Partner training is often dismissed as 'too martial' by many taiji students but it is an essential part of the training and without it your progress will be slower and you may end up stuck at a not very high level of skill. In the words of Yang style master, T. T. Liang, "To reach the highest level of the art you must master both civil and martial aspects of tai chi." Even if your interest is solely in health you will not go as high as you could if you only study one half of the art.

The civil portion is solo training (long form, short form, sword, broadsword), the martial aspect is partner training; push hands, applications and other interesting drills.

The benefits of partner training are many and varied but the most important ones can be summarized.

Instant feedback on the quality of your taiji stances, breathing, relaxation, internal strength, sensitivity, endurance, balance, center

The most important benefit of partner training is the immediate feedback you get to your performance of taiji. As soon as you touch another person to push or be pushed both parties can sense the presence or absence of relaxation, structure, connection and strength.

As students of the art we are not expected to display these attributes to any great degree when we first start but with constant feedback our progress is much faster than with those only performing the solo parts of the art.

Partner training usually consists of:

• Traditional Pushing Hands patterns
• Posture application drills
• Free pushing
• Successive approximation drills

Pushing hands leads to martial skill but is not really martial itself. You can think of it more as an interesting game of chess than as a martial struggle. The ideal environment is a partner who cooperates in challenging you, just enough. Pushing hands is not about winning or beating. It is a cooperative endeavour where each person helps to lead the other into being stronger, more balanced and more aware. Partners do this by pushing each other just to the point where they are about to loose balance, strength or relaxation. Repetitivly doing this allows each person to gain skill in maintaining these attributes.

When learning the pushing hands patterns there is a learning curve just to coordinate the body with the new movements. As with Silk Reeling and Form the usual method is to learn the choreography first. Once you can relax with the new movements details start to become more important. Of course whatever we do should be done as taiji and pushing hands is no different. Once the choreography is mastered we then try to add all taiji movement principles.

The challenge is that we are doing all of this with a partner in a somewhat competitive setting. Pushing hands should be treated more like a game of chess than as a martial encounter. We do try our best to retain our balance and center while occasionally upsetting our partner but if we get too involved in the 'fight' we will also lose our own balance. The trick is to win without really fighting or getting too involved in the fight.

If your goal in learning taiji is relaxation and health there is no faster way to that goal than through partner training. Again the feedback is immediate. If any part of you is not relaxed you quickly become aware of it and will have time to adjust to loosening and releasing in a non-competitive environment.

Gordon Muir