A short explanation on one of the biggest secrets in Tai Chi Chuan

Good morning. I just wanted to talk about something peculiar to the way I was trained. And some of the things that Mr. Chan would do in order to get someone to start to control their subconscious. I said to someone one time, you won't beat me in push hands ever because it's two on one. It's me and your subconscious against you. Until you can learn to control your subconscious mind, then you really will not make any kind of high achievement in push hands.

So, the term for it is bu wei bu ding, which is often translated as don't insist and don't resist. Or no fight, no flight, different ways of looking at it. But essentially what it is, is you don't allow your subconscious to comment on anything that's happening. You don't allow yourself to be pulled out of the present by a mistake that you made when you do your form. You continue to go forward. When your teacher is talking, you don't allow yourself to interrupt them to say what's on your mind.

Instead, you go back to emptying your mind, being receptive, and being present. And to this end, if you would say something like, can you show me that one more time? To my teacher, he'd show you one more time. And then he wouldn't show it to you ever again. So, you started to learn to not just let your mouth open and let sounds come out before they're processed through your mind and your thinking and your heart.

I call it don't allow yourself to be pulled around by your dog. Your dog should heal and should follow you and not pull you around. So, when you allow your subconscious mind to pull you around, then you can easily be manipulated when someone of higher skill interacts with that energy. This is why when you do traditional push hands, there's a pattern. Because when you're doing the pattern, you can identify anything that's outside of the pattern as subconscious interference.

I hope you find this helpful because this is one of the biggest secrets that there is in this art. Thank you.

Thank you.