Hi Charles,
Thanks for your comments. What’s going on in this second exercise is harder to see (or indeed to render visually explicit) than in the other one I posted. The initiation for the rising arm and hand actually comes from a small sinking /relaxing impulse in the kua/hips at each moment when the feet pass through the 50/50 weight distribution and simultaneously the lower arm has sunk back down to a brief moment when it hangs off the shoulder like a chain. It’s only a fraction of a second: when the kua/hips sink as mentioned above, this extends the lower arm just a little further
downward through the fingertips (and also the shoulder and ribs sink just a little) and this further downward extension immediately turns into the start of a forward and upward movement of the arm. Actually all part of a circle, but those are some details of that particular moment. As the arm rises, the forearm and hand are initially ‘hanging’ from the elbow joint, extending into (and mentally beyond) the fingertips; the hand is indeed initially not rising and only ‘separates’ itself from the rest of the arm as the shoulder and elbow begin to sink more externally. So I'm not actually lifting the shoulder as the initiator, it comes from lower down. The shoulder should be relaxed at all times, not actively lifting up. It could well be, however, that my shoulders are too tense in this video, and that the very first move was indeed a shoulder lift. Oops. Too much computer/mouse work at that time, and still recovering from a ‘frozen shoulder’ on one side. Oh yeah, and the dog ate my homework.
When doing other exercises and applications I usually endeavour to have fingertips or thumb basal joint at the lead points for a rising of the arm while shoulder and hips simultaneously sink (just a little). This exercise is different. There are other things/ideas going on as well, but I hope I have addressed your remarks.
I’m not familiar enough with the Huang Loosening no. 3 to know whether the ‘inner blueprint’ of that movement is fairly similar or very different. Of course, there are various ways of connecting and emphasising within the one exercise.