INTERACTIVE TAI CHI CHUAN ( Taijiquan ) is a lot like dancing with a partner - only badly. It involves training your external energy body along with your internal one. Sensitivity, flexibility, coordination and a great deal of skill are required to move smoothly and effectively with someone else, even when they are trying to cooperate. Interactive Tai Chi Chuan, however, adds the dimension that someone you may end up dancing with might have an intention that is not in your best interests: like dropping you on your head, hitting you very hard or using physical or psychological intimidation to make you do something you don't want to. So instead you convert their bad intention to hurt you into them hurting themselves.
Interactive Tai Chi is divided under two main traditional headings: "Tui Shou" and "San Shou":.
TUI SHOU (literally translating something like "Hands Attaching") refers to activities where a continuous physical contact between partners occurs: such as in wrestling, grappling, ballroom dancing, etc. Tui Shou training begins with rudimentary 2-person exercises, generally referred to as "Push Hands". As a student advances, he/she trains a variety of fighting techniques similar to, but different qualitatively from, other grappling arts such as Aikido, Jiu Jitsu and Judo. However all techniques are trained with the ideal of "effortless power" in mind.
SAN SHOU (translating something like "Free Hands") on the other hand refers to interaction where physical contact is usually brief but intense: such as in boxing, kick boxing, most rock and roll, etc., but where energetic connection is continuous and unbroken. In Tai Chi San Shou training may be done with a bag, a training partner doing fixed sequences of strikes and defenses, or through different levels of "free play" or "sparring". A traditional formal San Shou Form or Set (basically a Tai Chi solo form, but where the movements of your form are complementary to and coordinated with the movements of the form your partner will be doing) and shorter choreographed routines called Da Lu ( Ta Lu ) are taught and trained. Other routines and drills are learned designed to develop particular free form interactive skills. Supervised free sparring or "free play" may be engaged in as you are ready, at levels appropriate to the individual.
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