Soft is what you meet an attack with in order to neutralize it and hard is the symmetrical balance applied to the vacated place. Many push-hands students are so deluded by their false interpretation of softness that they actually get offended if you really push them. They don't understand that soft is what you meet hard with; what you neutralize an attack with and not what you push with when you counter an attack. Push is yang, yielding is yin. Don't mix that up.

Many Aikido students are similarly confused about the concept "aiki" or blending with energy. "Strength and size are important if, when an opponent attacks, you receive the strength of the blow in a collision-like situation. If, however, you brush the blow aside, the opponent must himself manage the force he has generated."--Koichi Tohei.

The quote above talks about yielding when meeting an attack. Within the range of the attacker's effective power, the soft martial artist withdraws or neutralizes. He doesn't meet force with force, but causes the attack to miss; allowing the opponent's hard yang force to reach beyond its intended conclusion.

The opponent provides the force you use to unbalance him. You may lead the opponent past his limit of balance, and apply a technique when he's at his weakest point, trying just to stay on his feet. At that point, he offers no resistance to a push or strike, and will naturally fall victim to a throw. After neutralizing the attacker's yang energy, causing him to float, choose from a menu of options for your turn that includes reasoning with him and ranging up to the physical class of techniques which include arm locks, push, pull, throws and strikes.

There's a clear admontion in the Tai Chi classics to let the force of a fly or the weight of a feather set you into yielding motion. In push hands, yield to the weight of a feather, unbalance an attacker with a four-ounce deflection and then surge from yin to yang at the proper breaking point, pushing the opponent away. This essential principle of softness tell us to use a force of four ounces to lead or deflect an attack away from us in the direction it intends to go. The four-ounce application on the yielding side is esentially a vacuum force applied to destabilize the opponent.

Why four ounces and not four pounds? If you apply more than four ounces, you have taken your turn and it is the opponent's turn again. The opponent can't feel four ounces, and so in unaware of being led, giving him the impression that his turn is continuing when, in fact, you're already taking his turn.
Copyright 2004 by Jack Livingston