How to listen with your hands?

When we doing TaI Chi Push hands, we always mention about listening energy. Listening energy has nothing to do with using your ears. Listening energy is about using you hands’ sensitivity to “listen” your opponent’s energy/force. It’s the key of push hands. What are the goals we use listening energy/use your hand’s skin’s sensitivity to identify ?

- Opponent’s energy/power’s size
- Direction of the energy
- If that power /energy is soft or hard
- If that power/energy is full or empty


After you identify the above, then you can decide what energy you going to apply back on the opponent and control his/her energy. It has to apply to every movement of your push hands, because energy changes in every movement. You decision of responding to the opponent will have to change all the time as well.

The key of listen energy is to touch, stick, connect and follow opponent’s hands and energy. Don’t against and lose. If you lose the connection, then you can’t listen. If you against other people’s energy, then you won’t listen well.

What’s your thoughts of energy listening? Any comments?

Copyrighted by Huan's TAI CHI2009