These are more of a synergy between you and the world around you, where, you will find the ways to manipulate the universe with yourself as a 'conductor in an an orchestra moving things around.' this is supposedly the more powerful of all magic, as it will be where you merely use your opponents force against them, to coin a phrase, of course. there are ways to tap your natural energies into these spells, but, if you were to observe that you do not need to, then you would find it easier to merely channel one thing to the next with your own manipulation skills in the form of communication skills. the universe is a relay communication system where things merely change and then take effect, manifesting abnormalities, in this case, like life, all over the place.
So, now that we have a foggy clue what this is about, we need to ask why they respond to us? this is because if we were to observe the science of engineering, we would find that this where we 'force things to help us,' yes? we literally force the natural world, for example, in the form of dams, to store water for us. we literally force cars to take us places, by forcing metals into one thing, yes? this is more than merely lighting a few candles and praying, this is manipulating the world around you with your own energies touching onto others and making a relay where we will find the outcomes to be to our choosing, of course.
Now, if we were to observe that certain things are more reactive than others, we will understand that merely swinging our arm through the air will generate 'wind,' yes? there will be wind we control, like the wind in front of our arms, being displaced, and there will be win around our arms, which we do not care for. like this, in magic there is a lot of residue that will manifest itself around our spells, leaving undesired effects sometimes - if we were to want to freeze a lake, let's say, it will get very cold too, yes?
The longer we dabble with the same spell, the stronger it will get. the effects will manifest themselves more and more each time because of our own understanding of what we are doing, of course, and, we will 'conduct the orchestra better.' this means we will start small, if you do not mind.
Then there is the aspect of what goes into the spells. they say it is a synergy between body language - like the wind? - phonics - like the voice boxes that will generate things if we whisper? - and mastering the system mentally, through a thorough understanding of what we are doing.