The pattern of abdominal contraction on inhalation is a natural one, and its usage makes sense if you consider the Daoist model of the human as composed of Pre- and Post-Heaven influences.
Everyone reading this has done reverse breathing. They did it not in relation to breath, rather in relation to respiration before the lungs fully formed. Watch an ultra-sound of a fetus and you will observe a rolling-in of the abdomen which matches the blood flow entering its body through the umbilicus. This is the breathing you were doing as your central nervous system was forming. Perhaps it has some significance.
Just because the lung function has taken over the task of respiration doesn’t mean it is the only natural relationship we can have to this process. I still maintian that the basis of reverse breathing is the relationship between Yuanqi and Zhengqi, the primordial and acquired energies of life. To stimulate the primordial energies we take our tissue back to a place before we received our breath directly from the outside world.
In our desire for pragmatism and practicality I believe it important to realize that many things we see as contrived at first are actually based on a very practical view of the world. The question for each of us is, “do we have enough knowledge of the context of these training methods to dismiss them out of hand?”
Its easy to throw out a simple example like pushing a car or running, but these may oversimplify something that is based on long observation, not slavish devotion to some idealized past. Its true that most people (the Chinese in China included), rely on little real information and a lot of hearsay when it comes to Neigong practices. The Chinese tradition of secret teaching hasn’t done them any favours in this realm. Yet the information is out there if you take the time to really investigate.
How many people involved in Chinese martial arts really take the time to understand the classical Chinese concept of a person. Its easier to come into the training with a Cartesian dualistic ghost-in-the-machine model from Bio-medicine, and a sceptical eye that easily dismisses concepts that are based on another pardigm entirely.
I’m not advocating simply swallowing whole the largely mystical bull**** that has come to present itself as Neigong. Be sceptical without being dismissive. Learn to read Chinese if you are really serious about this stuff, it opens a whole realm of possibility and teaches you very important things about how the founders and diseminators of these styles formed their thoughts. Then read the classics on your own. Most translations are so literal as to be useless. Study the medicine if you want to go deeply internal, then you can go beyond a connect-the-dots idea of points and meridians and see that there are amazing insights into the human exerience to be found within these arts that go well past busting heads and “keeping-it-real.”
“How many people involved in Chinese martial arts really take the time to understand the classical Chinese concept of a person. Its easier to come into the training with a Cartesian dualistic ghost-in-the-machine model from Bio-medicine, and a sceptical eye that easily dismisses concepts that are based on another pardigm entirely.”
Don’t forget about sources on both culture and history that come from outside the martial arts community.
On a different note, I see that Ted Mancuso is offering Kang Ge Wu tape on Bagua basics.
Professor Kang Ge Wu is both a historian and martial arts practitioner and is probably the foremost authority on the history of bagua.
I agree completely with your assertion that too few people do the real research, yet.. when the real research is done, and one finds that all the signs point to uncontrived utter simplicity.. that path seems valid for the perceiver.. It is not a right/wrong path, simply the path that works based on one’s own experiences.. which, by my own accounting, is a valid interpretation of Tao.
To aspire to move one’s abdomen as though they were still in the womb (“before the lungs fully formed”) seems to challenge the notion that we leave the womb and grow for a pupose greater than to emulate a partially formed body. Again, i assert the usefullness of reverse breathing for meditative and chi development reasons, but.. i have tried to find the Martial application of such techniques, but to date i can’t get the “flow” of it… Pushing a car?.. indeed, the muscles of the stomach and abdomen are supporting the frame as it encounters inantimate forces too great for the frame to bear unsupported. I would also assert that at its more developed stages, chi used to push a car will effortlessly express itself through well trained channels and relaxed application.
Lastly, this response is not, at all, intended to be inflamatory.. i hope only to share insights.. and learn from those of others.. I am gratified at the level of competency and content in this post..
I think one thing that gets lost very easily is the importance many Daoist practices have placed on alignment of innate and acquired energies. The idea of “womb breathing” isn’t about the lungs, its about reminding the acquired costitution where it comes from.
Anyone familiar with the idea of the Ling? Its often translated as spirit or spiritual, but it goes a bit beyond that. Why does life exist at all? That deep stiving that all life displays in the struggle for survival points at something underlying what life is. In Daoist metaphysics this is the Ling. I prefer “the force of life” as a translation, or “the wind of life that blows through the universe.” This is the basis of the primordial energies in the body. Try to dies by holding your breath. Conscious control can strive for this (an example of pathological behaviour in the acquired constitution), but as soon as you lose consciousness some other force takes over and you breath again.
An implication of this force-of-life is that it has speed and direction in each of us. True naturalness requires that we become aware of our own unique vector of living potential so that the acquired energies can move in the right direction and at the appropriate speed. This is why reverse breathing is so basic to many practices of internal alchemy.
There is quite a bit more to the Ling (innate aspirations, Hun and Po, Yuan Qi, etc.), but its enough to say that it is a key element of the observations that Daoist practices are based on, as well as being fundamental to their metaphysics of existence.
My thanks to those who bother to chew through my posts.
Thanks for taking the time to post. It is refreshing to read thoughtful input from someone who has taken the time to do the research.
It is obvious from that research you have learned to view what some see as “simple” questions from the perspective gained by setting aside the western world view and adopted the worldview that gave birth to the practices we supposedly subscribe to.
There is nothing “magical” about neijia training, but is also not the product of the average existence. It is simply physical in many ways, but a physicality that is much deeper and richer from the mundane approach to the physical.
The only magic there is the magic of our existence on this plane.
Okay, I’m done for those who find this stuff impractical.
Walter
p.s. if you really want it, think outside the box.
I get the opportunity to work with lots of people who come to Chinese physical culture with a sort of “floating vagueness” about energetics and medicine. In recent dialogue with friends and students I have refered to them as the I-am-a-cloud-guys. To these people I say exactly what TaiChiBob is saying, often in the same words. So I cannot argue with that view. Its useful and practical and is a direct way to get at what Neigong advocates.
Whjat I have been trying to say here is for other people, the ones who are more hard-core in their training and who have a sincere commitment to get at the deeper implicatons of internal arts. I have some fear that the recent trend to harsh pragmatism in internal arts will be just as extreme as the peace-and-love-hippie-taichi trend of the 1970’s and early 80’s, and it may do more harm in the long run by trying to reduce Neigong to a susperstition.
One of the great things about the Daoist models of the body is that they have been continually tested over the last 2500 years, because they are the basis of the medicine as well. The concept of Yuan Qi is not so ritualistic or contrived if you see it as an simple observation of something that can be affected in the body from the outside in a consistent and reproducable manner. Chinese medicine isn’t based on the postulation of a theory then its testing. Its based on contemplation and observation without agenda. When the Daoists advocate fangsong-ziran (naturalness) they still do it the context of the derived knowledge of what life is and what the body is.
After all, if Chinese medicine was simply ritual then it wouldn’t work on dogs or horses. I’m sure the belief system of the pig has little to do with how effective acupunture anaesthesia is.
i hope i never figure i “have it down”.. i can only report my current understanding based on my experiences… i have been reading and experimenting with the concepts posted here since the thread began.. The only assertion i can make, based on “my” experince, is that currently the task of reverse breathing doesn’t compliment “my” own application of skills in free-sparring.. That being said, it still plays an important role, for me, in the development of internal energies which plays a major role in free-sparring..
That is my own simplistic undrstanding of the topic, yet.. i will continue to experiment and research.. my understandings on most things are subject to revision… (thankfully)..
Bob,
Understood. You make an excellent point. The gap in neijia arts between neigong, or internal power training, and application, i.e. free sparring is huge. Most people don’t truly understand that. And if they do, they say “too hard, takes too long” and walk. Thats ok by me.
But, and I’m going on faith here(I have seen neijia free fighting skills manifested by others, I am still working on it), if one continues to train diligently, that gap closes and the very skills one develops through neigong manifest themselves in a free fighting format.
BUT, this takes TIME. It isn’t fast food, or the martial equivalent thereof.
Also, implicit in the idea that taiji should yield instant results is the assumption that most people who see taiji as a fighting art, are learning it to fight.
Newsflash, I learned how to fight a long time ago, I’m working on refinement of skill. I’d bet the same applies to you.
indeed.. at times, its a lonely path.. too many people unwilling to invest the time or adjust their perspectives… but, as you well know, its worth the effort.. if one can stay centered in the crucible of conflict, the clarity outside the arena is inspiring..
indeed.. at times, its a lonely path.. too many people unwilling to invest the time or adjust their perspectives… but, as you well know, its worth the effort.. if one can stay centered in the crucible of conflict, the clarity outside the arena is inspiring..