In GM Wei’s Tai Chi there is a practice which involves two contra spirals when mobilizing the arm to strike.
The principle of contra spirals can be likened to hand wringing water from a wet cloth. You wring the cloth by turning the cloth in a clockwise direction in one hand while the other hand twists in the opposite direction. This will produce two spirals turning in opposite directions.
We adopt this principle of two spirals to rotate the arm to boost its power. Since our arm is not a flexible as cloth we cannot emulate the wringing motion exactly.
However, rotating the straight punch by the example of cloth wringing can produce two contra spirals. Its just a matter of trial and error to work this out and put it into practice.
My Kung Fu Chatter 
Hello Mushin,
this is very interesting. So far I noticed that some of GM Wei’s Neigong principles use spiraling (e.g. 手走螺旋内功), but I thought it is more mental, not physical.
But the spiraling you are refering to has a physical component, too, right?
Then this would be very close or even the same to what GM Chu King Hung is teaching as “arm spiral” or as “Qi form”. We went through the whole long form distinguishing between closing and opening for each arm movement. In addition, both closing and opening can spiral outward or inward depending on the overall direction of the arm movement.
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Gunnar, the contra spirals in GM Wei’s Tai Chi is a combination of mental and physical. You can’t see the mental and we pare down the physical movements until its like there is little obvious spiral apart from the body’s natural rotations.
However, if I were to try to teach this principle this way it will be a long time before a beginner can get the hang of it, much less make it become part of him enough for him to use it. Learning something this way defeats the purpose of picking up a useful skill for self defence.
Plus, the fact that the type of force trained in Tai Chi does not easily lend itself to testing on hitting an object makes it difficult to get instant feedbacks to know if one is doing it right or wrong.
However, if I change it to more physical than mental practice then the force characteristic changes and now it is easy to get feedback from hitting something. Being able to see and feel is good for learning confidence. In this way, it no longer takes many years to get to a level of competence.
The way I see it the method does not matter. The lineage, the style is irrelevant. Knowing where it comes from is good but if it does not lead to result then this knowing is just so much theory.
Methods are all means to an end. If you can do it some way that gets results then good. If not, then back to the drawing board.
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Hi Mushin,thanks a lot for your feedback, that’s very appreciated!
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Hi Mushin,
thanks a lot for your feedback, that’s very appreciated!
I like your target-oriented approach detached from the standard
methods/thinking.
Best regards
Gunnar
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