Carhart Push-Hands

Tabby Cat has really ruffled his fur over the question, "What is push-hands?" In a slight-of-paw he has decided to avoid a direct confrontation by pulling a "Prince." He now refers to what he does as the Drill Formerly Known As Push Hands (DFKAP).  I can probably come up with fifty push-hands genre games or training experiments.  Why fixate on one?  Well, he tells us.

This one DFKAP is a method for revealing Deep Unconscious Tension (DUT).  He keeps telling us that we probably don't know the difference between Surface Unconscious Tension (SUT) and DUT.  I don't know why he is saying this.  In my experience reading a book reveals both SUT and DUT, my arms get tired after about 15 minutes, so do my eyes, at some point my spine too--that's SUT--the root of that SUT is deep in the torso and is distributed all over the body--it is Deep Unconscious Tension (DUT).  I understand the concept but I don't like the terminology.  Why?  Because it's neo-Reichian.  Just for the record, Wilhelm Reich said that the Function of the Sexual Orgasm is to release DUT.  So basically Tabby Cat is saying that push-hands is like an orgasm.  No wonder some people like doing push-hands with him and some people freak out!

I believe he is making a Cosmological Order Error (COE).  Reich was also obsessed with apocalyptic concerns, by the way.  Instead of DUT, I prefer to think of Inhibitions of the Spacial Mind (ISM).  How great are my ISM push-hands powers you ask?  So great that I already defeated Tabby Cat at Push-Hands last Tuesday and he wasn't even aware of it!  He still requires touch to reveal unconscious tension while I can do it from right here in the cockpit of my F160 Fighter Jet.

Not able to fully solve this problem myself I have asked a friend for help, so let me introduce guest blogger the MIT* Daoist:

"Tabby Cat stop worrying about peak oil.  The planet earth is a battery.  Half of this battery is being recharged by the Sun at all times.  The gaseous part of the battery only holds energy for a short time but the liquid and solid parts hold it for much longer, and life has all kinds of creative ways of capturing and storing energy.  All the world's oil is like baby fat, it's nice when you have it, nice when you don't.  Speaking of baby fat, humans are batteries too.  We take in water and air to keep the acidity levels optimum.  We recharge with food and sunlight.  We store energy in fats and sugars.  The purpose of push-hands is to extend our battery-life.  Push-hands does this by revealing both Energy Leaks (EL), and Energy Transmission Inefficiencies (ETI)."

Thank you MIT* Daoist.

What's that buzzing sound?  A mosquito?  It's whispering something in my ear...

Invest in loss.

Here is my unsolicited advice.  If Tabby Cat is so good at using DFKAP to reveal DUT he might enjoy giving up the combat mindset.  How about finding new ways to lose?  Can he still reveal DUT with just two claws of contact?  How about when starting with one paw in his pocket and with his opponent's hand on his face.  How about allowing his opponent to put him in an arm-lock and beginning from there?  How about putting both paws in his pockets and allowing his opponent to grab hold of his jacket and beginning from there?



While I'm giving unsolicited advice perhaps trying to never win would open up new possibilities.  Can you consistently stop yourself from winning?  Try to not win with your hands up by your head and yet still reveal DUT or ISM?

Tabby, you just scratched your ear with your foot didn't you?  See, I did that. Well I didn't actually do it, I just revealed your ISM and they you did it yourself.

I call it ISM because when I truly let go of DUT my Spacial Mind immediately changes.  Pure Tai Chi fighting establishes unity through completely melting DUT.  Once unity is established the Spacial Mind is free to dance with chaos and harmony.  Things like structure, technique, root, or intent are swept aside like those wooden stir sticks at Starbucks.  All mass is available to change without inhibition like a Transformer!  Why not do push-hands rolling on the ground?  It's fun!

Maybe the funniest thing about Tabby Cat's position is his insistence that push-hands is non-cooperative... Oh, never mind, let's do it your way.

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*Monkey Institute of Technology

Kong Ling - Empty and Alive

Over at millionaire genius Tabby Cat we have a little piece I can riff on.  Anyone who has ever done push hands with a Cheng Manqing lineage person has probably encountered the "why do I need to defend my head defense."  It is so weird, they never admit that they are making a mistake.  But Tabby does something interesting.  He claims that the difference in push hands methods is an indicator of a difference in the fruition that each person is seeking.

Here is what Tabby says the purpose of push hands is:

The Push Hands Drill of Tai Ji Quan is a diagnostic practice to identify tension in oneself and a partner and a developmental practice to foster skill in the application of internal energy to such identified tense zones to move the partner's entire body with a light physical touch.

He contrasts that with many other schools who teach push hands as a safe way to approach combat skills development.  He then points out the flaw of the combat approach by saying that the observable fruition does not support it's stated purpose.  For example, defending a position in fixed step push hands (the way many people do) simply doesn't work in combat.

He is using the observed fruition to examine the method.  What he should be doing is using the observed fruition to examine the view which inspired the method.  All views produce an experience.  Tabby Cat has made his view known on his blog countless times, he believes the human race is doomed and therefore he has chosen to become a cat.

For me, views always come first.  My view of push hands is that it is a game designed to get us to drop our aggression.  As the first Chapter of the Daodejing explains, when you drop your aggression the order of the cosmos reveals itself (note: there is no "it" or "self", the use of language creates some limits here).  One might ask, "After I have seen the order of the cosmos, why would I want to do push hands again?"  And the answer is that the order of the cosmos reveals itself differently each time.  Experiencing the order of the cosmos is not an advantage, it doesn't make us superior or more powerful, it is simply a moment of inspiration.

Can you use this 'order of the cosmos' inspiration to fight?  Of course you can.  It would be a very mundane usage by society's standards, but the cosmos doesn't care.

Now let's go back and analyze the method.  The method of push hands is to meet your opponent hand to hand while maintaining, embodying and expressing kong ling.  Kong means emptiness and ling means liveliness.  What I gather from Tabby's description is that his recent push hands partner (lets call him Mr. Pause) was ling but not kong.  I surmise this because Mr. Pause declared he could knock Tabby upside the head if he wanted to (a demonstration of ling), yet he was losing the matches because Tabby could feel Mr. Pause's tension and up root him demonstrating that Mr. Pause was not kong (empty).

Tabby on the other hand must be kong (empty) but not ling (lively) because he only feels obligated to cover his head when he is boxing.

How did it come to this?  If you are aggressive, you are going to have a strategy.  Having a strategy will occlude your ability to see the order of the cosmos.  Tabby's strategy is to be like water.  If he is like water his opponent will find nothing in him to push on, while he can simultaneously use extraordinary sensitivity skills to find a little sliver of tension in his opponent.  Once he finds that tension in his opponent he can expand condense or spiral his qi against the sliver of tension and the opponent will up root himself.  The problem with this method is that it works.  (Most martial arts methods have that problem.)  However, does it work when Tabby has his hands up at head level?  My guess is that it does not.  The test is not a quick hook punch to the head, it is a slow hook punch to the head with a soft lady-like hand.  It doesn't actually matter whether Tabby or Mr. Pause does the hook punch it's the hands going up that matters.

We already know the answer to our test because Tabby believes that boxing is a superior way to hit.  In boxing the body is like an on/off switch, it goes from dodging and weaving like water, then sudden switches on with an icy strike to the jaw.

Ali Video...



Of course boxers don't protect their groin because it is illegal to strike there in the game of boxing.  So what are we doing? trading the groin for the head?  No.  All the push hands teachings about protecting the head or the groin or the space on the ground (fixed step push hands) or the center line or whatever, they are all just mind forms, all limitations, all preliminary experiments meant to show you what not to do.  Even Tabby's idea about finding tension in the opponent is just a trick to get the student to see the limitations of focused sensitivity.  OK, you found the tension in my left baby toe?  you feel it?  You got it?  Now feel this right hook on your chin, subtle huh?

If you are kong the opponent can not feel the slightest bit of tension in your body, they can only feel a big unified whole.  If you are ling you can do anything, you can punch or kick, run around like a monkey, or eat some salad.  Kong and ling are pretty easy to do separately.  In order to do them simultaneously one must have a view which matches how things actually are.  Because we humans are always wanting stuff and setting goals and confusing what we see with what we wish we saw, our view gets out of sink with the way things actually are.  There is a Starbucks on practically every corner.

It's enough to make a person wish to be a cat!

When our view is in sync with the way things are, mind and movement are in harmony.  Then qi automatically fills the space between the quiet body and the active mind.   The body is kind of like a hotdog, wrapped in mustard and lettuce which is the qi, and surrounded by a bun which is the mind .  When you want to take a bite you pick up only the bun and move it to your mouth, don't touch the hotdog or the mustard.

The active mind is not busy or distracted, it is spacially involved like a person standing on the edge of a cliff.

Like crossing a river in winter.

--Laozi

When a person is kong and ling, empty and alive, at the same time he may still sense his opponent's tension-- but he doesn't need to look for it.  He just does whatever movement he fancies and the opponent will not be able to stop him.  With kong-ling there is no impulse to defend or to root.  That doesn't mean there is no defending or dodging.  Like punching or reciting poetry--they are options.

I'm always happy to debate these things over a bowl of coffee-flavored milk in Seattle, or to test them out next time I'm in Tokyo fighting Godzilla.

More Video Libraries

More old martial arts stuff appears on Youtube everyday. This guy has assembled another library, like this one I've posted about before. I found this wonderful bagua video of Bai Yucai. I love the way he does turns off of his front foot from the swallow swoops down pose. Don't much care for the applications and I would like to see some fast movements, but great stuff:



I also found this. I haven't written about Zhaobao style of Taijiquan before because I don't know much about it, but it has created a bit of a stir because some of the practitioners are good and because unlike Yang and Wu it does not derive directly from Chen, in fact it may be older. Zhaobao village is very close to Chen village so the controversy is really about authenticity of lineages... which are all in dispute anyway. I like his way of moving, clean and lively:

Winning Links

Two quick links for your enjoyment.

The League of Extraordinary Dancers is a hot new series.  Younger men may not realize just how revolutionary this is, but in my day dance wasn't very cool for men.  It has been a long fight to bring great male dancers up to the superhero status they deserve, but I think we are winning.

Some people in the U.S. Military seem to really understand the role the military has in shaping all of American society, and they are taking acupuncture very seriously.  This is going to be great for business!

Teaching, Guilt, But the Shows Must Go On

My regular readers deserve some sort of explanation about why I haven't been blogging much. I do hope to get back to regular posts soon.

First of all I'm busy teaching.  Lots of kids classes.  My advanced students are doing a mini-tour of schools and centers with a DeYoung Museum sponsored show for the public on Thursday May 13th at the Band Shell in Golden Gate Park around 1 PM.  It looks like we are head-lining because my kids put on such a good show last year.  Or maybe it was just an accident.  Anyway it should be fun.  Part of our show is a group fight scene and... we have 10 year olds with swords.

I'm also presenting a paper and teaching a workshop at the Daoism Conference in LA, June 4th... at the moment my paper is titled: Theater, Exorcism, Ritual and the Martial Arts.

Also I've been doing nothing but reading and sleeping on Saturdays for the last two months.  At 40 I realized that guilt was a primary motivator for me.  As a self-employed enthusiast, I always have something I feel guilty about not having started or finished yet.  So I decided to invert that.  I committed to doing absolutely no work on Saturdays.  Now I feel guilty if I try to do even a little work on my day of rest.  It's like, my job to lay on the couch.

I'm still looking for a space to teach evening classes and I'm looking to create my own after-school program for next school year.

I started taking a Physical Theater class.  I haven't been in a class like this for maybe 20 years, but I thought I should test my ideas about the relationship between martial arts and theater training in a more immediate way.  The class is called The Flying Actor. At the first lesson we learned two stances which were used together.  The names for those two stances in martial arts are Bow stance and Horse stance.  The way they do Bow stance is with the front heal up and the arms are in what I would consider a basic shuai jiao or "throwing" position.  The horse stance has a high and a low version.  One of the things we did a lot was to put a hood over our heads.  The hood makes it hard to see but not impossible.  I'm used to moving with my eyes open (of course) and also with my eyes closed, but moving with disrupted vision messed me up a bit.  Good exercise.  We also worked on some basic mime and I realized that I've trained myself not to look at anything close up.  My fighter mind doesn't want to narrow my focus to "show" the imaginary object.  But I also realized that one of the beginning shaolin instructions is to slowly look into the distance and then draw your vision back to yourself before beginning.  It never occurred to me to do it as a mime exercise before, but it fits.

Rory Miller is doing a workshop called Responses to Ambushes and Breaking the Freeze, on May 9th, I'm attending with a few of my students.  I will not be wearing my pajamas.  Check it out.

Oh, and I actually wrote a really long blog post which I might still put up, but I don't know how to finish it.  Maybe just a summary is enough:  Traditional exercise routines were not for weight loss because in the old days people didn't have Trader Joe's or even McDonald's.  Anything claiming to be traditional would have been designed to work without consuming very much food, duh.  If anything, a traditional form of exercise would have helped you put on a little extra fat for leaner times. (Wrestling, by the way, is an extreme example.)

And lastly, I've had some stimulating time with George Xu lately and my practice has been really empty, in a good way.

Yongle Temple

The Wall Street Journal just did a nice article and a video on Yongle Temple. Everybody knows about the importance of Wudang Temple. But for monastic Daoism Yongle is just as important.

Year of the Tiger!

Tiger years are good for pouncing and exorcisms.  If you want to start off with an exorcism, here is a simple one you can do on-line.

It's from David K. Jordan's website.  He has a lot of China-related resources on his site, check it out.  I'm back-logged with my blogging projects at the moment so the interesting links from his site were sitting on my desk top for about three weeks.  In that time the thing I most wanted to share with my readers disappeared!  Drat!

In the China-related resources he had a link called "108 Term Paper Ideas" and somewhere in there he had a link to "What Ever You Do, Do Not Attempt To Write A Term Paper About Martial Arts."  The link lead to a short essay explaining all the reasons why he has had to flunk every person who ever tried to write a paper about martial arts.  Arrgggh!  I'm working on a paper about Exorcism and the Martial Arts, if you can find his essay, pounce on it and send it my way.

Happy year of the Tiger!

Martial Theater

This article from Kungfu Magazine is a great overview of the total overlap of Triads, Kungfu, Theater, Religion and Opera.  It dips into the relationship between Theater and the Taiping Uprising, the Opium Wars, and the Triads.  Reading it you get that sense that Chinese Theater was nurtured in a violent world.  The authors keep their focus narrowly on Red Junk Opera, but what they say is likely true for many other styles of Theater and Martial Arts.  (hat tip: Jianghu)

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Here is a quick interview where Xingyi master Song Guanghua explains:

Another interesting comment that M Song made is that the 5 element fists can be practiced in different ways depending on the context. Specifically, he stated that, for each element, there is a performance version, a training version and a combative version. Thus, when comparing the performance of the 5 elements across styles, one must know which version you are seeing, otherwise the comparison is meaningless.

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Also:

Popular Religion in China Stephan Feuchtwang

Has a great overview of Popular Religion in China!

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And if you haven't checked out Marnix Wells site it's worth a look!

Mish Mash

This was my day to blog.  After teaching 5 and a half hours this morning, 3 and a half of it in the cold, two indoors, I was ready for a nap.  I slept from 1pm until 5pm.  Whoops that was my day to blog.  Well, never fear.  I have a bunch of small crunchy bits for y'all to chew on.

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I love this picture series of Liu Fengcai doing Baguazhang.

In these pictures he is emphasizing polarity in his body created by the combination of "monkey doesn't want to go to school" and "effortlessly floating the head upward." The two forces create extraordinary external wrapping of the soft tissue around the torso and the backs of the legs-- this is evident in the shape of his hands.  Sweet.  (The artist's sketch underneath is an unnecessary distraction, but notice he added the drawing 4th from the left which breaks several baguazhang rules.  The arrows are misleading too.)

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Only Comics and Dogs Wiggle their Head!

For all the hemming and hollering I’ve heard over the years about the importance of keeping the head upright as well as contrary opinions in favor of practicing dodging and ducking with the head, I am delighted to let everyone know that the controversy was created entirely from the denial of gongfu’s theatrical origins.
Here is a video of me doing an 8 part warm up that came from Kuo Lien-ying which I have been doing for 30 years.  After reading Jo Riley's book Chinese Theater and the Actor in Performance.  I've changed three of the movements slightly (I'll have to make a new video).  I'm very sure that I've been doing the exercises slightly wrong for all these years because I was limited in my view and simply didn't understand the original instructions.



Number 2 in the series is for training the basic heroic stance and should be done with the chest lifted more than you see here.

Number 3 is the basic comic stance and should be done with the tailbone back, the belly out, the arms straighter, and the head lifted.  In this position it is OK if the head wiggles because that's what comics and dogs do to show their lower statues.  It's so much better this way.

Lastly the 8th stance, usually called "chin to toe," is used as a mind clearing exercise by performers back stage immediately before they perform.  It should be done with the kidneys forward, not back as I've shown in the video. Thanks Jo, that tiny bit of information unlocked a lot of secrets for me.  (Yes, there are secrets.)

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Disheveled and in disarray...

is a good description of all of my Daoist studies, as well as all my “progress” in martial arts.   I have followed my teachers in trying to transmit brilliant structures, orders, and systemizations in my writings.  However; the reality is a lopsided, languid, sometimes choppy, sometimes flowing,  unwieldy beast.

Occasionally I pick up a comment saying I'm too organized.  Reality doesn't fit in boxes.  Thanks for pointing that out.  All systemizations are also limitations.  All stated orders are incomplete.  The truth is always available in completely undifferentiated chaos (huntun), just waiting for you to stick your head in there and pull it out.

Occasionally I have received friendly comments here and on various forums which describe my thinking as mystical.  While I realize it is silly of me to take umbrage at this, it does rub me the wrong way.  I’m not personally interested in a mystical journey.  I’m not declaring that everything I say is a concrete metaphor, yes, my metaphors are sometimes misty or even foggy; but I am not on a mystical journey.  Sometimes looking in at something new or foreign from the outside creates a mystical feeling in the observer, that's fine, but please tell me if you think I’ve become rooted in anything less than what is absolutely real.

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Chinese Martial Arts are a treasure...

but they are a changing treasure.  The Daodejing mentions three unchanging treasures, hold and preserve them!

The first is compassion.  (We're talking predator drone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the thick-of-it,  compassion-- not moral platitudinous, bumper-sticker yoga compassion like, "Do no harm.")

The second is conservation. (No not greenness people!  I’m (in the) black and I’m proud!  Business is the most effective social mechanism for conservation ever-- cut your costs, improve your efficiency-- now let excess, laziness, misty eyed romantics, hysterical greenies, and inferior products and services die.)

The third is not imagining yourself to be at the center of the world.  (Duh!)

The three treasures do not lend themselves to fame, or charisma, or even claims of authorship.   Each person, or family, or community, or nation, or institution can find its own way to express these treasures.  But it's not hard to see why one might be inspired to live like a hermit.

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Cold!  Lively!

I love being outside this time of year!  When the temperature drops the surface of my body cools down, but the inside stays hot.  This is an ideal condition for cultivating the Daoist elixir practice (jindan) and martial arts in general.  Why?  Because jing and qi differentiate more easily.  Our structure, the heavy stuff we are made of, jing, is easier to feel and therefore relax because it is cold on the surface.  And our qi, the activity, the motion, the animation, is more obvious on the inside.  It hums and vibrates.  Explosive power is more available.  In stillness the qi wiggles deeper into the bones, making whatever it is you practice irreversible.  People who get lazy about their practice in the winter months miss out on the best season. THE BEST!

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Here are some websites I found interesting:

http://www.chinesewudangboxing.com/aboutus.htm

http://www.fathom.com/course/21701773/sessions.html

http://www.nexthomegeneration.com/Han_Dynasty#Eastern_Han

OK my home-slices, keep it real.

Scratching The Uncarved Block

The Uncarved Block is one of the primary metaphors for the concept/anti-concept known as wuwei. The Daodejing suggests that we be like an uncarved block of wood.  The implication is that once a block of wood is fashioned into something, it loses it’s potential to be something else.  Once we make a decision, it cuts off certain options.  In other words, it is often good to wait.  But the Daodejing isn’t telling us to be indecisive.  It doesn’t say, “in difficult situations--waver!”  It also doesn’t say be slow, like a tree; or “be inactive,” like a log or a stump.  It says be like a partially processed block of wood.  Since the Daodejing doesn’t give us any idea how big this block of wood might be, or what it might be for, we can speculate.  Our block of wood could be carved into any sort of deity or icon, or perhaps a boat, a cabinet, a ladle, or a coffin.  The Daodejing is using this metaphor to point to a process which takes place when we make something.  It is not saying, “Don’t make stuff.”  Sometimes a decision can position us for more possibilities, sometimes a decision can limit us. Is this better than that? Be comfortable with ambiguity, but have a few uncarved blocks hanging around in case you need them.

There are a couple of other ways to look at this too.  A block of wood is simple, a block of wood has no preferences, a block does not calculate it’s advantages.  A block of wood can be an image of innocence, and of embracing the unknown.

The process of carving a block changes our nature as human beings.  It changes the carver.  Carving is a skill which requires particularly fine motor control, and a very specific sense of three dimensional mental imaging.  It is a sort of trance.  A sharpened focus.  It creates patterns of conditioning in our bodies and habits of mind.
Thus, the concept/anti-concept of wuwei is not a method. It is a challenge to the type of thinking which looks at everything as a method.

Yes, this type of method might be better than that one. But methods are just vehicles for transforming a vision into an experience--a result...in process.  A method always comes from something, like an uncarved block, and always gets discarded in the end.  Making and measuring is an aggressive mind-set which easily causes us to loose sight of the bigger picture.


Internal martial arts can be understood as a vehicle for discarding methods.
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I’ve been reading Tabby Cat’s blog irregularly and I noticed that he has been ranting against any other blog which describes or promotes a method which involves alignment, structure, or anatomical and physiological analysis.  He even dismissed my reluctant post on the three big muscle groups, and hinted that I might be an Posture Nazi. What is this all about?   It seems our little Tabby wants to be like the uncarved block but just can’t seem to pull it off.

His Taijiquan tradition is all gush, gush about Ben Lo, and gushy, gushy about Ben’s teacher Chen Man-Ching (the "Professor"), and, of course, ultra gushy wushy about Chen’s teacher, Yang Chenfu.  All that gushing is a form of Shamanism.  I define Shamanism as:  Making contracts or alliances with powerful unseen entities in the hope that one will acquire that entity’s powers. A word to the wise, do not get in the way of other people’s contracts with unseen forces.

In that school there isn’t much teaching.  There isn’t much attempt to create methods which will help people develop.  There is an emphasis on relaxing.  Do the form a lot, get the postures just the way you’re told, with out explication or modification.  If you lose  a bout of push-hands to a senior student, it is because you aren’t relaxed enough.  Now, honestly, there is nothing wrong with discarding methods.  --Remember the uncarved block!

Taijiquan really can be practiced as a revealing of our true nature without any inquiry or experiment.  Heck, who needs the form?  Who needs a teacher?  Just stop carving! Stop making and measuring, stop calculating and stop seeing everything as a method!  I concur!

Readers may be thinking, oh, yeah, I could move to a cabin in the Montana wilderness and live a life of quietude and leisure and then my every movement would become Taijiquan, right?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  If it isn’t working for you right here, it isn’t all that likely to work for you out there either.  But so what?  Wuwei is the idea that a return to simplicity is always an option.  Always a possibility.  Everywhere.  Always.

The moment I start writing a blog post, or you start reading one, the danger that we will lose sight of wuwei increases.  Because reading and writing is a form of carving. The moment we put pen to paper we risk crossing over into the land of methods.

Does embracing a method mean we have lost sight of wuwei? Maybe, maybe not.  This is one of the essential questions the Daodejing asks.   Some people have translated Dao-De-Jing as "The Classic of the Way and It’s Power” (Dao=way, De=power, Jing=text) meaning that it is a book of ultimate methods.  But Dao and De resist definition.   We could say there are Dao style methodless-methods, and De style methods which perfect us back toward simplicity.  The two together are one, Daode.

Our true nature is without limits.  Sometimes we go into survival mode and make contracts with the unseen world in hope of getting an advantage, a leg up, or accumulating power (Shamanism).  Other times we are content to explore, inquire, and experiment--wandering at ease (De).  And sometimes we find ourselves without an agenda at all (Dao).  These three categories of human experience, Shamanism, De, and Dao, are practiced to some extent by all humans.

If Tabby Cat ever stops scratching his post and decides to come down from his anonymity and share a bowl of milk with me--we might find ourselves together with no agenda.  (Yes, I’m offering!) He certainly makes a habit in his blog of purring in the direction of methodless-methods: “Just Rrrrrelax, it’s just Mmmmind, nothing but Eeeeenergy.”  But then he hits himself with his own bludgeon.  He goes to Ashtanga Yoga for alignment, and thinks Boxing is the perfect method for learning to hit.   Au contraire my fair kitty, I surmise from this that he has become trapped in a method.  He believes that Taijiquan works through using sensitivity to find an opponent’s weakness and channeling energy/power effortlessly up from the ground to uproot his opponent.  This is a perfect description of a water woman reverting to an ice woman.  This would also explain why he thinks he can’t hit someone using Taijiquan.  At that level he gets some power from weakness, but using sensitivity for power and advantage is a form of aggression which will block further fruition.  Power (jin) and energy (qi) have limits, weakness has none.