Customer Reviews

Tai Chi Sensing Hands (Chen Kung's T'Ai Chi Series)

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Tai Chi Sensing Hands assumes the reader has some knowledge of Tai Chi Chuan and is able to apply the forms correctly. The basic sets of push hands are presented and then expanded with variations on these techniques designed to enlarge the sensitivity and responsiveness of the student. While not all different push hands styles are covered, the variations can be adopted to almost any style of push hands to challenge the players to new levels of expertise. The pictures and the text work together to lead the student to explore each technique, if the student has the ability to perform Tai Chi well. Without the ability to perform Tai Chi, this book is best left on the shelf until the reader is able to move according to the instruction.

This book is very well written especially in the introductive chapters. The author considerations about the exercise are really great. Unfortunately, as a Tai Chi instructor, I was looking for something much more advanced in sensing (or most commonly "pushing") hands. Even though the work has been very well done, the pushing exercises are still introductive one. The use of the waists and the application of the "chan su shin" movement to the exercise are neither explained nor mentioned. As any Tai Chi person knows this is the key and the most important tip on sensing hand and generally speaking on all the tai chi movements. Anyway this book is the first one completely dedicated to the item and I really appreciate the author effort on approaching the sensing hand explanation in this work.

This is an excellent book on the deep principles behind the two-person reactive training usually called "pushing hands". I disagree with the reviewer who took issue with this book title since the actual translation of tui shou would be "connecting or bridging hands". The western approach of calling this practice "push hands" is possibly one of the main reasons that it is so poorly practiced as something more like vertical wrestling in most taiji tournaments.

Stewart Olson does not delve deeply into all of the advanced sensing hands exercises taught in the various taiji forms, but he does present the exercises that the original master of his lineage taught in the U.S. I think that this is very appropriate and that most of the more advanced two-person exercises need to be directly taught by an instructor knowledgeable in them. He does do an excellent job of transmitting with words and exercises a topic that is difficult to communicate face-to-face and hand-to-hand to students.

It is wonderful that taiji has become so popular in the U.S. that an interested student can find someone who teaches the form at most every college, continuing education center, gym, or martial arts studio. Unfortunately, finding a teacher who can instruct more advanced topics such as sensing hands is much more difficult. For the novice student this creates the difficulty of determining if their instructor knows what they are talking about or is just faking it. This book can help such a student because while the training exercises in this book by themselves may not guarantee a correct understanding of push hands, they can identify incorrect teaching. Further, for students that have a good instructor and want a text written by a master level practitioner this book has exercises that can deepen your skill. This author has several other books addressing the deep aspects of taiji and qigong that are also very high quality.

Insightful study from someone who knows his stuff. I am a rank beginner but his way of expressing comes thru very well. There are supposed to be five books in this series of his but I can find only three.

if jou know a little about the deep knowledge of tai chi en p-h. then jou feel the diamont inside this book.a excelent book en meny credit for the writer en the translator olson.