Tag Archives: Small-Chi-Sphere

Strength Source

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Related to the principles of Elongated Wrist, Small Chi Sphere and Opening-Closing is that of Strength Source.

In Yang-22 there are two Strength Source which I shall term as Strength Source (Back) and Strength Source (Palm).

Beginners learn to use the Strength Source (Back) until such time when their proficiency in the control of the Small Chi Sphere enables them to use the Strength Source (Palm) instead.

For combative applications the Strength Source (Palm) is used because it resides in the hand and thus can be used to impart a force into the opponent’s body in the fastest time, given the shorter distance from hand to target.

By comparison, the use of Strength Source (Back) would take a longer time to move the power from the back to target. This is why the Strength Source (Back) is for training the power rather than for combative applications.

In the study of Strength Source you must first achieve the Elongated Wrist without which your power cannot pass through the Wrist Pearl to the hand.

You then need to practice the control of the Small Chi Sphere a lot, in particular the action of inserting the Small Chi Sphere into the Shoulder Chi Ring. Later you should learn to dissipate the Small Chi Sphere across space to an imaginary dot in space.

To train the Strength Source (Back) pay attention to the practice of the principle of Opening-Closing. The opening and closing of your back is like a bellows expanding and contracting to pump air.

Elongated Wrist 2

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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

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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

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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.