[ben]

I'm going to copy and paste from a gchat conversation I had with Qiang about the wrapping/spiraling through the joints... Would love to hear anyone else's take on this.

me: ok, so when you say you're trying to spiral through the joints... lets say I'm doing absorb project... I mean the wrist is essentially a hinge joint, so are you just thinking "absorb the yin", then the same thing on the elbow all the way down?
down to the feet, which are wrapping

Johnny: yeah, I'm thinking of absorbing on the yin, but I'm also trying to feel how certain rotations affect the absorb/project feel. Like rotating the radius/ulna and humerus. Going one way makes the wrapping of the pinky back to the dantian feel stronger, and going another way makes the connection to the mingmen feel better. Does that make sense?
me: I think so, for the upper body. how do you do that in the lower body? especially knees hips.

me: and just to be clear, you're saying (for instance) if you frontally rotate the shoulders when you absorb, it helps keep the 13 pts.

Johnny: I've been working at it from the knees and ankle. Remember sifu showed moving the lower leg clockwise and counter clockwise to generate different spirals up?
right, frontal rotation of the shoulders, though you also have a small range of sagittal motion at the shoulders.

me: saggital going back to absorb
and about the knees and ankles, I don't think I really understood it. I remember him saying it, but the knee is a hinge joint.
it only moves in one way.
hence my confusion.

Johnny: The knee is technically a hinge joint, but it does have a limited range of motion off the hinge direction.
Plus you can move up to the hips to generate the turning motion.
(i.e. involve the upper leg too)

me: ok, so for instance, when I wrap the feet, that means i'm always wrapping the right foot clockwise, left foot counter. if I am spiralling out, that means thatthe ankles are moving slightly in the horizontal plane inthe same direction as the wrapping? same with hips?

Johnny: The ankles don't have to move out the same direction was the feet wrapping.
If you can move the lower leg in two different direction circles, the ankles can wrap both directions.

me: ok, I understand that the ankles don't have to move in the same direction, but what I'm asking is, if you're trying to spiral up the outside, then do the ankles move in the same direction? and does the center of the ankle actually move, or does the circle just rotate?

Johnny: I think of the center of the ankle as actually moving. I'm not sure how you could just rotate the center of the ankle.
The shin bone is circling, so how the direction the weight drops through the lower leg into the ankle and to the feet is changing.

me: ok, so now I'm getting somewhere. so the foot wraps, the ankle moves in a horizontal circle either the same as the wrapping or opposite it. the knee "adjusts" even though its a hinge joint, and then the hip kind of drives/lines up the movement (though the hip cannot move horizontally, correct?) to line up the lower/upper body.
?

Johnny: You can move the hips horizontally by using open and close and a little bit of weight shift between the legs. Yeah, but I think you're right, the hips are transferring the force from the legs up to the torso.