In some instances, there have been personal misfortunes to push hands or sparring with advanced practitioners or even teachers who fulfilled the aggrandizement of their egos by physically hurting someone. When one pushes hands with a less advanced student, one can easily sense the point of weakness and imbalance and gently move them off balance to make a point. One does not need to hurt a student for them to learn. So, a student can very well feel that their balance is teetering and get the point. In the same token, one can also be an experienced practitioner and still learn. For instance, this student never did 3-dimensional push hands till meeting Master Hwa. There was confidence and trust in him not to send a student flying, so one relaxes to "sense" what he was doing, and in that instance, I learned how to do it myself.
If the lesson involves an application like "White Crane" or "Repulse Monkey," for example, the student can gently be guided to the ground instead of being dropped from a distance. In freestyle push hands sparring, many good partners would put on the ground by doing it gently. It is a tremendous leap of logic for some to understand that the "one-inch punch" does not even need the "inch." It can be done much as in push hands when one is in contact with the opponent. So it does not require an inch of distance and can be quite a shock, so one does not use it in sparring to protect the partner. One gets even more effective when executing a joint lock, and there is no need to hurt. Do not boost one's ego by using it to throw a student across the room when one knows very well it could happen with a slight twitch.
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