Years ago I was shown (I forget by who) that there is no waving of hands in “wave hands like clouds” and I thought “Oh, that’s cool” and now I just had to concentrate on making sure the hands were in the right place at the beginning of each repetition. This significant change allowed me to relax a lot more which resulted in a dropping of the lower back which elongated the spine which amplified my awareness of Qi flow.

I soon expanded the concept to all my forms and practiced allowing the arms to naturally follow the turning of the torso until it was time for the hands to float into place. Once I had totally integrated this concept I immediately felt my forms were much more graceful and I started hearing comments like “it looks like he’s floating”.

I was so pleased with the results that I whole heartedly embraced this concept and started using the phrase “less is more” when teaching students the forms.

I often use brush knee and repulse monkey when teaching this concept, as most students really like to wave their arms around when performing these particular forms.

Invariably after showing them how much more efficient and graceful these forms look when incorporating “less is more” they soon change their ways and “wave hands like clouds” becomes just “cloud hands”.

Peace
Rod