push hands - Taijiquan in practice

Because our coach for the beginner class is on holidays for two weeks it was offered to us to join the advanced class (actually the highest level of taijiquan classes in our academy) led by our chefcoach on Friday evening. That's what I did yesterday evening. It actually meant leaving work earlier than usual, rushing home, changing clothes and then heading to the park by bike - and I made it in time .
So I saw the advanced training group the first time (most of them I already met at the special trainings with Master Lu De He from China)  - only guys no gals   at least this time - which meant I was the only girl in this training group and from our beginner class only two more guys joined this alternative training. So we went through the Yang 24 and 42 (still having trouble with the last third of it) and also the Wu form (quite easy to run in the group because the moves are all pretty slow) and in the end they also did the Chen 108, but we took the opportunity to work for some time on the Yang 42 instead.

Finally we did some push hands, which means twe persons take position in front of each other in the taiji basic stance with the goal to push or drag each other out of the balance. When you are more advanced it really looks like struggling with each other - really funny und usually the people have a lot of fun doing it - me too. Though for me the main goal is not to get dragged or pushed out of balance. And slowly I get better at it. It took my opponent from the advanced class longer and longer to make me losing my balance. But I did a serious mistake in the beginning. Instead of being flexible like jelly in the shoulders I stiffened up there and pushed hard against him. Today I feel the aftermath of it. I woke up in the early morning with pain in the neck and had to take painkillers throughout the day because I realized that I got seriously sore muscles in the whole back which usually means that I get a migraine from tightened muscles....

Nevertheless I met up with Snowduck in the afternoon and we had a good time chatting and eating some vietnamese dishes before it was time for her to head to a jazz concert in the evening. It was great to meet up with her and I hope we can repeat that again soon!

But now it's time to take a hot bath and go to bed early today, though it is Saturday...