DRILL FOR ACQUIRING WARD OFF


Taijiquan has been called Peng Jin Quan or Ward Off Boxing by some. It is Ward Off that allows for the cultivation of soft effortless power and it is softness that creates an environment for Ward Off to occur. If one attempts to aquire Ward Off , they will have the best results if they look at Yang Cheng Fu’s 10 essential principles and the Song of Peng Jin . It is also very important that they look at their postures and alignments . That being said, one can pass through the gate by looking at the etymology of the Chinese Character for Peng . The main radical is 月 /Yueh or moon . The creators of early Chinese writing were not unlike our modern linguistic thinkers. They seek knowledge as much as they ponder feelings and emotions. They saw the moon as alone and gave it a friend … and so 朋 /Peng or two moons means friend . The inclusion of the 手 /hand radical on the left side makes this Chinese Character unique to Taijiquan. When i showed this character to Learned Chinese , their response was that this word did not exist. Fellow Practitioners of old created this Character to transmit the feeling to future practitioners. The resulting Peng character was born . It is often printed as 棚 Peng with the wood character to the left because you can’t find it on most Chinese Character lists. The meaning of a ” Friendly Hand” makes perfect sense to me and best describes the feeling . i created the following drill to pass the feeling on to Fellow Practitioners in a simple ” you already know how to do this” format. It is very common for me to observe Fellow Practitioners mimicking a movement and circumnavigating the intent in the process . These movements are vague contrivances when they are not initiated with the correct intent . When i see someone i like that i haven’t seen in a long time , my mind will energize , my spine will open , and all of the joints will open as well . This is the bodies natural way of opening caused by one intent instead of trying to manage the multitude of internal changes that occur simultaneously with in the body. Simply match the Yang aggressive energy with a Yin Greeting type of energy and this will repel your training partner ; even if he pushes hard you will feel stabile and they will be repulsed . You can’t fake the love or it will not work !!! Once you experience the feeling , then your skill will progress . BP Chan did not pronounce this word Peng ( PUNG) as most do because he felt a collapse in the chest when he expressed the word. Instead, he pronounced it PING as this word pulses through the bodies frame . I hope that this is helpful !