At a higher level, stretching moves are changed to arching moves. Arching is really a way of extension without stopping the energy flow.Arching is more stable than stretching. However, arching creates less distance than stretching.
Some examples:
- When moving the arm back towards your body, don’t allow your front knee to move backwards. This way, you can extend your foot hand arching length.
- When pushing the front arm out, don’t allow your rear knee to move forward. This will make your rear foot-front arm stretch longer.
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Very interesting, I do have a question
would it be fair to say that arcing is a more refined way of stretching between 2 points?
2 points can be stretched in a number of ways, but with arcing, it is required to have a defined curvature in which that stretch needs to happen? Is this accurate to say this?
In arcing, I am assuming that the other joints involved must maintain this curvature along the stretch motion, otherwise, it reverts back to simply stretching 2 points away from each other (a form of tossing even though a stretch is present?).
Hi Anonymous,
There is a very interesting video on this web site that addresses your questions. It is called the “Taiji S-Line”. One of the things that it discusses is that a lever is a special case of the S-line. The lever involves the stretch (extension) of a straight line, and the S-line involves arching.
I hope this helps.
Gene