Tag Archives: Small-Chi-Sphere

Elongated Wrist 2

Posted on by
1

Place a long hose on the ground. The hose is curled.

Next, connect the long hose to a tap. Now turn on the tap a little. The water comes out through the hose which is still curled.

If you turn on the tap to the maximum, the water will surge out strongly, straightening the hose. This is basically what the training of the Elongated Wrist does. It turns on the energy from your body out through the wrist, onwards to the hand and towards the target area.

Sometimes people ask me how does one do a palm strike with a straightened wrist. You can’t. When you strike with an open palm, your wrist will naturally bend. But the energy is still flowing through the wrist.

This is why a palm strike may look like a light slap but the struck opponent seems to be hit by a disproportionate larger force. Without the Elongated Wrist training a light slap is just a light slap.

Train the Elongated Wrist until you feel as if you no longer have a wrist. Then keep training until even if you bend your wrist the energy flow is still there.

Small Chi Sphere

Posted on by
1

In Yang-22 we use three hand shapes namely the open palm, fist and hook.

What the three hand shapes have in common is the Small Chi Sphere. This is an imaginary nebulous sphere conjured by our intent.

At the most basic level, we use the Small Chi Sphere to help form the shape of the open palm, fist and hook. For example, when our hand is opened up, it is as if we are holding an imaginary sphere i.e. the Small Chi Sphere.

Similarly, when our hand is forming a fist we are squeezing a much smaller sized Small Chi Sphere between the curled up fingers. As for the hook, it is as if our fingers are pinching a marble sized Small Chi Sphere.

The size of the Small Chi Sphere depends on the hand formation. When you change from open palm to fist or open palm to hook, and vice versa, the Small Chi Sphere will expand or contract depending on which hand formation you are changing to.

For example, if you are changing from open palm to fist then the Small Chi Sphere will contract to a smaller size. Your open palm accordingly follows the contracting Small Chi Sphere by curling your fingers to become a fist.

Practiced this way, we have a balance of physical (external) and non-physical (internal). However, our definition is not internal as within our body but internal as in our mind. The use of intent allows our body to interact with what is outside our body. Thus, our internal is unlike the typical definition of internal.

Elongated Wrist

Posted on by
1

On the surface, the Elongated Wrist resembles the well known Fair Maiden’s Hand of the Cheng Man Ching Tai Chi style.

However, our Elongated Wrist has a lot more within its practice than the Fair Maiden’s Hand. I had learned the Cheng Man Ching style more than a decade before I started with Yang-22. I do not remember my teacher ever teaching anything more to the Fair Maiden’s Hand.

On the other hand, there’s a ton of stuff within the Yang-22 usage of the hand. They all begin with the Elongated Wrist.

The principle behind the Elonaged Wrist calls for us to stretch open the wrist joint. Yup, to elongate the wrist is not just a matter of relaxing the wrist and posing with a straight, loosened wrist. Instead, we have to stretch the wrist to straighten it.

On top of straightening the wrist, we also need to straighten the hand and stretch out the fingers. As if this is not complicated enough, we are required to add on the use of intent to imagine that we are grasping a Small Chi Sphere.

This is only the beginning. There are a few more things to this Small Chi Sphere which for the moment we will not go into.

The Elongated Wrist sounds pretty simple to practice, right?

If you do a survey of the videos that are out there on the internet of fellow practitioners of Yang-22, you will notice that it is the rare practitioner who is able to keep a proper Elongated Wrist throughout their performance of the entire form.

Coming from the Dong style variant of Yang Tai Chi I too had a problem adhering to the Elongated Wrist principle. It took me a long time to nail it down.

The Elongated Wrist is one of the key components in the process of fajing. If you want to nail the Yang-22 method of fajing, then you really need to master this principle.