What It Means To Relax

My teacher tells me that to relax the arms, you have to first relax the kua. Thinking about this, I think I am starting to understand what he means.

When someone pushes your arm, if your arms are relaxed, but your kua is not, what happens is that the balloon that your arms form with your body becomes flattened by your opponent's force. But when your kua is relaxed, when your opponent pushes your arms, the balloon doesn't really flatten. Instead, your whole upper body moves back to absorb his force.

But you control your movement. You don't move straight back in the direction of his force. As your kua moves to absorb his force, at the same time, your kua is moving to change the direction of his force. And thus you are able to redirect his force against him.

So being like jelly is not relaxing. You relax so that you can become a balloon, an elastic rubber ball, capable of deflecting someone's force back at him.