The 9 Bend Pearls is a principle that is taught after one is able to perform the other principles that come before it.

In particular, the practitioner must have achieved the requirements of Song, San, Tong, Kong. These four keys are taught on the first day so one must assiduously cultivate them over the years until a breakthrough is achieved.

At this stage you will then have a physical understanding of what Song, San, Tong, Kong actually mean and feel like when practicing the 22-form. The next step would be to slowly transfer this skill to the practice of push hands.

When Song, San, Tong, Kong is activated together with whole body expansion (like a balloon that is being filled with air) that’s when you add in the 9 Bend Pearls.

To train the 9 Bend Pearls you imagine this energy line moving through your body from the ground up right to your wrist. As you can well imagine there are nine points to channel the energy through, namely from the ground up through the ankle, the knee, the crotch, waist, centre pearl, source strength point, shoulder, elbow and wrist, then out into the target.

In practice you activate the 9 Bend Pearls right at the end of a technique. When you do so you can feel the entire body filling up with energy, expanding out, and using the Small Chi Sphere you can issue the force out (one example of fajing) and into the opponent’s body.

At the end of the power generation you relax and grasp back the Small Chi Sphere. You perform this internally so someone looking at you will not be able to see you doing fajing and then loosening the body after that.

In the beginning you might train to move the ankle pearl first, and then the knee pearl and so on until the wrist pearl. However, this is not correct.

You actually activate all nine pearls at the same time. You do this by activating the process from the centre pearl (that’s the 5th pearl). Think of it as a water hose being filled out quickly with water, which will cause the limp hose to do a whip-like motion in response to being filled out with water.

When you activate the 9 Bend Pearls the energy line running through your body will act in a similar manner. If you place your palm on your training partner’s body he will feel as if you are a balloon inflating very rapidly.