By Jakub Hlavaty from Plzen, Czech Republic (Pushing hands (tui shou)) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The martial school I am part of practices push hands fairly regularly. We are familiar with the pushing hands conventions for taiji, bagua, liuhebafa, and weng chun. But the most advanced form is freestyle, where we help each other come out with the techniques we learned in the form. It's not fighting, but it's a useful drill to develop sensitivity and good sense when it comes to body placement.
I personally try to get ideas about how to move in push hands from a lot of sources. As far as I'm concerned it's all the same so long as I keep to the basic foundations of my school. I've got books and articles on taiji, and I use my previous experience with xingyi to add some surprises to my repertoire. I've found that with this kind of work getting a different point of view on the thing can open me up to big insights.
Right now I'm learning a lot from boxing. I'd earlier posted about stuff I found regarding Mayweather's defensive tricks; recently I also found Jack Slack's Fightland articles and one really stood out to me: the one about Manny Pacquiao's offensive mind games. I am really seeing parallels with xingyi and I am most certainly going to use the material on my next session with my teacher.
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