... The key to the leveraging, Zhang said, is relaxing and sinking on his side of the fulcrum. This increases his power while diminishing that of his opponent on the shorter end of the lever.

... He said a person has to be soft, or supple, enough, to create a lever and fulcrum to do this from any angle or with any weight. Softness, he said, means "the qi arrangements are very good. Some people are soft but their body still doesn't make good qi arrangements. It is hard to be soft."

To develop skill and softness, he said, requires practice: First, the arms and shoulder must get soft. Then the body motion can effect the spine and the spine can get soft. Once the spine is soft, the motion can loosen the dantian motion. Once the dantian is loose and free and the body is soft, then the concentration on the dantian motion can control the body motion. To be soft, he explained: You have to make the spine very loose, very flexible. All the vertebrae have to be loose. Soft means you do not use your tense muscle to lift any organ in your body or any arms or other limbs. That means that my arms do not use muscle force.

... Zhang said by adding rotation to movement so that there is spiraling, the lever is also lengthened, providing greater mass, strength, and leverage.

"Everywhere in the body there is rotation, inside and outside, linked together."

He said this involves not just the arms spiraling, but the body knees, ankles and torso. The spiral is created by the rotation in different directions, the left part of the body to the left, and the right to the right, or vice versa. The hips and legs move in opposite directions from each other. "When they move in opposite directions, there is a spiral, a rotation of force." ...