioning. He says that training surprise impacts, on your face particularly, can help to keep you from going into shock in a situation where you are completely surprised. Familiarity with the feeling of being hit will make it easier to see through the hormonal fog.

Speaking of fog, he gives some statistics on police firing their pistols while they are under attack. Basically, they miss most of time at very close range because they are shaking and they can't see:

...Under the stress hormones, peripheral vision is lost and there is physical "tunnel vision." Depth perception is lost or altered, resulting in officers remembering a threat five feet away as down a forty-foot corridor. Auditory exclusion occurs--you may not hear gunfire, or people shouting your name or sirens.

Blood is pooled in the internal organs, drawn away from the limbs. Your legs and arms may feel weak and cold and clumsy. You may not be able to feel your fingers and you will not be able to use "fine motor skills," the precision grips and strikes necessary for some styles such as Aikido.

The "dis" of Aikido here is totally unnecessary since all styles have these kind of techniques, probably invented for dealing with drunks. But what a great case he makes for internal styles like Baguazhang and Taijiquan!

Internal arts don't rely on focused use of the eyes, in fact my bagua training is full of exercises designed to get you to use your eyes in unusual ways. I would even argue that the different bagua Palm Changes can invoke different experiences of time, distortions if you will. If you are constantly spinning around or turning your head, you can get by without your peripheral vision.

Internal arts are based on the principle that coordination will be impossible in a real fight. That's why we only move from the dantian! (As I noted above, I don't believe fighting is the only reason we move the way we do, or even the primary reason...but it makes a great argument doesn't it?) In bagua and taiji we don't tense up our muscles, all movement is centralized in a single impulse. We use one unbroken spiral as our only technique.

Jumping rope? Waste of time too. It's fun training for sparing games, but in a real surprise attack two things are likely. One, you freeze and stop breathing like you are a frightened animal "playing dead." And two, the hormone cocktail will give incredible speed and stamina--don't bother training those either!

Lest I leave you thinking everything he says is pro-internal arts, I should point out the obvious. Any technique requiring sensitivity will likely be useless in a fight to the death. So is push-hands, which is all about sensitivity, really useless? Maybe it is. But he also makes the case that training to attack from a place of total stillness is great practice for teaching yourself how to get "un-frozen" when you are utterly petrified. Good Stuff!!!

note: I just I just Googled "Meditation on Violence" and I got Maya Deren's 1948 12 minute film by the same title, a classic if you haven't seen it yet.

Sensory Integration Disorders

I took a short workshop on working with Special Education students last week. It got me thinking about how common low-grade Sensory Integration Disorders are. A Sensory Integration Disorder is a developmental problem, meaning it appears as a child ages.

Special Education is constantly redefining and re-categorizing its terms. These categories also have a habit of overlapping. Even highly functional people can show signs of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Asperger syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, or my favorite-- Learning Disability.

I've known quite a few martial artists who were Obsessive about martial arts to the point where they really could not handle someone changing the subject. In some sense, it is people who have an insane ability to limit their focus that can also achieve greatness in a field which requires discipline. Some of them really can not sit still. I myself had no patience for sitting in class and listening to a teacher after age 14.

What was interesting about the workshop is that I realized that there is a significant percentage of people who love martial arts because they have some kind of Sensory Integration Disorder. Martial arts practices make these people feel good!

For instance, many people who have Sensory Integration Disorders like to hold or squeeze things in their hand. Squeezing their hand into a fist (or the knife hand shape) feels good. Holding a difficult stance while the teacher or another student pushes against one's body, testing "structure and root," is also the kind of thing that feels good to a person with a Sensory Integration Disorder. Wearing weights, armor, or very particular clothing is also helpful.

Part of what characterizes a Sensory Integration Problem is not being sure where your body is, or what your body is doing. So conditioning exercises which put pressure or impact on the skin and bones actually feel good, they help a person with this problem integrate. Building up muscles may also feel good. As does wrestling, or even getting caught in a football style pileup!

When you think about it, fighting is the art of giving other people a sensory integration problem! I'm not just talking about clocking someone-- the head fake, cross hands, the spiral punch, shrinking/expanding-- any kind of unexpected or unpredictable movement can cause a sensory integration problem in your opponent. All martial arts also teach us to improve our sensory integration so that we are not "phased" by what ever tricks or surprises are thrown our way.

Push-hands really, when you think about it, is a bunch of games that develop better sensory integration. When you lose at push-hands, especially to a far superior player, it feels like you just floated off balance. Often you can't really even figure out what happened. Often beginners are so sensorially disoriented that they don't even notice they have lost!

The Wind (Xun, or third) palm change in Baguazhang uses a particularly unnerving technique to disorient the opponent. We brush very lightly over the surface of our opponent's skin/body, not usually hard enough to move them, but very quickly covering as much body surface as possible. The effect of these quick light swipes is that it is hard to feel where the opponent is, and that moment of disorientation often effects balance too. It feels like you are fighting a ghost.

The therapeutic aspects of martial arts should be more widely acknowledged. Learning to fight is good.

A 160 Pound Bone Hammer!

The quest for power is endless.

However; we all know that no matter how frivolous or fruitless the quest for power becomes, people will still seek it.

The sacrifices we make in the pursuit of power are not small, and the likelihood of eventually becoming possessed is high. That's what power does, it possesses.

This is true of all sorts of power, including the most basic type: physical power. That's why demons in Chinese art are so often shown with "great" muscle definition.

Daoist precepts, which preclude the invention of internal martial arts, strongly discourage the development of physical power. Why? Because these precepts require us to be honest about just how strong we actually are-- from the beginning!

It is only through the quest for power that we come to think of ourselves as weak, or insufficient. Humans are naturally very strong.

Pure internal martial arts completely discard the idea of muscle force. They completely discard the idea that any form of exertion is necessary to generate force.

My hand, balled up into a tight fist, is mostly bone. So is my elbow, and so is the heal of my foot. I weigh a little under 160 pounds. If I can move, propel, rotate or swing my entire body weight and strike an opponent with all one hundred and sixty pounds concentrated at a single point, using my bony fist--what need do I have for muscle strength?

Even a 40 pound bone hammer can bring down most men with a single blow. Don't even waste your energy trying to image a 160 pound bone hammer, it's just too much force.

Relatively speaking, force generated from muscle exertion is pretty wimpy.

If you get possessed by the idea of being able to generate a lot of force; consider that time spent trying to move freely as a single integrated unit has a much bigger pay off than any muscle-force training.

A 160 pound bone hammer pay off.

Note: This post is a riff on Master George Xu's recient claim that he is a 160 pound bone hammer!

Second Note: The picture at the top of this post is from the Film "Hebrew Hammer," very funny, I recommend it! Shana Tova!!! (Yom Kippur starts tonight.)

And also I forgot to wish everyone a happy Double Nine Day (last Sunday)--It's Daoist New Year!!! and it's traditional to eat venison.

Soy Milk with Your Coffee?

I went over to Master George Xu's house yesterday to work on a writing project.

He has always had really interesting and weird ways of saying things.  I just thought I'd share a couple with you.

We were talking about how your mind should be when you are fighting or practicing internal martial arts.  He said that your body should be unconscious like when you are watching a movie.  He sometimes uses the word subconscious instead.  Both words are from psychology, and neither one really hits the mark.  One reason it's hard to explain is that America is a "what" culture, and China is a "how" culture.  We tend to think about "what" we should do, a Chinese person tends to think about "how" it should be done.

But of course George Xu's students ask, "What do you mean?"  George's answer is a combination of mime and words, but if it was just words it would sound like this, "It's like when your boss is yelling at you.  As he glares at you, shaking and pointing the finger of his right hand, he unconsciously reaches out to the side for his cup of coffee with his left hand, finds it, picks it up, brings it to his mouth, takes a sip and puts it back down.  All this without looking left, and without a break in his tirade.---  The hand that reached for the coffee cup was unconscious, the way your whole body should be when you are fighting or training internal martial arts."

In his kitchen, yesterday, after we had a few cups of tea he started demonstrating.  While he was throwing me into the walls and various kitchen implements, he pointed out that I haven't perfected my shoulders yet.  He said, "Your shoulders should be like Soy bean milk."  He demonstrated this for me, and repeated the phrase 4 or 5 times.  I tried to feel what he was doing as he launched me into the microwave.

Back a home about six hours later, I put my feet up and closed my eyes.  Suddenly it struck me just how outrageous and yet specific the expression, "Shoulders like soy bean milk" actually is. 

Now, Get to work!

Gaining Control

A female friend of mine was recently attacked by a crazed crackhead half block from her house.  He was big and he kicked her in the ribs.

She thought her ribs were broken, she feared for her life, and she thought about the lives of her two new born infants who were thankfully not with her at the time.  Then she "went crazy on him," and he ran off.

In telling me about the incident she said she wished she had studied martial arts because she wanted to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else.  That, I think was the rational explanation, the more spontaneous explanation, I'm guessing, would be that she wanted to kick his ass.

A few days later while we were sitting at an outdoor table at a local bakery/cafe, she asked me how much martial arts training would have helped her.  I dodged the question and talked to her a bit about self-defense and what kind of training we do.  Then a 300 pound guy sat down next two her on a large green wooden box which had a sign saying please do not sit here.  The purpose of the box was to guide the flow of foot traffic around the tables and chairs, and thus, not for sitting.   It promptly toppled over onto her--bruising her arm.

The guy was naturally embarrassed and apologetic.  But that prompted her to ask me if studying martial arts would have prevented her from getting hit by the box.

So I was cornered.  Would martial arts training help with a surprise attack or a surprise accident?  Yes, probably, maybe, I'm not sure, I don't know,... how could I know?

Hexagram 10 of the Yijing (I Ching) is about just such a situation.  The title reads Treading (Lu):

Treading on a tiger's tail: one is not bitten.  Auspicious.

The image is of an innocent, perhaps a 10 year old child, stepping on the tail of a tiger and not getting bitten.  Why?  We don't really know.  Perhaps it is because the tiger isn't hungry and 'though surprised, it doesn't feel threatened.

Chinese Internal Martial Arts cultivated with a Daoist perspective achieve quite the opposite results of what most people think.  These arts are not about gaining control.  They are not about preparing for some monstrous future attack.  They are not about trying to control or predict the future.

To the contrary, they are about giving up the effort to control.  The basic  assumption or experiment of internal martial arts is that other options will present themselves effortlessly when we give up trying to control.  Does this really happen?  Yes, probably...maybe...How could I know?  I don't know, I simply have the experience that being less aggressive reveals other options.  I certainly don't know in advance what those options will be.  I keep repeating and simplifying the experiments because having options sometimes seems akin to freedom.

In Buddhism they have the expression, "Skillful Means," to describe brilliant techniques on the road to enlightenment.  But it's also kind of a Buddhist joke because the end result requires no skill at all.

In my opinion, this friend of mine who got attacked, did everything right.  She did get some bruises on her ribs, but frankly a couple of weeks training in martial arts could easily produce the same injuries.  After she chased him away by whatever crazy moving, screaming and raging she did, she even had the peace of mind to record all the details about his clothing and appearance for the police.

Her innocent response was good enough.

And that is the point of this post.  Not only are we cultivating weakness, we are cultivating innocence.  The skills we develop in all the Internal Martial Arts involve discarding our learned responses, discarding our preconceptions about what our body is and how it works, discarding our ideas about how events begin and how they come to a resolution.

Discarding pretense, embracing innocence.

Two Images Worth Thinking About

I noticed these two images in the San Francisco Examiner last week.

The first one is of the creepy Chinese police training to kill unarmed civilians on Segways. It would have been simple enough to construct bullet proof shields on the front of the Segways if there was any intention to use them against people with arms.

The second is of the latest competitive format for showcasing masculine prowess. Five bouts of boxing interspersed with a game of chess. I don't know what the head phones are for. Seems like it would be more interesting if they had to concentrate on the chess game with a crowd of unruly boxing fans screaming, "Take his knight, you big oaf."

Here are the rules!

Daoism and Sex (part 2)

In my previous post I didn't get as far as discussing the history of Sex and Daoism or misunderstandings resulting from that history. Instead I focuses on what Daoism understands sex to be.

The brilliant young scholar Liu Xun has written about two person Daoist practices from the ~1600's generally undertaken by two people of the opposite sex. Unfortunately it looks like his writing on this subject remains unpublished at this time. Perhaps he will read this and correct me. My recollection is that it is often difficult to tell from textual sources whether sex of any kind was involved because most of it is written in metaphoric language. There probably were some practices involving sex and meditation, but they were by no means widespread and it is questionable whether they should be called Daoist at all. (More on this below.)

Others have tried to say something about early Celestial Master (~200 CE) sex practices, but the truth is we don't know much about them. It seems like there was a short period in which teachers would pick two people of opposite gender from among their disciples and guide them through some sort of private marriage ritual in which the teacher and the two disciples were all present. Because the practice was discontinued, I think it is fair to conjecture that it didn't produce the best results.

Judging only from the precepts followed by Celestial Masters at the time, I think it is safe to say they were not engaged in anything they thought would increase desire. Most likely they were practicing not getting excited. Or, as I describe in the previous post, perhaps they were engaged in some type of physiological awareness which had as its goal, limiting the production of jing in the form of eggs or sperm, so that it would be available for some other practice. Generally speaking, sexual desire causes our bodies to produce more sperm/semen and more warmth excitement and lubrication.

I have heard that some Chinese Emperor's may have practiced getting an erection with out any desire. Supposedly it is possible, through extreme discipling of the mind, to get an erection, have sex, and neither ejaculate nor feel any desire. Presumably one doesn't feel much pleasure either, but I don't know. This kind of practice makes a little sense if you are an Emperor and have 800 concubines who are bored. It is important to remember that while some Emperor's were no doubt sex addicts, each and every concubine represented a political alliance which had to be maintained. If you never had sex with them, you might cause more trouble that it was worth. I can't imagine why anyone would want to try those practices today.

Now on to the misconceptions (no pun intended). The Daozang, generally known as the Daoist Cannon, has been complied by order of various governments into different additions over the last few hundred years. It is an enormous collection of texts (≤5000). No Daoist could study or use more than a fraction of these texts in a lifetime. Which would lead one to ask, "Are there texts in the Daozang which no Daoist has ever used?" And the answer is, probably. Compared to Buddhism, and Confucianism, Daoism has been a lot more lax about condemning what other people do. Practices which were outside the norms of Confucianism or Buddhism, were openly rejected by these two traditions. But Daoists have been more likely to respond, "Maybe it is Daoist, I don't know." So there is a trend that whatever no one else wanted, got stuck with the label "Daoist" simply because Daoists didn't reject it. Daoists have generally held precepts encouraging discretion and even secrecy, so it's likely that individual Daoists would not know the details of what other Daoists were doing.

That being said, there have been lots of books written about Daoist sexual practices. For the most part these have been invented out of whole cloth, or deal with issues your average sex advice columnist could handle better. But we also have the problem that people have intentionally limited (and therefore mis-translated) the meaning of the term jing to mean simply semen. Thus, we have been treated in some books to the disgusting image of semen traveling up the spine to nourish the brain.

And yes, of course, there are Daoist precepts against wasting jing. But folks, that is meant to refer to jing before it goes into sexual reproduction. There are many ways you could interpret this precept. For instance, I would say push-ups and sit-ups are a violation of the "don't waste jing" precept because the day after you do them your body will start using jing to regenerate your injured muscles, which is a waste because push-ups and sit-ups serve no purpose (except perhaps vanity).

[Note to readers, my updated position as of 11/17 is that people should practice Maximum Vanity. There is not enough true vanity in the world.]

The crazy idea that an average Joe, like me, would get an erection, make-out for twenty minutes and then have sex and not ejaculate, is the stupidest idea ever!

Man, just shoot!

Let it out, it's too late to save it, might as well clean out those pipes.

On a slightly different note.

Over the years, many people have come to me wanting to study qigong because, in their own words, "I want more energy!" After a couple minutes of interviewing it inevitably turns out that they are deficient either because they do drugs, don't get enough sleep, work too many hours, have a poor diet, or don't exercise enough. All of these problems are solvable with out qigong, so they never stick around. (A couple of times the problem has been they exercised too much, in which case the problem was easily solved by suggesting they do less.)

However, there are some weird power accumulation exercises out there falling under the category of sexual qigong. None of these are good for your longterm health, because like taking drugs, they mess with your endocrine system (In TCM language they use up yuan qi). They are also completely unnecessary because you can get the same amount of energy from proper diet, sleep and exercise. My guess is that these practices were originally invented for people who were starving in times of famine, when such practices might have served a real purpose.

Yelp* Reviews

A few years ago some inexperienced internet people came up with a great idea. They created a search-able review site for local businesses called Yelp*. Any business owner could list and describe their business and anyone else could write a review about it. Brilliant, they should have become billionaires by now.

Would that it were.

Yelp(ers) were the first people to get a site up and running, and they quickly cornered the niche, but they have had such poor business sense that years later they are still having problems.

First of all let me encourage you all to check it out. Secondly, if you've ever studied with me please write me a review. Lots of people in San Francisco use Yelp* to decide what businesses to patronize.

But...be forewarned...(because they won't tell you) if you only review one business or service, they will erase your review after a few days. Why? Because they are loony. They have some theory about the ethics of single-reviews. Whatever, if you take the time to write me a review (for which I will be deeply appreciative) also write one about a sushi restaurant, or a bed and breakfast, or a dentist.

I first found out I was dealing with amateurs three years ago after I wrote a review of Mao's Village Restaurant, which used to be an annoyance around the corner from my house. The next day I got a call from a guy at Yelp* who sounded like he rides his skateboard to work (nothing at all against skateboards, he just sounded young and unprofessional). We talked for about half an hour. His reason for calling me was that he didn't think I had actually eaten at the restaurant, which was true and obvious from my review. I commented on the Chang Kai-Shek's Wife's Chicken on the menu as well as many Mao and Zhou Enlai references that just made me think about starving babies. I mean would you buy an oven from a store called Hitler's Stoves? I commented about the mess around the cash register and the fact that hardly anyone ever eats there. In fact, I was pretty sure that it was a mafia money laundering scheme. A restaurant which has no customers can invent cash receipts, then pay taxes on them, which makes the money clean. The only people I ever saw in there were partying and drinking whiskey late at night.

Anyway, they took my first review down off the site.

Then, last year they called me to say I had some pretty glowing reviews, perhaps I would like to have my business moved to the top of the search for a fee of $300 a month. They worked really hard to sell me on this, obviously having no idea how my business works. I mean, look, if I was in a competitive business like a restaurant, and I had 20+ customers a night, $300 might look like a good price. But heck, I'm happy if I get 2 new students a month! Their business model made no sense at all.

So just the other day I (and nearly every small business person I know) got this message from Yelp*

Hello,

I'm writing to let you know about our decision to close your account. Your user account was flagged by the Yelp community, and our Customer Service team has determined that your account has violated Yelp's Terms of Service (http://www.yelp.com/static?p=tos).

Specifically, the Terms of Service state that:
> "You shall not: create user accounts by automated means or under false or fraudulent pretenses."

We have determined that you have been using Yelp to improve your business' and your friends'/other small business owners' ratings on Yelp through review trading. We have determined that review trading does not reflect unbiased customer opinions which violates the spirit of Yelp.

We review every situation with detail and care and take account closure very seriously.

Regards,
Kris
Yelp Inc. User Support
San Francisco, California.

Did you notice that Kris spells his name like the spirit capturing daggers of Indonesia?

Don't worry, they didn't take down my business description itself, just the reviews I had written for others and my personal ability to comment on other people's businesses--Oh, and all of the reviews people had already posted about me, except for one.

See, by Yelp* Logicâ„¢, if I write a review for someone in my business network it must be fraud! Thus all my students and former students who have their own businesses are automatically disqualified from sharing their opinions because they might be biased in my favor.

Get a clue Yelp*! The majority of my clients/students run small or even one-person businesses. This is San Francisco! A whole host of technologies, starting with the answering machine and now including Yelp*, have made it possible for individuals to run their own businesses. The possibility of the one-person business is the greatest single institutional change in the direction of freedom in my lifetime.

I was prepared to ignore the whole thing and move on but then this article made it into the San Francisco Chronicle, and someone started up a site called Yelp-Sucks.com

Sweet.

UPDATE: My honey tells me that not only do you have to review some other business in addition to mine, you also have to add a picture--otherwise they'll just toss your review in the cyber-trash.

Accidents (part 3)

People sometimes achieve very high level martial arts by accident. Accidents happen when we aren't paying attention, so they are often effortless.

A few years ago I was teaching Northern Shaolin to juvenile delinquents. A program was set up that was a collaboration between the school district, the sheriff's department, and Performing Arts Workshop. It was a lock down school which had a significant performing arts component. My classes always had a probation officer present watching on the side. All the students were between 13 and 16 years old and had been convicted of crimes.

Somewhere towards the end of my residency I brought my friend and Choi Li Fut expert Greg Mooney in as a guest artist. One of my rules is that students bow as they enter or exit the room. On this particular day, like most days, they were unruly, rude and disorganized as they entered the auditorium. As I introduced Greg they started pestering and shouting that they wanted us to fight, "We want to see you fight."

I looked at Greg, he is a performer, a stunt clown (he used to do 500 shows a year), we had sparred enough to know each others stuff. He looked game.
"OK," I said, "I'll make a deal with you guys." "You give us your full attention, you work hard, concentrate, and give todays class the best effort you've ever given, and we'll fight for you-- at the end of class."

As I said it, I thought to myself, 'these kids don't have any discipline, there isn't much chance that they will really concentrate?'

"Really?" They asked, "If we do our best you'll really fight each other, for real?"

"Yes," I said. I knew I was taking a little risk, I looked over at the probation officer and he was motionless. "Alright, it's a deal then let's practice."

That day they practiced harder than they ever had before, it was a fun class. I guess they trusted me. So at the end I had them all sit down and Greg and I went at it.

Neither of us were looking to connect a punch, we were putting on a show. Our strikes were intentionally missing by just enough to make it look real, we each took a couple of dive rolls on the hard floor, our sweeps were slow enough to give each other time to fall the easy way, our kicks were to the meaty parts. The juveniles were screaming with delight.

Then I did a simple bagua zhang single palm change. Greg accidentally turned into it. I was trying to make all my movements empty of force, and at that moment I wasn't even aiming at a target, I was paying attention to my audience. But my elbow connected with Greg's temple and he flew backwards into the air. His temple opened up and blood spurted out everywhere. My movement at that moment was so effortless I didn't even feel my elbow connect.

I helped Greg to his feet and we had an eye to eye bonding moment. The juveniles were completely blown away, their enthusiasm was profound. They also found it incredible that after such an event we were showing all the signs of being best friends.

As they left class that day, each of them bowed with reverence and sincerity I hadn't believed possible. The staff of the school reported to me that a year later the students were still talking about it as their best day ever at school.

Push Hands: Small Circle, Big Circle

Small Circle push-hands is a rules set which can have moving feet, but really ought to be learned with fixed feet first.  Small circle push-hands allows no grabbing, slapping or striking.  You can only do peng, ji, lu, and an.  The reason it is called small circle is because you are trying to develop peng, ji, lu, and an (ward off, push/poke, draw inward, cover/contain) in a continuous circle, no breaks, no moments of intermittent force.  Small circle push-hands can be completely improvised or it can follow a set sequence.
Once you have established small circle push-hands there are lots of subtler games that can be played from it.

Big Circle push-hands gets it's name because to play it one must break the small circle.  The rule set allows for grabbing (chin na), plucking (zai), elbow strikes, throws, and traps (zhou), forward strikes with the shoulder (kao), and two directional attacks to the opponent's frame which can be light swipes, slaps or sudden jolts(lieh).

Most people learn both big circle and small circle at the same time.  I think that is a mistake, the two rule sets should be clearly differentiated.   The question remains, which is better to learn first?

Small Circle push-hands is the heart of the game, but to deal with an aggressor you must know Big Circle push-hands cold.