The Kwa is Little Understood

Very few people seem to really understand how the kwa works. I remember back when I first started working on the basic neigung sets, it never made sense to me. I still don’t think many people really get it. I started ranting about this in my post “Tip for Opening the Legs and Hips”. I re-read the post and realize that I didn’t contribute much to helping anyone. I basically defined part of the problem. Here’s another attempt to help you get this faster than I did.

Until you really can control the cavity in the kwa, don’t try to close and open it. Instead, fold it. The goal is to have the leg, kwa, and waist work as one unit. So, initially they are three independent pieces. If you can twist your tan tien and open it at the same time, you can create a spiral in and out of the tan tien through the kwa and down the leg that will unify these three pieces into a single powerful spiral. Once you’ve done that, you are well on your way to developing real internal power. Until then, you fumble around for a long time.

Since you probably can’t do this, try the following: treat your torso like a big cylinder that turns and let it roll into the kwa. That’s your close. Reverse the direction and rotate the leg and torso in opposite directions, that’s your open. The shoulder’s nest works exactly the same way. The chest rolls into the fold. Follow the curve of your ribs into the shoulder’s nest. Here’s the real trick: you have to make room for it. Everyone just jambs their body into these folds until they cut off their circulation. The problem is they don’t know how to make more room. You can’t completely close down anything in the body otherwise you get stuck and your mind gaps and there is no chance for internal power.

So how do you make this room?

You create the space by lengthening the arm and leg out as you are rolling the body into the folds (closing). The best way to lengthen out is by combining a twist with a lengthening; you spiral the tissue. So, in the single palm change this is how you create a strong block while ko’ing inward. The arms are twisting in but you are lengthening the arm out so the tissue isn’t getting jambed in the fold. I’m sure everyone has seen Bruce hollow the shoulder’s nest. I don’t know if anyone realizes he’s creating space by moving the soft tissue out of that area.

This is also how the top opens the bottom and the bottom opens the top. This cryptic phrase just means that either the kwa or the shoulder’s nest can limit how much your torso can roll into the fold. At first, you start with the arms and try to create space in the shoulder’s nest. At some point you’ve gone as far as you can and the kwa is actually preventing your body from rolling into the fold more. The leg has to be lengthened more to allow the torso to turn more. You work that out and then the shoulder’s nest is limiting your turn again. Eventually you’ll get the whole body spiral that we’re supposed to be doing and it starts to get really obvious how to prevent any binding no matter how contorted the arm and leg positions get.

This same principle applies to circle walking. At some point you’ll have to straighten the arms out further in order to turn toward the center of your circle more when you are practicing circle walking. The trick is that the extension will create additional room for deeper twisting.

What I’m describing can easily increase the torque of your twisting by a factor of 10 to 100 times. This significantly increases the possibility of ripping your body apart in very bad ways if you do it wrong. So go easy and slow. This took me a long, long time to figure out. Treat the information with respect and be safe.