"There are no secrets in the Tai Chi Chuan that I am teaching you," said Professor Cheng, "but if there were a secret, it is that the mind moves the ch’i."
Sometimes he would say, "There are no secrets in this Tai Chi Chuan, but if there was a secret, it is that the hands don’t move." This was yet another one of those times when I initially thought he was contradicting himself, only to realize later that in both cases he was saying the same thing: "The hands don’t move" and "The mind moves the ch’i" are the same and the secret of our Tai Chi Chuan.
"The hands don’t move." It is rather the mind, or more precisely the idea that directs the waist to produce the movement. The energy only emerges from the hands, which move from the waist like spokes on the hub of a wheel.
"The waist is the commander," it says in the Tai Chi classics, and the hands should submit totally to the command of the waist – never moving independently.