An ordinary body moves through its extremities. To push a door, the shoulder contracts and the arm extends; the torso may or may not follow, the pelvis does nothing, and the feet simply go along with it. This mechanism is effective for everyday movements and has no shortcomings as long as nothing else is required of it. It has two shortcomings as soon as more is demanded of it.
The first is loss of efficiency. The force produced locally by a single segment cannot exceed what that segment is capable of producing. A single arm produces what an arm produces. A whole body engaged in the same movement produces something else, and this difference is not of an athletic nature: it is organisational. It cannot be achieved by building up the arm’s muscle strength.
The second is wear and tear. A body that moves via its extremities overloads the distal joints and leaves the proximal joints inactive. Over a few decades, this produces precisely the clinical picture we are familiar with: painful shoulders, weak lower backs, stiff hips, and a core that has ceased to be mobile without anyone realising it, because nothing in everyday life requires it to be so.
The training described here tackles both issues simultaneously, through a single approach: restoring the body’s centre to its role as the driving force, and the periphery to its role as the transmission system. This is a complete reversal of the usual organisation of movement, which is why it cannot be achieved in a matter of weeks.
In the tradition from which it originates, it is known as ‘silk reeling’, or chan si gong. This name describes its outward form. What it actually works on is simpler to explain: the centre, and the way in which what the centre does is transmitted to the hands and feet.
The most functional location of the Dan Tian is not a point but an axis. The tradition describes it using two reference points facing each other: a point on the anterior abdominal wall, at the level of the navel or slightly below, and a point on the posterior wall, between the second and third lumbar vertebrae. The centre lies between the two. This dual location is not redundant: it defines a horizontal anteroposterior axis, around which rotation in the sagittal plane becomes conceivable. A single point would only allow rotation around a vertical axis.
Three clarifications immediately dispel the most common misunderstandings.
The centre is not an organ. It does not correspond to any isolatable anatomical structure, and attempting to locate it more precisely is a waste of time.
The centre is not a reservoir. The image of an energy reservoir that can be filled suggests that it exists independently of posture, which is not what the most precise tradition states.
The centre is a structural effect. This is the crucial point, and it is stated unambiguously: when all parts of the body are in their proper place, the core of the centre forms naturally; if a single part is not in the correct position, its formation is prevented. A raised shoulder, a blocked groin or a misaligned coccyx are enough to prevent it from existing.
This formulation has an immediate and liberating practical consequence: there is no work on the centre independent of work on alignment. One does not cultivate the centre in isolation, as one might train a muscle. One establishes a structure, and the centre emerges as its inherent property. This is a strictly anti-mystical position, and it stems from within the tradition itself.
Once formed, the centre functions in both directions. It is produced by the coordination of all the parts, and in turn drives the whole body, a single movement thereby producing many.
The centre does only one thing: it rotates. It rotates in three ways.
The first is rotation about the vertical axis. The pelvis and lower abdomen pivot to the left and right, like a key in a lock. This is the most accessible method and the one most often practised.
The second is rotation in the sagittal plane. The pelvis tilts forwards and backwards around the anteroposterior axis described above, as if a wheel were turning inside the abdomen. This mode is more difficult to isolate and is more easily confused with a movement of the lumbar spine, which it is not.
The third is a combination of the two. The centre then describes a circle, followed by a spiral. It is from this third mode that the rest of the training derives.
The range of these rotations is very small: a few centimetres at most, and much less for an advanced practitioner. The difficulty is never the range; it lies in producing the movement exactly where it is required, without the shoulders or the spine generating it in place of the pelvis.
Three forms of movement are possible between two points, and the choice of the third is not arbitrary.
The straight line is the form of raw intention. It goes from start to finish by the shortest route. It is effective, and it is perfectly predictable.
The circle is the form of return. It is complete and goes nowhere.
The spiral combines the two: it turns and it progresses; it returns without returning to the same point. It is the only one of the three that allows one to move forward whilst retaining the ability to withdraw.
This preference has a mechanical justification, a tactical justification and a philosophical justification, and it is best to distinguish between them.
The mechanical justification rests on three basic and sound points.
A force applied at a distance from an axis produces a torque, not a simple translational movement. A body pushing in a straight line from the shoulder applies a force. The same body, transmitting the same force via a rotation of the pelvis, applies a torque, the lever arm of which is the distance between the axis and the point of application. Hence a formula that has been passed down through tradition and is mechanically accurate: the circle need not be large; the force depends on the speed of rotation.
A propeller converts rotation into translation. This is the principle behind the screw, the drill bit and the auger, and the image is explicitly used in ancient texts, which describe the method of coiling as unfolding across the skin and flesh in the manner of a screw thread. A rotating contact produces a component of penetration that the same stationary contact does not produce.
A pre-stressed structure reacts more quickly and transmits force more effectively than a structure at rest. This is what is meant by the requirement to maintain a constant expansive force in all directions, and it is what distinguishes this training from slow-paced gymnastics.
The tactical justification follows from the first point. A spiralling force is difficult to neutralise: whoever offers resistance along one axis finds themselves bypassed along the other. The spiral operates in three ways depending on the encounter: as a whirling force, which causes the opposing structure to pivot about an axis; as a piercing force, which penetrates like a rifled projectile; and as a neutralising force, which absorbs and diverts towards the void.
The philosophical justification is that the spiral is the form of unforced processes. The seasons return without the year ever being the same. A principle and its opposite give rise to one another without ever repeating themselves identically. Tradition expresses this by saying that yin and yang are mutually rooted in one another, a phrase which, in the texts, immediately follows the listing of the types of coiling, which is no coincidence.
This latter justification has a very concrete practical significance, and that is why it must not be treated as mere ornamentation. A practitioner who forces the spiral, who deliberately amplifies the twist and seeks sensation, produces a stiff and fragmented caricature. A practitioner who allows it to emerge as a consequence of correct alignment achieves something that does not resemble an effort.
A moving limb simultaneously performs two distinct actions, which can be distinguished using astronomical terminology.
Proper rotation is the rotation of a segment about its longitudinal axis: the forearm pronating or supinating, the femur rotating within its acetabulum, the trunk pivoting about its vertical axis. It has only two possible directions.
Revolution is the movement of a segment around a centre external to itself: the arm tracing a circle in space, the hand moving up and down. It has six possible directions: up, down, forwards, backwards, left and right.
To this is added the rotation of the centre, described above, along with the accompanying weight transfer.
Three planes, a single action. The rule that links them is simple to state but difficult to achieve: they begin together, they end together, and they are proportionate.
From this follows the criterion that distinguishes this training from gymnastics, and which must be remembered word for word:
• an arm that rotates on its own axis without the body rotating is not this exercise;
• an arm that traces a circle without rotating on its own axis is not this exercise;
• the exercise is the simultaneous and proportionate superimposition of both, driven by the centre.
A fourth aspect emerges as soon as the practitioner moves: the rotation of the entire body through space. This is the point at which most practitioners lose everything: the movement becomes mere displacement, and the arms begin to rotate on their own.
The entire technical description is based on a binary opposition: conforming coiling and inverse coiling.
For the arm, the most widespread convention—and the one most easily verifiable from the outside—is as follows: when the thumb turns outwards and the palm turns upwards, the coiling is conforming; when the little finger turns outwards and the palm turns downwards, it is inverse. In anatomical terms: supination and pronation.
It should be noted that a competing convention exists, which defines the same terms by the finger applying the force rather than by the final position of the palm, and which results in a reversed nomenclature. The two may perhaps be reconciled by distinguishing between the result and the proprioceptive motor, but this reconciliation remains a hypothesis. The practical advice is to choose one convention, stick to it, and check which one is used in any source you consult.
For the leg, the convention is more consistent. When the body turns to the left, the left leg is in a conforming coil and its knee rises; the right leg is in a reverse coil and its knee lowers. There is one absolute rule: one knee rises, one knee lowers; never both in the same direction, and no lateral sway.
These two coils form the fundamental pair. Ancient texts list others: coiling whilst moving forwards and backwards, to the left and to the right, upwards and downwards, inwards and outwards, large and small; but these are not separate coiling patterns: they are positional and quantitative descriptors of the same phenomenon. A single movement can be characterised simultaneously by several of them.
The texts themselves warn against a taxonomic reading, in a clause almost always omitted from quotations: as soon as one pulls, one coils; as soon as one moves forwards, one coils; and these categories cannot be treated as techniques separate from one another.
The unity of the body sought here is not the unity of a single block. It is that of a machine: it presupposes parts that do not perform the same function and which are interconnected. Separation is the condition for integration, not its opposite.
With a strict rule of coupling: the internal works with the middle, the middle with the external; the external never works directly with the internal. This is the technical formulation of the prohibition against pulling on the hand: the hand can only be connected to the centre via the elbow and shoulder.
Other rules complete the system:
• the parts of the body coordinate without necessarily moving in the same direction, at the same time, or with the same function;
• two adjacent parts must not move identically;
• when the upper part moves, the lower part remains still; when the lower part moves, the upper part remains still; if they move together, it is in opposite directions;
• one part, one function.
The flaw that all this aims to avoid has a name in the tradition: ‘double heaviness’. Its practical formulation is the most useful there is: when the left hand is full, the left foot must be empty; when the right hand is full, the right foot must be empty.
‘Double heaviness’ is therefore not ‘having one’s weight on both legs’. It is the absence of differentiation at any point within the structure. A body in a state of ‘double heaviness’ can neither transmit nor neutralise, because it has no axis.
A classic formula, predating this training method and common to the entire internal tradition, outlines the pathway: the root is in the foot; the force is emitted through the leg, governed by the waist, and takes form in the fingers. Followed by: from the foot to the leg to the waist, there must always be a complete and integrated unity.
This formula contains the central argument. The mechanics of the human body preclude an upward transmission through the hip, knee, shoulder and elbow from being purely linear: these joints all have a rotational component. A force rising from the ground to the hand therefore necessarily acquires a twist. Spiral training adds nothing to the classical formula; it merely explains its inevitable mechanical consequence.
Three concepts make this transmission usable.
The fixed point. All movements are based on a point on the body that does not move. This point is, first and foremost, the centre; the skill then lies in being able to establish it anywhere as required.
The lever. The hand or elbow on the one hand, and the fixed point on the other, form a lever arm. Without a fixed point, there is no lever; without a lever, there is no transmission.
The transfer. There can only be one point that possesses force; everything else must relinquish it. This is the condition for the lever’s existence; a lever whose both ends exert force transmits nothing.
From this follows the principle governing all power transmission: in a transmission movement, none of the intermediate parts generates power; they are merely a medium. When one pushes off with the heel, the pelvis shifts by about a centimetre, and the reaction force from the ground travels through a structure that merely conducts it.
The symmetrical fault also has a name: lurching, that is to say, an action without rotation or a defined axis. This is the main fault of beginners when moving, and it is very easy to diagnose: when filmed from the front, the top of the skull traces a wavy line instead of a straight one.
An essential clarification, to counter a widely held misconception. The ‘do not move’ aspect of this training is not a state of relaxation. A stationary point achieved through relaxation is useless, because it then has no connection with the moving parts: the cogs are separated and do not work together. Relaxation is a necessary condition; on its own, it does not produce any transmission.
The postural requirements of this training are not merely for show. Each one influences a specific point in the chain.
Of all these, the most important and most neglected is the opening of the groin fold. A stiff groin fold interrupts the chain: the waist rotates, the legs do not follow, and the force remains at the top. It is also the point that closes first under the effect of fatigue, which explains why a long session always deteriorates from the bottom up.
Two safety rules are worth highlighting, as they prevent the only real injuries associated with this training. The knee must remain in line with the foot; it collapsing inwards is the leading cause of injury. And the knee must never move horizontally: it moves up and down, and nothing else.
The exercises in this training programme are few in number, extremely repetitive and lacking in variety. This formal simplicity is deliberate: it is what makes observation possible. A practitioner who repeats the same circle for twenty minutes eventually notices what they had not noticed before: that one shoulder rises at the three-quarter mark, that the knee sags when attention wanes, that the breath catches when changing direction. None of these phenomena is visible in a varied sequence, because variety occupies the attention.
The repertoire is divided into six families, which cover the entire range of the work.
One. The stationary stance. Standing, knees slightly bent, arms curved in front of the body. It is not a coiling movement, and yet it opens almost every sequence, because it establishes the alignments without which no coiling is possible.
Two. One-handed circles. The core exercise of the repertoire, performed in both the frontal and lateral planes. The hand traces a vertical circle in front of the body whilst the forearm rotates on its axis and the weight shifts from one foot to the other. This is where the coordination of the three planes is revealed, and it is the only exercise one ought to practise if one were to keep just one.
A variation of this same circle deserves a mention because it is more precise than the standard version. It breaks the movement down into three stages: the elbow tucks in to touch the ribs, the waist turns, and the hand extends. It imposes a formidable constraint: the middle finger must be aimed at a fixed point in front of you and must not deviate throughout the entire circle; and a rule of precedence which, on its own, encapsulates a large part of the training: when retreating, the elbow leads and the hand is pulled back; when pushing, the hand leads and the elbow can only follow.
Three. Two-handed circles. The same structure, with the specific difficulty of bilateral movement: both arms must be co-ordinated without doing the same thing. When one hand is in a forward coil, the other is generally in a reverse coil; when one rises, the other falls. Variations where both do the same thing at the same time do exist, and they are more advanced, precisely because they require the differentiation to occur elsewhere, in the lower body.
Four. Legwork. Rotation of the femur, knee trajectory, weight transfers. This is the half of the system that most practitioners neglect. A practitioner whose arms spiral well but whose legs merely bear the weight has only completed the upper half of the training.
Five. Footwork. Side steps, forward steps, backward steps, diagonal steps, whilst maintaining the coiling motion throughout the entire movement. Four requirements govern them: the body neither rises nor falls; the foot lands unweighted before being loaded; the continuity of the hands is not broken when the foot lands; and one can stop at any moment in a stable posture.
Six. Segment-specific work. A second pedagogical approach exists, which cannot be reduced to the first. Instead of organising the exercises by movement pattern, it organises them by anatomical segment: neck, shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees, feet, followed by a final shake of the whole body. It engages joints that the circles do not address. Its explicit principle must be reiterated at every stage; otherwise, it degenerates into mere joint gymnastics: the whole body is engaged, not just the joint being worked on; the division is an analytical pretext, not an actual segmentation.
Added to this are exercises for transitioning to application, such as the spiral breakthrough, sequences involving the four fundamental directions of contact, and rotations on one leg, which do not alter the principles but merely put them to the test within more constrained geometries.
A progression runs through the entire training programme, and it is more important than the number of exercises learnt.
We start on a large scale, to understand the path. We then reduce the amplitude in stages, until the circle becomes almost invisible, then invisible. The traditional formula sets out the four stages: large circles, medium circles, small circles, no circle.
This reduction is the litmus test of the entire method, because it immediately reveals whether the spiral was produced by coordination or by the amplitude of the movement. What almost always happens during the first attempts is instructive: the rotation of the centre disappears first, and the movement becomes a small arm gesture.
The culmination of this progression is an internalisation in which the limbs are the last place where the movement appears. There is one criterion for avoiding the corresponding pitfall—which is to do nothing at all whilst believing one is doing something subtle: at any moment, one must be able to amplify the movement back to its maximum amplitude without restarting anything, simply by allowing what is already underway to grow. If something needs to be restarted, it is because it had stopped.
We must draw a conclusion from this that should temper a great deal of vanity: the degree to which the spiral is visible is not a measure of quality. A practitioner whose spiral is barely visible may have a more accomplished technique than one whose wrists turn spectacularly.
The rhythm is governed by three requirements, all drawn from the metaphor of unravelling a silk thread.
Constant speed: the movement must neither speed up nor slow down within a circle. The most difficult point is the change of direction, where one slows down involuntarily.
Continuity: no pause between two circles, no dead spot. The end of one circle is the beginning of the next.
Moderation: too fast, and the thread snaps; too slow, and it becomes tangled. There is no universally correct speed; for each practitioner, at any given moment, there is a narrow range within which the movement remains both connected and alive. A useful practical guideline: the speed is correct when, at any moment, one can come to a sudden halt without losing balance or structure, and start again without having to restart the movement.
Breathing is the least well-documented aspect of the entire field, and honesty dictates that this should be acknowledged rather than inventing a rule. Highly authoritative sources merely prescribe that breathing should be natural and that the perceived weight should settle in the lower abdomen. The more specific instructions one comes across – such as breathing in on the opening or closing, or direct or reverse abdominal breathing – contradict one another and come from sources of lesser authority.
The sensible advice is to breathe naturally, through the nose, without straining, without blocking, and above all without ever holding one’s breath when changing direction. Coordination develops of its own accord; it eventually happens. And one should be wary of sources that are overly specific on this point: precision, in this context, is an indication of low reliability rather than competence.
There are no established standards regarding duration. The practical guidelines are as follows. An effective session lasts between twenty and forty minutes, comprises only three to six exercises, and each exercise is repeated for long enough for the nature of one’s attention to shift, which rarely takes fewer than fifty repetitions. A daily practice of fifteen minutes yields more than a weekly session of two hours, because what is sought is a reorganisation, not a development.
Three exercises practised a thousand times are better than thirty practised thirty times. The temptation to collect exercises is the first mistake in one’s progress, and it yields nothing.
The errors in this training are few in number, very consistent from one practitioner to another, and almost all detectable by oneself.
The cardinal error is a movement initiated by the shoulder rather than the centre. It can be recognised by an unmistakable sign: the shoulder rises. The remedy is to deliberately immobilise the arm in one position and move it only through the rotation of the torso, until one regains the sensation of being moved rather than moving oneself.
The five postural extremes, which constitute the classic catalogue:
• too low: when the angle between the calf and thigh is less than ninety degrees, the path of the force is disrupted and control of the centre of gravity is lost;
• too wide: the force from the crotch is dispersed and the rounded posture becomes impossible;
• too far forward: the forward centre of gravity overloads the knees and prevents downward force transmission;
• too tense: unloaded legs, loss of expansive force and multidirectional mechanics;
• too open: feet in a V-shape, the crotch does not close, unstable base.
Coordination errors: a misalignment between the three planes, where the rotation of the forearm ends before the arm’s path, or vice versa; neglect of the lower body, where weight transfer is the first thing to disappear as soon as attention shifts to the hands; weight transfer in a straight line, whereas it should follow an arc, slightly towards the rear.
Conceptual errors: seeking amplitude, which disconnects the body segments; seeking sensation, which produces tension and nothing else; believing that relaxation is sufficient; and treating the exercises as separate from the practice from which they are drawn.
The correspondences between the traditional description and contemporary anatomy are sometimes striking, often misleading, and almost always presented with a confidence that the data do not support.
What has been demonstrated. The mechanical principles referred to above – torque, helix, prestress – fall within the realm of elementary mechanics and are beyond dispute. They alone suffice to make this entire training programme intelligible without drawing on the authority of works that do not pertain to it.
A second finding is firmly established and is directly relevant. An in vivo experiment has demonstrated the transmission of force between a large back muscle and the gluteus maximus on the opposite side, via the thoracolumbar fascia: tension in one mechanically alters the state of the other, independently of any joint action. This is precisely the diagonal connection described by practitioners when they say that the left hand is connected to the right foot via the waist. Subsequent studies have shown that this transmission is reduced in patients suffering from chronic low back pain.
Anatomically, this region is also the one that traditional Chinese medicine identifies as the path of the only one of its meridians to be horizontal, encircling the waist and crossing all the others. Two entirely different systems of observation have identified the same area as a transmission hub.
This has been partially established. The model of myofascial chains—and particularly that of a continuous spiral chain running from the foot to the head—is the most direct counterpart to the traditional description. However, a systematic review of sixty-two dissection studies concluded that this spiral chain is verified at only five of its nine junctions. It constitutes a legitimate heuristic model; it does not constitute a proof.
This is merely a model. The application to the whole body of tensegrity models, in which bone is thought to function under floating compression within a fascial network under continuous tension, is a fruitful conceptual framework but one that has not been experimentally validated. It elegantly explains why a local torsion propagates throughout the entire system—which is precisely the traditional assertion—and must be presented as a model, not as proof.
The development sought here is not development in the usual sense. One does not become stronger, nor does one become more flexible, and gains of this sort that occur incidentally are by-products. What changes is the organisation of movement: the way in which an intention becomes an action, and the order in which the segments engage in it.
This reorganisation is a slow process, because it concerns habits ingrained since childhood and maintained by every action of the day. The timeframes provided by tradition are uncompromising: approximately two years to know where the hands and feet are going; five years for the three planes to be coordinated; ten years for the force from the ground to flow through; beyond that, the gradual disappearance of visible movement.
The culmination of this work is described in ancient texts by a criterion that is not a performance but a state of unconsciousness: as one constantly employs this force in daily practice, it eventually flows naturally without one being aware of it, which is only possible after prolonged practice.
Meanwhile, training produces a more immediate and rarely mentioned effect. By eliminating all variety, all performance and all reward, it creates the conditions for sustained self-awareness. It is in this precise sense, quite apart from any energy-based theory, that this is an inner practice. The traditional saying that one must seek stillness within movement describes this approach quite accurately.
