Big and Small Circles

Just thought I wanted to bring up something that my teacher talked about the other day.

A key to taiji is in drawing circles. And those circles do not stand alone. Using the kua, small circles drawn through shifting the weight from leg to leg (and turning the kua) are translated into big circles drawn by the arms. The small movements (circles) at the lower body translates into big movements (circles) at the upper body. And key to that is using the kua.

Observing my teacher, he is able to move his legs very slightly, yet translate his power to his arms to generate a big circle. For us, we shift our weight back and forth between our legs, with very big/obvious movements at the lower body. But most of the power generated is not translated to our upper body, and we end up drawing smaller circles. And smaller circles mean less power.