Pushing Hands and ‘’Eyes Wide Shut’’

“Kevin, please  tell us why you have such poor eye contact.”  They asked me this at a Job Interview, in California, during the 1970s, the era of the Human Potential movement. The job was as Live-in Counselor for Emotionally Disturbed Adolescents, and I had just learned from the Interviewers that their approach was based upon the mechanistic Stick-and-Carrot approach, the Stimulus-Response system of Skinner, with the adolescents´ daily actions being evaluated and scored, with consistent/continuous CONSEQUENCES.  Minutes before, I had decided that I did not feel rapport with these folks, and their competitive use of eyeballs felt like arm-wrestling. So…it was an easy Hello-Goodbye Job  Interview.

By contrast, consider:
* sitting with friends and talking around a campfire at night, beneath the stars, as in John Denver’s song Rocky Mountain High
* Chinese Dao-inspired paintings, in which the humans are quite small, as they are part of a larger Circle of Nature—sky-mountain-river-trees-animals
* Pushing Hands with someone who is blind and/or with your own eyes closed.

At Helen Keller´s famed Alma Mater, Perkins School for the Blind, several decades ago I was a Volunteer Trainer in Pushing Hands and the exercises of Walking and Rowing. To empathize/equalize the process, I would typically close my own eyes. No one complained. I felt—and still do—that  Ting Jing (Listening Energy) can be greatly enhanced with  eyes closed. In China, and elsewhere in Asia, there are Massage Centers with blind professionals. There is a global network for Blind Massage Centers, called ´´Seeing Hands´´.

SEEING HANDS — that is a relevant metaphor for our goal in Pushing Hands, eh? Here are 2 videos of my Blind Pushing Hands classes in 2017 in San Cristobal de las Casas (SCLC), Chiapas, Mexico.

For a period, I made a base in SCLC because I thought it would be suitable for introducing Pushing Hands. On the walls, there are always posters of  music events and classes—Yoga/Reiki/Aromatherapy/Film-making/Afro-Cuban Dance/Puppetry/Enneagrams/Meditation/Shamanism/Sweat Lodges/ad infinitum. SCLC is visually exquisite, with a strong Mayan/Zapatista ambience, especially attracting (1) artisans/musicians from Latin America and beyond, and (2) Mexican tourists, especially on weekends. On the pedestrian-only Walking Street, folks earn income by selling  their crafts and playing their music for the tourists. There are 2 different residential Artist Cooperatives—one specializing in Visual Arts, and the other in Dance/Movement. Though it didn´t  develop in SCLC, that is my goal/intention/plan/Dharma—to develop a Cooperative for folks training in Pushing Hands.

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