Lifting or Withdrawing the Three Gates”（三關領起）（三關後撤）
Lifting the three gates”（三關領起）or “withdrawing the three gates”（三關後撤）at Baihui（百會）or Huiyin（會陰）
What you describe can plausibly involve changes in alignment（身體排列）, muscle coordination（肌肉協調）, and the direction of force（力線）. But “the partner cannot press me down” and “I cannot squat or rise” are conditional effects—not universal consequences of placing attention at Baihui（百會）or Huiyin（會陰）.
The important question is whether the posture provides adaptable support（靈活支撐） or simply becomes fixed（僵定）.
I am interpreting your description as meaning that the practitioner becomes difficult to press or pull, but also finds their own movement restricted. Without seeing the demonstration, the explanations below remain hypotheses.
1. What are the “three gates”（三關）?
In the traditional usage relevant here, they are:
| Gate | Approximate body region |
|---|
| Upper gate（玉枕關） | Back of the head |
| Middle gate（夾脊關） | Mid-back, along the spine |
| Lower gate（尾閭關） | Sacral and coccygeal region |
Gu Liuxin’s discussion of the three gates describes a gently lifted crown（百會虛領）together with downward settling（鬆沉）. These are complementary qualities, rather than mutually exclusive upward and downward states. However, your teacher’s particular meaning of “lifting the three gates”（三關領起）or “withdrawing the three gates”（三關後撤）needs to be distinguished from this broader traditional terminology. 太极网
2. Why might lifting toward Baihui（意在百會）make downward pressure harder—but also make squatting difficult?
A plausible explanation has two parts.
First, alignment can improve load-bearing（排列改善承重）. If the downward force passes close to the supporting joints and remains within the base of support（支撐面）, it produces less tendency to bend or topple the body. The legs and trunk can then support the load more effectively.
The partner may feel that their pressure “goes into the ground”（力傳入地）. Mechanically, the body transmits the load to the floor, and the floor supplies a corresponding ground reaction force（地面反作用力）. The force has not disappeared.
Second, the practitioner may preserve that alignment by bracing（固定支撐）. If the instruction to “lift” causes the hips and knees to remain extended, or opposing muscles to contract together（共同收縮）, beginning a squat becomes harder. Squatting requires the ankles, knees, and hips to change their angles while balance is maintained.
Thus, being hard to compress and being unable to squat may come from the same temporarily fixed coordination pattern. This does not establish that attention at Baihui itself prevents squatting.
A well-coordinated practitioner should be able to retain a gently suspended crown（頂頭懸）while bending the hips and knees. Uprightness（中正）does not require straight, locked legs.
3. Why might withdrawing and sinking toward Huiyin（後撤、意沉會陰）make standing up difficult?
If withdrawing the body shifts the pelvis backward, the practitioner may find it difficult to bring the body’s centre of mass（重心）into a position from which the legs can lift it.
This is especially clear in rising from a chair: the body normally develops forward and upward movement, with coordinated changes in the trunk and lower limbs. Research shows that the initial relationship between the hips and feet, and the coordination of these segments, affect the movement. This supports a mechanical explanation, but it does not directly test your teacher’s Huiyin exercise. PMC
If the person insists on keeping the pelvis back and maintaining an unchanging downward intention, they may inhibit the transition needed to rise.
“Sinking”（沉）should therefore be distinguished from “remaining stuck below”（滯於下）. The ability to settle is useful; losing the ability to change is a limitation.
4. Why might the partner become unable to pluck the elbow（採肘）?
Several different mechanisms could produce that impression:
- Whole-body connection（周身貫串）: The elbow is supported by the trunk and legs, so the partner is no longer moving an isolated arm.
- A changed pulling angle（牽引角度改變）: A small change in the shoulder, torso, or elbow position may reduce the partner’s leverage.
- Following and neutralizing（隨勢走化）: The elbow and body move with the pull, preventing the partner from establishing a useful fixed point.
- Bracing（僵持）: The practitioner resists successfully in that particular direction but becomes less able to move elsewhere.
These can feel similar in a brief demonstration. The distinction is whether the practitioner can still turn, step, rise, and sink when the partner changes direction.
Without knowing where the partner holds the elbow and which way they apply Cai（採）, it would be too strong to attribute the result specifically to Huiyin or the three gates.
5. What do the Tai Chi classics actually support?
The classics support coordinated uprightness, settling, and changeability. They do not, in the passages I checked, establish the exact rule “attention at Baihui prevents squatting; attention at Huiyin prevents rising.”
| Classical passage | Meaning relevant to your question |
|---|
| 「虛領頂勁，氣沉丹田」 — Tai Chi Treatise（《太極拳論》） | The crown is lightly suspended while the lower body settles. Both qualities coexist. The text says dantian（丹田）, which should not automatically be replaced with Huiyin（會陰）. |
| 「立如平準，活似車輪」 — Tai Chi Treatise | Stability should coexist with the freedom to turn and respond. |
| 「立身須中正安舒，支撐八面」 — Insights into the Practice of the Thirteen Postures（《十三勢行功心解》） | Uprightness includes ease and support in multiple directions, rather than resistance to only one predetermined force. |
| 「意氣須換得靈，乃有圓活之趣」 — the same text | Intention and internal coordination must change readily; remaining fixed in “up” or “down” misses this quality. |
These passages provide a traditional framework for interpreting the exercise, rather than experimental proof of its proposed mechanism. ftcca.org.tw
Yang Chengfu’s Ten Essentials（《太極拳十要》）also explicitly cautions against using force to hold up the head: 「不可用力，用力則項強」—do not force it, because doing so makes the neck stiff. This supports understanding “lifting”（領）as a light organizing cue, rather than forceful upward bracing. ct-taichi.org.tw
My interpretation is that the exercise may demonstrate how intention changes bodily organization（意念改變身體組織方式）. Its greater teaching value would be learning to move between those organizations without becoming trapped in either.
For your push-hands teaching, I would express the principle this way:
Let the crown rise lightly while the body settles; maintain support without losing the freedom to change.（頂領身沉，支撐而不失變化。）
That is my teaching formulation, not a quotation from a classic. If a posture makes you difficult to move but also prevents you from moving yourself, it demonstrates stability under a constraint—not yet the full adaptability（圓活）that Tai Chi seeks.
Gu Liuxin 是顧留馨（1908–1990），中國近現代的太極拳研究者、武術家，曾向陳發科學習陳式太極拳。
他的重要著作包括《太極拳術》，並與唐豪合著《太極拳研究》，對太極拳的歷史、拳理及技術整理頗有影響。
我上一則提到的〈通三關備五弓〉，網頁署名為顧留馨。這屬於近現代拳理論述，應與《太極拳論》《十三勢行功心解》等傳統拳論分開看待。