Today, I am going to tell you something even I don’t fully understand yet. Why? Because my teacher said I do. So, I invite you to join me in this hazardous journey, a journey into my interpretation of being connected. And I am going to explain this connectedness through a very specific activity in Tai Chi called push hands.

Push hands is a very specific Tai Chi training. It involves two person sparring with one another. Like any martial art sparring, the purpose is to win the opponent. One famous military strategy is to know your opponent. Push hands provides a very specific means to know your opponent, that is through the physical contact of the hands, sometimes known as the art of sticking.

To stick is not to glue. It’s not where you can maintain the skin contact between two hands. It’s not the rub or friction between two hands where it burns.

Sticking is an intention. A feeling. A state of mind. It manifests itself through physical contact of the skin, but the physical contact is just an end state. It is not sticking.

Once you are in this state of mind, you become aware. You become aware of your force. You become aware of your opponent’s force. You become aware of gravity. You become aware of the ground you are standing on.

You see, although in push hands, sticking appears to be on the hand only, the true nature of sticking is the simultaneous sticking to the ground and to the hands. The ground provides the power, the hand is just a manifestation of that power. The more you stick to the ground, the more you stick to your opponent.

Now this can be misunderstood as pushing off the ground. That is not true. Again, sticking is a feeling inside. You are working with the ground, not against it. When you work against it, you will feel that you are almost flying off the ground. Should the ground move, like standing in a train, you will be thrown off.

True sticking is a relaxed feeling. Your whole weight sinks into the ground. You feel connected. Your ground is your partner, your friend, not your foe. You are working together with the ground. It’s as if you have the power of the earth in your legs.

That’s sticking. Have you felt it yet?