How the arms physically spiral inward:

This is an attempt to answer Robert’s question about how the hand relates to the rest of the arm. I posted on this before but I’m clearer now so maybe this post will make a little more sense.

Hopefully you read my post, “Spiraling Defined”, because I’m going to use a lot of the terminology here.

We still need to define directions. “In” will mean toward the lower tan tien. Out is away from the lower tan tien. Rotating the hand inward will mean rotating the palm facing up to the palm facing down. Twisting the hand in will mean that we are trying to move pressure, energy, our mind in from the fingers toward the wrist joint while the hand rotates in (palm facing up to palm facing down).

The hand is a single segment (we can get more granular but I want to keep this as simple as possible). When you spiral this segment, whatever is moving back toward the joint should go into the wrist’s synovial fluid. That changes the radius of the felt rotation. It is all a smooth continuous spiraling movement.

The next segment is the forearm. Continue the movement in from the finger tips to the wrist joint to the elbow joint. The soft tissue in the forearm starts to twist as soon as the hand twists. They are kind of a matched pair. You can’t mistake this. It is exactly what you see and is one of the most obvious examples of connectedness. The pressure in the wrist joint should transfer to the elbow. Bruce calls this “referred” pressure. This is another example of connectedness.

From the elbow you are moving back toward the shoulder’s nest. The rotation really comes from the shoulder muscles. You should start bending the arm on a closing action which is exactly what we are doing here. So…start bending the arm at the elbow as the pressure/energy/mind spirals into the elbow joint. Note the spiraling into the wrist joint continues as well. As the arm bends it should move in toward the torso. The arm is moving into a position like it is in a sling. The bicep muscles should move, but I feel like the physical movement is coming from the shoulder’s muscles and tendons. This will be important to understand when you try to relate all of the movement to the legs.

To spiral into the shoulder’s nest you need three rotations. The first is the rotation of the arm into the sling-position I just described. The second is a rotation like pumping your arms when running. The elbow is swinging down toward the torso and can continue behind you. The last is the rotation that Bruce shows as wrapping. Because we are closing into the shoulder’s nest, you’ll want to pull the shoulder blade back toward the spine. If that doesn’t create referred pressure into the body, you are either completely numb or dead.

Again, everything is done as one smooth continuous motion. If you are successful, you are now able to access the side channel. You’ll want to train this for a while until it is smooth and easily done. Then start figuring out how the foot goes back to the kwa in exactly the same way. I’ll try to describe that in another post.