Twenty-one

Grab both of your partner's forearms just above his wrists while he stands in a right stance. Making sure that he is squared up and facing you directly, tell him to stiffen by tensing his muscles. Tell him to resist you when you begin to push. Push into him and note how much energy is required to take him off balance. Now have your partner relax the muscle tension. Tell him to let his arms bend slightly at the elbows and wrists and drop his center slightly by bending his knees. Tell him to keep one point and extend ki (or, feel free to insert your favorite metaphor). Instead of resisting suggest that he absorb the energy of the push and let it travel thru his body and on into the ground at his rear foot. Tell him to let the relaxed joints of his bent arms dissipate the force, unlike his stiff arms in the prior test which concentrated the force at his shoulders. Now using the same amount of energy as in the first test, push into him. When he doesn't move begin to increase the power of your push gradually.

As the student becomes more familiar with the idea of absorbing and dissipating instead of resisting forces, have him bring the rear foot closer and closer to the front foot in subsequent iterations of the test until he's doing it from a natural stance with both feet parallel to one another.

As the one pushing your responsibility is to help your partner find and reinforce the correct feeling of being able to absorb the energy of your push. Therefore carefully direct your push into his strength, which is generally slightly down in the direction of his center. This is especially important for beginners as it is very easy for them to become discouraged if you don't allow them to discover where their strength lies by deliberately pushing in odd directions away from their centers. When students become more experienced with this kind of testing you can vary the force vectors to allow them to "move their centers around" as you push off line.