When you perform an application by thinking about the nature of the animal, rather than the posture, you find that the movement happens far more spontaneously.

You no longer plod through the movements. The application just emerges.

As the syllabus progresses you must cultivate 'sung', an advanced-level neigong.
Part of sung entails doing without doing, a tzu-jan quality of immediacy, whereby the outcome happens without any sense of feeling the body.

A student initially learns to coordinate the pattern.
Later, they focus upon the movement.
At sung level, the student just strikes. No thought, no feeling of anything. The strike lands without self consciousness.