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1 Bagua and The Sixteen Neigong
1 Bagua and The Sixteen Neigong
1 Bagua and The Sixteen Neigong
BRUCE FRANTZIS
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Table of Contents
Relaxation ................................................................... 11
Taoist Breathing (Neigong Component #1) ........... 11
Breathing Level 1: The Simple Story ................................... 11
Breathing Level 2: The More Complete Story ................... 12
Breathing Level 3: The Bigger Picture ................................ 12
Breath and Movement ........................................................... 13
Opening-Closing ...................................................... 24
Lengthening .......................................................................... 26
Twisting ...................................................................... 34
Spiraling ..................................................................... 35
Physical Tissue Motions of Spiraling in
Conjunction with Twisting ..................................... 37
Reverse Breathing
(Neigong Component #1) ....................................... 41
Bagua is derived from and is a part of the neigong or "internal skill" tradition
of Taoist meditation. Beginning thousands of years ago, Taoists delved deeply
within themselves during meditation and discovered and learned how to work
with the chi flows within their body-mind-spirit.
The Taoist science of how these energy flows work is called the "Taoist sixteen
neigong system:' Bagua was developed from the sixteen neigong with the
purpose of embodying the Eight Universal Energies of the I Ching. Conversely,
all the other Taoist arts-qigong, tai chi and hsing-i-are external forms infused
with neigong (internal power).
The sixteen components refer to the major subjects within the system, which are:
3. Moving chi in specific ways through all the main and secondary
acupuncture channels, energy gates and points, as well as the multitude
of tiny interconnecting channels that cause specific functions to occur.
4. Precise body alignments that prevent the flow of chi from being either
blocked or dissipated.
6. Bending and stretching the body's soft tissues in a general direction from
the inside out and the outside in, and along the body's surfaces associated
with the yin and yang acupuncture channels.
8. Working with the energies of the external aura to connect the body with
mental states; and make connections between the body, the aura and the
rest of the psychic and spiritual energies that exist within the universe.
9. Amplifying the circles and spirals of energy inside the body that have been
dormant and amplifying and controlling the flow of the currents that are
already operating well.
10. Learning to move chi to any part of the body at will (especially to the
internal organs, glands and spots within the brain and spinal cord). This
includes absorbing or projecting chi from all body parts at will.
11. Awakening and controlling all the energies of the spine and what they
connect to. This includes the vertebrae, cerebrospinal fluid, brain, spinal
cord and all the nerves within the body.
12. Awakening and using the body's left and right energy channels.
13. Awakening and using the body's central energy channel, which controls
all the others.
14. Developing the capacities and all the uses of the body's lower tantien,
the main energetic center that directly affects all physical functions, one's
sense of fear, insecurity and death and one's sense of being stable and
grounded.
15. Developing the capacities and all the uses of the middle and upper tantiens,
and the higher human spiritual centers. The middle tantien (heart center)
governs all relationships. It is intimately tied to all our most subtle emotions
and intuitions and is considered the source of consciousness within the
body. The upper tantien, located within the brain, is critical to longevity
because of its ability to activate the pituitary and pineal glands (master
glands). It is also responsible for well-functioning thought processes and
psychic capacities.
Each of these components or subjects has immense depth, and all but the more
superficial aspects have been kept relatively secret for millennia. Each one of the
components could legitimately merit one or more very large books. Within any
one component, there may be hundreds and even thousands of techniques for
developing chi.
Each of the components is organically related to and overlaps with each of the
others. Together they comprise a continuous circle of knowledge. As with any
circle, there is no definitive starting point for beginning your studies of neigong
nor is there a definitive endpoint. Instead, you study neigong by going around
and around the circle of sixteen. Each time you go around, you hopefully
spiral ever deeper into more fulfilling and beneficial levels within each individual
component and within the neigong system as a whole.
In the past, I've tried to teach the sixteen neigong simultaneously with the
external movements of bagua and tai chi. My experience, however, has been
that the complexity of the physical movements inhibits attention to the internal
energies.
So, within the Bagua Mastery Program,™ initially when you learn a bagua
technique, you will receive instruction on:
Once you gain proficiency at this level, you can continue studying neigong and
then go back and begin learning the intermediate levels of practice, which are
discussed in the next section.
There are the seven essential practice ingredients in bagua for beginning
practitioners:
• Relaxation
Relaxation
All of your muscles and nerves must be relaxed when practicing any qigong,
bagua or tai chi technique. Under no circumstances should the body's muscles or
nerves be deliberately tensed or forced.
Many erroneously think they must tense their body to produce yang internal
energy. The power of the mind must not be pushed to exercise its force of will.
It often physically shows up as involuntarily tensing of the back of the eyes and
tightening of the jaw. Relaxing the mind will eventually result in consciously
relaxing the brain-a new and challenging task for many beginners.
Taoist Breathing
(Neigong Component #1)
Classically, bagua only used Taoist methods of whole-body breathing. With all
Taoist breathing methods, the chest is deliberately not expanded. This is the
opposite of what is practiced in Hatha yoga, gymnastics and more common
Western breathing techniques.
Taoist breathing has two basic methods: regular and reverse breathing.
After the beginning (learning) stage, bagua classically was intended to only
be practiced with reverse breathing, which will be explained in Section 3.
Regular Taoist breathing was considered a preliminary rather than main event.
Most people, however, must first learn how to do regular breathing well in order
to do reverse breathing without risk of injury.
Initially, you practice engaging your diaphragm and deep belly breathing.
Each inhale and exhale deliberately moves and massages your internal organs.
Regular Taoist breathing expands your belly on the inhale and condenses your
belly on the exhale.
Breathing with your belly means a bit more than its obvious implications.
Initially, with each breath, you expand and release your entire belly from the top
of your pubic hair to your diaphragm (solar plexus), including the sides and back
of your belly. This activates your liver and spleen as well as the back of your belly
(abdomen), where your lower back muscles and kidneys are located. Your body's
anatomy physically moves in all the appropriate places as the expanding and
condensing coordinates with your inhales and exhales.
In regular Taoist breathing, as you inhale, your belly and other anatomical parts
of your body (muscles, ligaments and internal organs) expand or open. When
you exhale, your belly and other anatomical parts of your body simultaneous-
ly shrink, condense or close. (In reverse breathing, the opening and shrinking
patterns are the exact opposite.)
Taoist regular breathing also involves breathing into and with the back of your
lungs without the front of your chest moving. This techniques directly massages
your heart and is particularly emphasized. It is a unique feature of Taoist breath-
ing that is not found in other breathing systems.
Your breath should reach the very top of your lungs, which people normally don't
do unless they are well-trained in these methods.
Lao Tse writes in the Tao Te Ching, "The wise man breathes from his heels:' A
partial meaning of this statement refers to coordinating the physical breath with
breathing chi into and out of several parts of your body simultaneously,
including:
Later, with experience and using your own best judgment, you can naturally let
the linkages with the breath happen of their own accord. You'll only nudge them
a little every once in a while. If in doubt about whether you might be overextend-
ing yourself, take it easy and wait for instruction from a competent teacher to
provide you with personal feedback.
Figure 1.2.1
Fundamental Bagua Alignments
These fundamental alignments (Figure 1.2.1) apply to all bagua applications for
medical, martial art or meditation practices. They are:
• The neck is straight, so the weight of the head is gently lifted off
the spine and the neck's highest vertebrae. ideally, this is aided
by the head being energetically and gently pulled upward from
the energy center in your aura to above your head.
• The midriff (between the top of the hip and the lowest rib) is
lifted.
• The rounding of the back allows the chest to spread and round
horizontally toward the shoulders. This allows the chest to reach
its normal, full-size without causing any internal compression.
This in turn allows your natural breathing to massage the heart
to an extent greater than a normal puffed out chest position.
• The chi of the chest is sunk and the chest is rounded vertically
in a relaxed, but not collapsed manner. You should not go to
the point of collapsing the chest onto the diaphragm and solar
plexus, which would weaken your breathing and close down this
important energetic center. The relaxation and rounding of the
chest allows the spine to straighten and the head to lift to their
fullest natural extension possible without tension.
• The abdomen is relaxed, so you can fully breathe with your belly,
diaphragm and kidneys, and over time, your chi can sink and
store in your lower tantien.
• Lastly, when on the ground, the feet are flat on the ground and
firmly rooted.
The aura above your head should not be so energetically weak that it comes too
close to the top of the head. If so, the energy in your body must be gradually
increased. Often a weak aura results when your head is scrunched onto your
neck. This causes the neck vertebrae to compress more and more over time and
the occipital junction (occiput, at the base of the back of the skull) to close down,
which weakens or blocks energy flow upward and downward.
• The arch of the foot or area behind the Achilles heel is collapsed.
Ideally, this turning rotation of the arm would begin from the shoulder blades,
move through the upper arms and forearms, and finish turning at your palm and
fingers.
Ideally, you turn from your hips and waist. (The best practice for intermediates is
to allow your turning to originate from your central channel to drive the turning
of your hips and waist.)
• Not turning your torso or hips, but rather your head and arms.
Both of these will result in having the weight of your upper body concentrate
within your spine and/or knees, which basically tears them apart.
Best Practices
• Make sure that your hips and torso turn while maintaining your four
points. This ensures your torso is stable and that it rests stably on your
hips, so that when your waist turns, your hips turn and vice-versa.
The turning of the torso is best achieved by having your kwa (inguinal
crease), hips and body's centerline gel into one unit and using that unit
to generate and control the smooth turning of your torso.
• The body's centerline begins from the crown of your head and
descends on a straight line downward passing through your
nose, throat notch, heart center, belly button and lower
tantien, and finishes at your perineum. When turning
incorrectly, many practitioners begin by turning only their
head, which disconnects them from their body's centerline.
Avoid this and keep the connection between the centerline of
your head and the centerline of your torso as strong and stable
as possible.
• As with the turning of your arms the turning of your hips in the
beginning stages ideally comes from turning the outer muscles
of your waist, hips and legs. Developing this capacity can go
Figure 1.2.2
Keep Your Four Points Aligned
If the alignments of the centerline of your head, neck and torso and the four
points are kept together, the weight of your torso will stay inside your torso, on
top of your hips and legs, and will not as easily end up excessively pressurizing
the anatomical structures of your lower body.
Intent is of two kinds: the ordinary intellectual type or the extraordinary kind of
the Heart-Mind to be explained in Section 3. All forms of intent ultimately derive
either from ordinary intent or the Heart-Mind.
Ordinary intent is partial. It is derived from the part of our brain or mind that we
use to manipulate symbols or for logic and mathematics. It is the part of us we
use to activate force of will.
In the early stages of learning bagua, try to become aware of and then refine your
ordinary intent. The intent you should use in bagua and tai chi should always be
relaxed, fluid and continuous and not tense, forced or intermittent-reg ardless
of being employed for longer or shorter times.
Then, as you are presented with new bagua practices in the upcoming modules,
you can first learn them using the technique of turning the soft tissues of your
arms and legs when you are directed to twist them. Then, you can advance to
twisting when you feel you have the capacity to do so.
You will find that the instructions for the warm-up exercises in this module
and the unification exercises in Module 3 contain instructions for twisting your
tissues, but the instructions for straight-line walking and Circle Walking in the
first several modules do not. That is because it is best for you to first explore
turning and then twisting your tissues within the simpler warm-up and
unification exercises.
After you have gained some experience with turning and twisting, instructions
will be given in later modules to begin incorporating twisting into your straight-
line walking and Circle Walking practices.
For each bagua practice presented in the modules, the neigong tecniques most
appropriate for that practice will be discussed.
23
The specific ways in which opening-dosing is practiced includes all bodily joints
and cavities. Lengthening must be practiced in direct coordination with all of the
soft tissues as they relate to the body's yin and yang acupuncture surfaces. Both
are taught within my Marriage of Heaven and Earth core qigong program, which
I encourage you to study in order to learn the specific techniques that will be
referred to in these modules.
Opening-Closing
The I Ching places great emphasis on the essential actions of opening and
closing. Opening (kai in Chinese) means to expand outward from a point toward
a periphery. Closing (he in Chinese) means to collect or condense inward from
the edges of a periphery into a point. Opening-dosing is the essential middle
ground between what can be called the beginning and advanced methods of
bagua and tai chi. Without opening-dosing, the beginning practices cannot reach
their full potential. In all advanced chi practices, opening-dosing is the bedrock
foundation.
Opening-closing (also open-close) occurs not only within physical tissues, but
also within each of your eight energy bodies. Experientially, comprehending the
qualities of opening-closing is mandatory within the tenets of Taoist meditation
to understand the underlying nature that molds the matrix of manifestation. This
is what causes all yin and yang qualities to change into each other.
Health and martial internal power can be accessed through a detailed and
methodical learning process, which begins with opening-closing the energy of
all joints and bodily cavities. This process requires that you directly open-close
(expand and condense) all of the joints and cavities of the body on demand. This
must be achieved purely through intent alone without using muscular effort or
external movement. Later, the same is physically achieved with the vertebrae of
the spine, bones of the pelvis and plates of the skull.
Although this initially may seem difficult for many to even believe or accept,
masters and genuine advanced practitioners of Taoist qigong and internal
martial arts can easily demonstrate these capabilities on demand. It's possible
for many people to develop this ability with proper instruction and practice.
Over the centuries in China, opening-dosing has been successfully taught and
demonstrated by tens of thousands of people using Taoist qigong exercises that
are specifically designed for this purpose.
Initially, Circle Walking is practiced at a very slow pace, only just slightly
faster than the slow motion typically used in tai chi practice. This is meant to
synchronize the opening-closing of the joints with each step. Ultimately, it is
very important that with each step, the joints, kwa, entire abdomen, other bodily
cavities and spinal vertebrae also simultaneously open-close in a synchronized
manner.
Lengthening
First, the nerves are completely relaxed. This must be done before any attempt
is made to stretch the muscles and make them longer. Only after the nerves are
released should the body's muscles be asked to stretch as far as they can (within
your seventy percent). This must only be to the point where the relaxation re-
sponse is fully active and not beyond, where the relaxation response diminishes.
If any signals of tension enter the nerves, thereby creating even only a minor
sense of body resistance, stop.
Stage 2: In this stage, you learn to consciously activate, strengthen and balance
the chi naturally moving through your body's acupuncture meridians toward (via
your yin meridians) and away from (via your yang meridians) your lower tantien
(see Figure 1.4.1 ). To do this, your body must be sufficiently relaxed and either be
able to feel your chi (ideal) or at least have the sense of nerve flow moving within
your body. Only then can you lengthen your bodily tissues in coordination with
the moving of your chi, either toward or away from the lower tantien.
When you can lengthen this way, you will be able to:
• Activate the body surfaces and all the soft tissues within them,
where your yin and yang meridians flow-without any external
physical movement whatsoever.
• Activate the soft tissues and nerve flow within a yang or yin
body surface while leaving its corresponding opposite yin or
yang body surface essentially passive. This allows the chi in
the yin or yang meridian to flow most powerfully through the
tissues along its pathway. (This method is different from the
more common method of stretching by contracting one
muscle while releasing another.)
Y;mg
A B
Figure 1.4.1
Yin and Yang Meridians
The shaded areas are the body's yin acupuncture meridian surfaces (A) while
the white areas are the body's yang acupuncture meridian surfaces (B).
Although this type of lengthening may sound impossible to pull off, again it most
definitely is possible. However, it can only be done if a deep baseline of muscular
and nerve relaxation and sensitivity is developed to support it.
This is one of many reasons all Taoist practices emphasize continuity of physical
movement.
>> Now have your partner place their palms on both sides of your
arm. If you are activating a wave in the manner of this method, your
partner will feel clear movement on the outside yang side of your
arm and nothing on the inside (yin side) of your arm. Conversely, if
you haven't quite got it, your partner will fee/little or nothing on the
outside (yang ,side) of your upper and lower arm, palm and fingers. In
this case keep practicing within seventypercent of your current a bit v ...."'"""''-
Stage 3: This stage is unique to Taoist chi arts. In this advanced practice,
you will learn how to lengthen all parts of the body simultaneously as an
integrated whole. In sequential stretching, only a single part or multiple parts
lengthen while others are neglected. So, to lengthen as an integrated unit, you
will gradually expand the total number of yin and yang body surfaces that you
deliberately engage.
Initially, work only on the area of your yin and yang body surfaces where you
can get access to the protective chi of your body (called wei chi in Chinese
medicine). It lies not far beneath your skin. After your awareness opens
sufficiently, you'll gain greater access to the inside of your body and the sense of
moving chi through your wei chi.
Then, in three more stages and depths inside your body, you can repeat the
process until you are internally moving all of the soft tissues on your body's
yin and yang surfaces all the way to the bone. As you penetrate each deeper
layer, more surface layers above it normally become active, alive and pumping
chi through them. You might find you can move their soft tissues more strong-
ly and precisely with significantly less focused effort. Eventually, it will become
effortless.
As the chi lengthens, it must carry absolutely no iota of a sense of physical force
with it. This lack of force enables the body's deepest anatomical substructures to
unfold like a flower and creates the last bits of natural, possible and useful space
between them. The lack of force also mitigates potential imbalances in these
terribly important micro-spaces.
1. Lengthen the top of their body through their arms, neck and chest areas.
After they activate each progressive section of the body, the lengthening
continues and joins seamlessly with the body parts previously activated. Then,
they begin to work at the next depth within their bodies
IMPORTANT TERMS
Taoist qigong, bagua and tai chi traditionally use certain technical
terms all of which are interrelated. They partially but not fully
mirror each other to varying degrees. Often they are used inter-
changeably to describe different faces of the same phenomena:
• Opening-closing
• Shrinking-growing
• Bending-stretching
• Lengthening
To be more*precise, however, open-close is a subdivision or aspect of
the more e'rimary overarching internal principle of shrinking-grow-
ing. Lengthening is a subdivision of open-close. Bend-stretch is >>
One way to look at the difference between twisting and rotation is by wheth-
er the feeling of movement is primarily on the outside surface of the body or
within the deeper inside tissues. For example, in your arm if you feel the elbow
or shoulder joint move, but not the inside tissues nearby, that's rotation . Twisting
penetrates progressively more deeply into all of the soft tissues between the skin
and bone, so they feel like they are being wrung as you might a rubber band or
towel. The deeper the twist goes toward (but definitely not into) the bone, the
stronger the sensation.
SAFETY NOTE: Twisting into the bone is never practiced in bagua, tai chi, or
hsing-i. Remember to only twist soft tissues and not inside the bones or joints them-
selves, either when twisting or spiraling. Never twist deeper into your waist or legs
than you can do easily with your arms. In fact, going deeper than superficial twisting
is best done only under the guidance of a master or well-trained instructor.
Spiraling
Chi travels through the human body in spirals not straight lines. Spiraling is
how circularity universally manifests as spirals seamlessly join and continue the
motion between two independent circles.
The spirals of chi that exist within you power and connect to each other through
bodily structures, such as the center of the joints, spinal vertebrae, internal
organs and glands.
Some basic assumptions that govern all Taoist chi practices will help you to
better understand spiraling.
Spiraling of chi begins from multiple centers deep within the body. From there,
it connects moving through the layers of the body to other energies that bring it
to the body's periphery. It returns from the periphery to its centers of origination
in unending cycles.
Three examples:
As the spiral moves, so do the physical structures. They both come into being
at the level of matter and the quantum field. Spiraling generates the body's
ability to physically move, either in terms of micro-anatomical movements
(e.g., internal organs, glands and blood vessels) or gross physical, motor
movement, such as Walking the Circle.
When you practice spiraling techniques, you are essentially trying to tie into and
awaken the naturally occurring energy spirals already moving in your body.
There are other examples in nature of spiraling. At the subatomic level, two
protons always circle each other effectively creating spiraling energy. Internal
organs have a tiny (which can be perceived by trained human touch), self-
generated natural spiraling motion called "motility" by visceral osteopaths.
When babies first learn how to move, they do so with spiraling motions. While
lying down, they spiral as they shift side to side. When they begin to crawl, they
do not move their hands in a linear fashion, one hand in front of the other, but by
rotating, spiraling and twisting their arms and legs to propel them forward.
Chi constantly spirals up from the Earth and down from the heavens. The
question is not if it's happening, but whether an individual can use (or borrow)
the natural spiraling energies of the universe to enhance the functioning of their
own body, mind and spiritual essence.
For example, if your shoulder tissues twist outward (including those around your
shoulder blade and your deltoid and latissima dorsal muscles), those around your
elbow simultaneously twist inward. Your upper arm muscles also twist as the
tissues around your wrist and palm yet again twist outward with the muscles of
your forearm. Vice-versa, if your shoulder tissues twist inward, those around your
elbow twist outward and those near your wrist and palm inwards.
Remember to only twist soft tissues and not inside the bones or joints themselves.
There are two basic ways of turning a cylinder, i.e. your torso and waist. You can
turn the outside of the cylinder's circumference, i.e. the beginning method of
turning from your waist, hips and legs. Or, you can turn the cylinder from its
central axis, which runs the length of the cylinder in its exact center, i.e. your
central channel.
Any cylinder (human torso and head) has a top and a bottom and a central core
that runs through the exact middle of the cylinder (your central channel).
Imagine if a thread or tiny rod goes through the middle of the cylinder and is
fused into its center. Imagine that this rod also extends out the top and bottom
of the cylinder (to your arms and legs). If this thread, line or rod (central channel)
is turned, so too must the whole cylinder (torso) follow and turn.
The location of your body's central channel of energy goes from your perineum
through the crown of your head exactly in the middle of your head, neck and
torso in the dead center between the front, back and sides of your body.
At first, the turning of the central channel feels more like a rod inside the center of
your torso. However, with time and progress, its sensation becomes progressively
thinner and lighter. As it becomes thinner the coordination between the turning
of your central channel and torso, your limbs also becomes progressively tighter.
Eventually, it centers in the bone marrow of your legs and arms.
At each stage, you refine the central channel as the source of turning your torso
and limbs. This activates the neigong flows in your body in ever-stronger ways
with seamless effort.
When turning from the central channel, the four points must be aligned. Go back
to turning from the waist and hip method if you're not able to maintain the four
points. This will ensure that you do not excessively twist or torque the vertebrae
of your spine, nor cause excessive pressures and pulls to occur at the base of your
neck. You can restrict blood flow to and from your brain if you lose your four-
points alignments.
Part of this central channel cylinder turning is making sure your feet remain
stable, still and grounded. They should not wiggle or wobble. If they do, turn-
ing from the central channel can cause untoward and potentially destabilizing
effects to happen inside your internal organs or joints of your lower body. This
is so because anatomical connections between your legs, pelvis and internal
organs can bind inside your internal organs. If this is the case for you, then turn-
ing from the central channel inside your internal organs can negatively pull on all
the physical attachments that go into your pelvis and legs.
Another aspect of central channel turning is that the smaller the bagua circle
walked or the tighter the central channel movement in tai chi, the greater the
pressure will be on and in your internal organs. This is good and bad news.
If you're a healthy genetic specimen, then regardless you may be strong enough
to withstand problems. However, if you're not as genetically fit as you think you
are, you can go overboard and hurt yourself. This is the problem all athletes have
in training. The questions are: How much can I train? Am I overtraining?
In more advanced practices that use the Bagua Dragon Body, it becomes
possible to turn from the central channel and segment the lower, middle and
upper parts of the torso in a way that paradoxically and simultaneously keeps
them connected and unified. However, it requires twisting deep within the inside
of your abdomen and internal organs, which can be rather fierce.
This method is specifically not shown in this text for fear of misunderstand-
ing and someone going off half-cocked and hurting themselves. A competent
instructor, ideally a master, should teach you the Bagua Dragon Body in person.
Heart-Mind
(Neigong Components# 15-# 16)
All motions of chi in bagua and tai chi should originate in and be directed by the
intent of the mind. As discussed in Section 2, in Taoism the level of the mind
deeper than ordinary intent is known by many names, including the"Heart-Mind:'
The Heart-Mind's intent comes from a much more expanded area of human
potential. Although its source is yet unknown to scientists, it is commonly
referred to in Eastern traditions by such names as "mind;' "spirit" and
"consciousness:' Whether its source is the brain or something else is an age-
old debate that has raged for thousands of years. In the East and West, the
relationship of matter and spirit has been in question as well as what
distinguishes the conscious from the unconscious mind and if the mind
continues after death.
What can be said is that ordinary intent is partial; the Heart-Mind-if not
complete-is definitely a quantum leap beyond ordinary intent. The Heart-
Mind is a powerful door for becoming conscious of what is going on in the
unconscious mind. It is the place from which "real time" (as it is called in China's
Taoist tradition) or "Fourth time" (as it is called in the Buddhist and Hindu Indian
traditions) arises.
Reverse Breathing
(Neigong Component # 1)
During reverse breathing, your abdomen closes or shrinks on the inhale and
opens or grows on the exhale. This is the opposite of what is practiced in regular
breathing, where your abdomen expands (grows or opens) on the inhale and
condenses (shrinks or closes) on the exhale.
The methods of even basic reverse breathing, however, are far more complex
than just directing which way your belly moves with your inhales and exhales. To
practice reverse breathing, you must become aware of and be able to control the
movement of the soft tissues, joints and cavities of your arms, legs, head, neck
and spine as well as your internal organs.
Reverse breathing has two basic yet complete methods: vertical breathing and
center-to-periphery breathing. These are best not introduced or practiced in
bagua training until you are well into training energy postures or the Single Palm
Change. The two methods of complete reverse breathing will be explained in
later modules as appropriate.
From an external perspective, moving from your core is about using your
stomach, lower back muscles and possibly thigh muscles to move. In bagua and
tai chi, moving from your core has a slightly expanded meaning.
This sense of connected pressure, which derives from the sense of fluids
moving within your body, is different from how most people normally feel
muscles moving. Few people can do it except super athletes who train to feel all
their muscles moving at once.
The process is similar to how water pressure can move within a balloon.
Connected Pressure
Take a balloon and fill it close to the top with water, tie it off and hold its top and
bottom steady. Next, squeeze the water in it as your hand gradually inches up the
balloon. In this way, you can feel the pressure of the water changing inside the
balloon. This pressure change will mimic the feeling of moving from your core in
the four previous ways just mentioned and is usually experienced in two basic
ways.
Initially, your goal with any bagua practice should be to coordinate the
continuous moving into and out of your core with any bend-stretch (retraction-
extension) movements of your arms and legs.
Then, something else occurs: After a sufficiently long developmental period, this
internal pressure and moving into and out of your core fuses into a continuous,
unbroken presence in your conscious mind. Within that continuous, very present
and still awareness, the internal movement from your core continues to move
in-out.
This basic principle incorporates using all functions of your energy channels. It is
important to recognize that the flow of chi within every energy channel within
you goes in both directions-regardless of the path and direction the chi travels.
Signals travel seamlessly in both directions, similar to speaking on a telephone or
using wireless devices. Over time, the connecting awareness inside you will easily
and seamlessly allow multiple energetic actions simultaneously without strain.
For tai chi practitioners, this ingredient is another of the subtle meanings from an
important statement in the Tai Chi Classics about internal power: From posture to
posture [movement to movement] the internal energy is unbroken.
the I Ching are realistically downloaded into a human being's psyche or inner life.
Part of creating an elastic body is getting all the body's fascia to not only move
freely and easily, but incredibly elastic like a great rubber band moving (length-
ening in and out). This is a quality all babies have and it's incredible to observe.
People love to playfully pull their hands, arms and legs and watch them shrink
back like a rubber band. All Taoist chi practices seek to recreate this quality inside
a human being.
Elasticity positively affects and moves all the associated tissue related to making
the joints strong and keeping them flexible. Greater body elasticity also keeps
the synovial fluid inside joints moving. When the joints lose elasticity, you can get
negative problems, such as:
• Arthritis.
Simply put, all of the problems of aging can be accelerated-even for people as
young as their teens-as the body loses its elastic quality.