Consider what Master Hwa is doing as the following paraphrase and analogy of his arm as "belt" moved from center. “Neijia” v. "Waijia” ; whether quarter, half, upper body turn: “It is known and practiced by all competent golfers, tennis players, etc. The strength and mass of the body is in its center, so it makes sense to begin and control motion at the waist. Consider this illustration. Hold one end of a long belt in one hand. Imagine that end to be the center of a circle, with a radius equal to the length of the belt. If you try to describe the periphery of the circle by using your other hand to move the free end of the belt, your efforts will be slow and awkward. However, if you leave one end to swing free, and merely flip the wrist of the hand holding the “center” end, the belt will swing around and around, smoothly and with great speed. Beginning at the center; returning to the center. Tai Chi is basically a conservative philosophy of motion. Conservative as in conservation. One of the priorities is simply to endure - energy flows in circles, always returning, never exhausted. This is a kind of thinking that we are beginning to understand as we foresee that in the future we may have exhausted the world’s once “inexhaustible” energy reserves. Tai Chi is also recycling of energy - and it demonstrates that for each of us our bodies can be a microcosm of the whole physical universe."
Lui, H. H.; Horwitz, Tem; Kimmelman, Susan. Tai Chi Chuan: The Technique of Power (Chinese Taoist Texts) . Cloud Hands Press. Kindle Edition.
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