LEVELS OF MARTIAL ARTS

THE WORDING

In advertising, a graphic designer precisely defines the color scheme for a product. The copywriter defines the world of words. The graphic designer calls this "design", the copywriter "wording". Words are worlds. They create worlds.

Not only when our favorite writer creates characters and places that come to life in us. Even ordinary names create worlds. That's why companies spend huge amounts of money on the right name for a product or the right advertising slogan.
Open Hands is a central element of the integral movement and of RIVERS. A central element that has undergone a wording renewal process. However, this has nothing to do with marketing, but with a subtle and all-altering inner shift. Let's take a look at this.

"Push Hands" is a translation of the Chinese "Tui Shou", which has become established here. The emphasis in the term "push hands" is on pushing. Before we have even stepped into a push hands interaction for the first time, we already have the idea that it is about pushing. This is of course true, we also push in push hands, but this is a very coarse word for the many subtle differentiations that we cultivate. Above all, however, pushing is by no means everything. We also feel, sense, sense, find, hear, ask, communicate and contact with our hands.
"Pushing" also has an undertone in German that we hardly notice consciously, but which helps shape our approach. When we use "push", we mean an action that has a tendency to force and compel. "He pushed me to do it" or "The CEO pushed his people to peak performance (and to burnout.") are examples of this. "Pushen" also means to push (as in English).
So the wording itself is perhaps a reason why it makes sense to think carefully about the term "push hands". The context in which we want to practise push hands is another reason.
To help us differentiate the context, let's look at a model that allows us to see martial arts in an evolutionary sense.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARTIAL ARTS

To explain the levels of martial arts a little, I use the Spiral Dynamics model (not to be confused with Spiral Dynamics). Spiral Dynamics describes the development of a person's basic value structure (value line). Different levels are described and named with colors.
All people start "at the bottom" and grow through the levels - until they stagnate somewhere or pause for a long time (possibly decades). The value structure (or the level of development of the value line) determines the world view and therefore to a large extent how we deal with the world, how we perceive, interpret and act.

Red/purple/beige
Instincts. Winning. Being strong. Desire for freedom. Impulsiveness. Magic

It's about survival.

Martial arts: Martial arts means fighting to win. It is competition and more: survival is everything. All means are good.
The partner is not a partner, but an enemy. Rules and fairness don't matter, only winning is important.

Blue
Truth. Hierarchy. Tradition
The master is the master. Follow him. That is the way.

Martial arts: You work exactly according to master XY or style XY. The master/style is not questioned, on the contrary: idealized. You practise the traditional, which has proven itself over centuries. There is no need for anything new. The exact form as practiced by master XY is the only true criterion and the only true way. People may be tolerant of other schools, styles and masters. They are tolerated, but not seen as an enrichment for one's own practice. There is a debate about which style is better (one's own, of course).
Push hands are practiced according to master XY. Free push hands are practiced little or not at all. Routines (fixed movement sequences) are the correct practice.
Positive aspect: respect is shown to the master or teacher, which may be lacking at other levels.

Orange
Science. Structure and order. Rational analysis. Thinking mind. Materialism. Progress
That which can be explained exists.

Martial arts: Great interest in structure. All power comes from the right body structure. It is researched in the scientific sense of separating the researcher and the object of research, not experienced. It is reduced so that it makes sense. Integral movement, for example, can be reduced to physiology. Push Hands is reduced to body mechanics.

Green
The world is harmony
Pluralistic, multicultural. Diversity is valued as such.

The western adoption of Yoga, Taiji, Shiatsu etc. could only thrive on green soil and thus support the opening to subtle levels of being. Harmony between the many folds is important. This can give rise to an addiction to harmony and lead to a superficial understanding of harmony in which the individual disappears into the collective: "We are all human beings. Everything is one." This is true, but Green likes to use it in a reductionist way. Individuals are not necessarily valued (except for peace-loving people such as gurus, Nelson Mandela, Francis of Assisi, etc.). Pacifist. Perceives a confrontation as an attack. Is the victim and needs perpetrators. Cannot deal with conflict. This has to do with the fact that although the value of diversity is recognized, it cannot yet be brought into a big, coherent picture. So you simply glue all the individual folds together with the glue of harmony.
As an entire generation that experienced green for the first time, green was the era of the softies. Flower power and hippies. Every first departure shows extreme forms that cannot be considered a healthy benchmark for later development. Young people passing through the green level today are very warm and vulnerable at the same time. Since they are open, they need harmony. At later levels, they will learn to remain open even in conflicts if they have not been traumatized at the green level but have been able to experience openness as a positive quality. It's like learning to surf: first we learn to stand on a surfboard on the beach, then in calm water, then in small waves, then in big waves. In terms of the Köbi dynamic, all previous levels were dedicated to centering (and therefore also, in an unhealthy form, to overestimating oneself). Now, with green, opening unfolds.

Martial arts: We are peace-loving and do not pick up a sword. We do gentle push hands without confrontation. The common flow in and out of the heart is all it takes. Greens don't dare to push. They don't want to attack or hurt. Softie push hands, floating push hands of everlasting harmony. If they then learn to push, a lot of fun can develop, as pushing can also be liberating.

Yellow
Learn to wield the sword. Learn not to use it

We recognize the value of the whole and thus of all other stages of development. We can integrate them into a coherent whole. There is a certain stress factor, because by recognizing the stages of development we also recognize the need for humanity to develop quickly at the moment.
The Köbi dynamic shows that expansion is now happening. Things are starting to move.

Martial arts: We can accept and integrate other arts, techniques, schools and perspectives. Maybe we can't handle it yet, but we are learning. We recognize the value of different styles, different people for our growth. Push Hands is an ideal learning ground for this. We accept what comes and learn. We integrate different perspectives into a coherent whole, including traditions and new Western insights.
The most important teacher is myself, i.e. my higher self, to which I have a constant connection. This does not make me an egocentric, but a self-responsible person.

Turquoise
Consciously promoting and using intersubjective potential, collective intelligence. Infinity Games

Now the actual encounter takes place in the Köbi dynamic.

Martial arts: We create a common center that enables dynamic harmony. We create a learning field in which we both learn. Martial arts is a common learning field to achieve something that is more than the sum of the two partners.

FROM PUSH HANDS TO OPEN HANDS

We have now looked at a brief history of martial arts. However, this history is not in the past, it is still happening in its entirety. From red to turquoise (and beyond) it is happening right now. Right now, every level is embodied somewhere in the world. You can meet representatives of all planes when you attend a Push Hands class. Friendly, rational people can mutate into strange, irrational beings when they do Push Hands. That may seem a bit of an exaggeration. But it's not.

I had a key experience when I was looking more closely at the issue of push-setting. My wife, with whom I had started pushing at the time and who had always really liked push hands, had come to an open exercise group. After the lesson she said to me: "I no longer need to be pushed around so hard and inappropriately, in an undifferentiated and unclear way. It takes the joy out of pushing. Not like that anymore." (Small side note: I hadn't pushed with her during this session).

And it was true. She no longer needed it, I had noticed. Not because she was "better". But because after many years of doing the same thing, you're ready for another step. She had done this long ago, but she couldn't practise push hands at her level.

I keep saying that it helps to broaden the spectrum of interaction if you do push hands with as many people as possible. That is still true. However, the push setting also prevents this spectrum because it focuses so much on pushing. On pushing on a physical level with muscle power. Because, after all, you are in a competition. This can only be avoided by practising in a closed group in which everyone agrees that the focus is on the more subtle and essential areas and that competition is no longer an issue. However, this restricts the range of interactions because you only ever practise with the same partners.

Or you define a setting that either doesn't interest certain ("lower") levels at all or, and this is a great opportunity in our latitudes, uncovers the potential in the practitioners.

My wife's statement was just the last straw. Too often I had seen people who, initially enthusiastic, left push hands in frustration because they no longer wanted to be treated in the rudest and most inappropriate way.

In order for my wife to develop further, she doesn't need constant contact with representatives of the lower value levels, but with representatives of the same level and the levels above. So that many initially enthusiastic people don't turn away in frustration, they need the same setting.

Push Hands is good for levels red to orange. From green onwards, however, Push Hands no longer makes sense. Then Open Hands makes sense.

"Open hands" means that you meet with open hands, open arms and therefore simply openly and allow a natural dynamic to emerge from this encounter (meeting). From the outside, two people are still facing each other and will bump into each other. But the premise is different. It is no longer about competition and winning, it is about learning and learning.

We are centered and open and from there we make contact. This contact is unique, and when we are actually open and in contact (encounter), a natural dynamic will immediately begin to develop. This dynamic is unique. This is the step from Push Hands to Open Hands. It is the same and it is not. If you want to learn how to push someone as far away as quickly as possible, learn Push Hands. If you want to learn how to stay in contact in a relaxed and potentially dynamic way under all circumstances, learn Open Hands. If you want to learn how to defend yourself, learn Push Hands. If you want to learn how not to have to defend yourself, learn Open Hands.

Open Hands naturally encompasses all the "techniques" of Push Hands, and in it we practise all the principles such as structure, flexibility, intra- and interconnection, creativity and resonance, receptivity, adaptability; we practise the gestalt, the waveforms, the spiral; we practise the four expressions of relaxed power and relaxed strength, receptive relaxed power and receptive relaxed strength.

However, it does not stop at comprehension. The principles are continuously subtleized and essentialized. Open Hands offers a setting in which this subtletizing and essentializing is possible because it creates a learning field in which these two qualities are explicitly named instead of being ignored, forgotten or deliberately thrown overboard in a competitive setting.

There are no Open Hands schools, because Open Hands is an open game, an Infinity Game. A "school" always means a narrowing of the spectrum of interaction. Open Hands can appeal to people for whom other martial arts are too competitive or too technical. Practitioners of martial arts will find a form of interaction that allows them to differentiate the potential dynamic aspects of their own martial art in order to subsequently integrate them into their art. Practitioners of defensive arts such as Aikido find in it a vessel in which they can also cultivate and thus transcend attacking.

Of course, Open Hands is the joint realization of the integral dynamic. Any techniques that arise from this are only momentary consolidations based on a focus in the learning process. However, no techniques are taught from the outset. The Köbi dynamic (centering, opening, widening, encountering, integrating) is observed and felt, differentiated, integrated, subtle and essentialized. In free interaction, and this is where Open Hands always leads, there can be no prefabricated techniques. And there is no other goal than to bring the creative moment to full bloom in a shared exchange.

Now, something needs to be said about this right away, a counterweight needs to be set: We don't learn to encounter by being positive about it. "The art of meeting" may sound trite. Today there is an "art" for everything. But the term still helps us. Art is based on solid craftsmanship. Another word for craftsmanship is competence. We cultivate a wide range of skills through Open Hands. The competencies are the integral movement competencies that are subtleized and essentialized into the deepest/highest/most aspects of being. The skills do not rob the moment of magic, they enable it. If we do not dedicate ourselves to the skills, and therefore to the craft, and therefore to the techniques, we narrow our range of movement and interaction and do not allow it to unfold. There is a tendency to forget the skills, whether of magic or of the personal, cultural, intercultural and political dimensions that Open Hands can take on. Let's not do that. Everything needs a foundation of competence.

So we are taking the step from the struggle for survival (even if it is only the survival of the ego) to the cultivation of the quality of encounter, to genuine dialog. This is something that will become extremely important in our increasingly networked world and is still lacking in every nook and cranny. After all, what good is networking if we can't really meet each other?

Now it's just a small step to Open Hands. Open Hands does not separate, does not leave a winner and a loser, but two people who have learned something together and from each other because they have met. Open Hands unites and is never over. Open Hands United is not a new style, not a new method, not a new school, not a religion. It is a setting for a new level. Open Hands United is the simplest possible setting that allows us to practise and learn in a targeted, essential and potentially dynamic way. There are no tournaments and no ranks. The only goal is the constant learning process. A continuously differentiating and integrating process. This setting can be adopted by all Push Hands practitioners who wish to do so. Events can thus be given a clearer direction, the "survivors" either allow themselves to be transformed or are not attracted to the setting at all.

The result is people who cultivate encounters. Who learn to meet each other. Openly and unconditionally, without having to create a superficial illusory harmony and then make sure that no one disturbs it. We learn to meet people we don't like openly and unreservedly. Whose views contradict our own. We are open to learning, but at the same time we have our center, our point of view. A point of view that enables a flow. And we are prepared to defend it without violence. We can set ourselves apart without rejecting.

Other important keywords in connection with Open Hand are play, peace-building, intercultural exchange, conflict resolution, dialog competence; initiating, promoting and consolidating relationships, understanding oneself and others, promoting the free flow of interaction, working together, learning together.

Just as integral movement arose from the need to create an optimal learning environment for movement, Open Hands arose from the need to create an optimal learning environment for integral encounters. Just as integral movement does not reinvent the wheel of movement, but explores and differentiates it in new ways, Open Hands United does not reinvent the wheel of encounter, but offers a new field of research and new research equipment, new growth - and thus new insights.

Open Hands: The setting

We practise
being centered and staying centered
being open and remaining open
getting in touch and staying in touch
meeting each other and staying in contact
to act integrating and to be integrating

This is how we start a dynamic.
This is how we start a dialog.
This is how we start an Infinite Game.