You have a length of water hose that is connected to a tap.

You dangle 10 inches of the end of the hose over a wall. You use a clamp to hold the hose down on the wall. The end of the hose is hanging down.

You turn on the tap to let the water out and observe the effect of the flow of water on the end of the hose.

If you turn on the tap a bit then the small amount of water flowing out will barely affect the dangling hose.

Keep on turning the tap and observe how much water needs to be flowing to make the hose want to straighten. Probably quite a lot of water needs to be flowing, practically gushing out, to cause the hose to want to straighten.

I use this analogy to explain the principle behind the Elongated Wrist which is a good principle to learn first to understand what our Yang style Tai Chi is about.

At first glance, the Elongated Wrist just looks like keeping the hand-wrist straight. However, the principle behind the Elongated Wrist is to minimize the amount of tension at the wrist that prevents us from letting our energetic force out from the ground, through the body, and via the arm to exit through the wrist to the hand.

To be continued……