Precepts of Practice: Principles, Pointers, and Precautions
In a word, the guiding principle in chi-gung practice is ‘Tao’, the ‘Way’ of nature and the universe. The natural order and universal laws which govern the movements of stars and planets, the cyclic rounds of season and time, the blow of wind and flow of water, the wax and wane of the moon and tides, also prevail within the microcosmic universe of the human body, regulating its ‘rivers’ of blood and ‘winds’ of breath, moulding its ‘mountains’ of flesh and ‘minerals’ of bone, and turning the wheels of growth and decay, life and death. Chi-gung provides a convenient and effective way through which Humanity may harmonize itself with the powers of Heaven (cosmos) and Earth (nature), thereby restoring the primordial balance which the artifice of civilized life so easily upsets. The more technologically advanced human beings become, the further they fall from grace with nature. While there’s nothing an individual can do to reverse the course taken by human civilization as a whole, anyone can easily re-establish his or her own personal primordial link with nature and the cosmos simply by practising chi-gung.
According to traditional Chinese views on health, all disease and degeneration in the body can ultimately be traced to basic imbalances of energy. Therefore, the way to cure, as well as prevent, disease and decay is to restore and maintain natural balance in the human energy system. Chi-gung does that by establishing harmonic resonance between one’s personal energy field and the greater energy fields of nature and the cosmos, either through individual practice or by transmission of emitted energy from a master. This brings the natural order and balance of the universe into the disordered, imbalanced human system. It’s a basic fact of life that whenever some part of the human system loses synchronicity with its macrocosmic counterparts in nature and no longer follows the patterns ordained by the creative template of the universe, health will suffer, vitality is sapped and the natural order of life is disrupted. The only way to correct this situation is to relink the imbalanced energy system of the ailing individual to the naturally balanced energies of more powerful fields and to restore the internal landscape of the body according to the universal patterns of nature. This is precisely what chi-gung does.
While the methodology of chi-gung revolves upon the rhythmic coordination of body and breath, balance and posture, inhalation and exhalation, the main agent involved in practice is the mind. It’s the mind that brings body and breath together in chi-gung, and it’s the mind that brings the universal Tao of nature and the cosmos into the personal realm of the individual human system. In order to do this, the mind must over-rule many objections from the ego and the emotions, which are accustomed to commandeering human energies for their own peculiar purposes – purposes that are almost always counterproductive to health, longevity and spiritual development. To prevent the ego and emotions from plundering energy and distracting attention during practice, it helps to keep in mind some of the most important principles of balance and harmony that define the Tao and use them as guidelines for working with energy in chi-gung.
Guiding Principles of Balance and Harmony
Movement and Stillness
Movement and stillness are the complementary poles of mobility, the Yin and Yang of motion. One of the most basic precepts of chi-gung practice is to find the perfect balance, the ultimate equilibrium between movement and stillness. To do this, one must ‘seek movement within stillness’ and ‘seek stillness within movement’. Integrating movement and stillness is a primary principle in all styles of chi-gung practice, for somewhere between the state of motion and immobility, action and inaction, change and continuity, there is a precise point of perfect balance and harmony in which form and function merge. Indeed, modern physics informs us that actually there is no such state as absolute stillness, for all phenomena and objects ultimately boil down to energy oscillating in polar fields. Thus, what we seek in chi-gung is the ideal degree of oscillation, the perfect pulse that tunes the human rhythms of body, breath and mind in a harmonious chord of unity and balances them with the universal rhythms of nature and the cosmos.
In the internal, or ‘soft’ style, school of Chinese martial arts, the fusion of internal stillness with external movement is the key to generating power, for stillness and serenity of spirit are prerequisites for mind to exercise complete command over energy as the body moves.
Internal and External
When practising chi-gung, it’s important to bear in mind the close links between internal and external. In the ordinary view, our physical bodies form a very clear, concrete boundary between our ‘insides’ and the outside world, but from the chi-gung point of view, there is no precise border between the human energy system and external energy fields, because all energy fields intersect and interact. Furthermore, the human energy system as a whole constitutes a microcosmic replica of the greater force fields of nature and the cosmos, and the human system therefore responds by harmonic resonance to the vibrant forces of greater systems. In fact, one of the most effective ways to rebalance the human energy system with chi-gung is to establish harmonic resonance between the internal energies of the human system and the external energies of nature and the cosmos.
Another way chi-gung works to link and balance internal and external factors is to mentally ‘exercise’ the invisible network of energy meridians on the inside by physically exercising the body and breath on the outside. The external physical body thus becomes an avenue of access for working with and balancing the internal energy body, and the balance of internal energies in turn determines the health and functional vitality of external physical parts. The internal alchemy of essence, energy and spirit may be catalysed and controlled externally by balancing body, breath and mind with chi-gung. However, since energy, not matter, is the basic ‘active ingredient’ in the internal alchemy of chi-gung, internal and external factors are integral elements of practice that intersect and constantly interact, and therefore they cannot be separated.
Finding the Centre
For something to have balance, it must have a centre to serve as the point of balance. In the human system, the central point of balance for the body as well as for energy is the so-called ‘lower elixir field’ (dan-tien) or ‘sea of energy’ (chi-hai), located in the lower abdomen, just below and behind the navel. Anatomically, this point is located precisely in the middle of the triangle formed by drawing a line between the navel and the Gate of Life directly opposite the navel on the spine, with the other two lines drawn from the navel and the Gate of Life down to the Yin Confluence point at the perineum. In terms of energy, however, the entire lower digestive tract, including the large and small intestines, constitutes the centre of balance for the human system, for these tissues have a great capacity to store energy.
The integration of proper posture, rhythmic bodily movement and deep abdominal breathing in chi-gung all depend on focused awareness of directional equilibrium in the body – top and bottom, front and back, left and right. All these axes of balance in chi-gung find their true centre in the lower dan-tien, and all postures and motions used in moving exercises revolve upon this point of balance, while in still forms of practice this point constitutes the central foundation of stability in all meditation postures. One reason that it’s so important to develop a strong, stable Horse stance (Fig. 11) for standing practice is to ensure that the bulk of weight in the body is supported by the thighs, thereby allowing the pelvis and sacrum, which house the centre of balance, to swivel and shift freely in all directions during practice to maintain constant directional equilibrium.
Soft, Slow and Smooth
These three words sum up the essential qualities of chi-gung exercise. Softness (rou) has always been regarded as a quintessential quality of the Tao. As the Tao Teh Ching states:
Nothing under heaven is more yielding than water;
But when it attacks things hard and resistant,
There is not one of them that can prevail.
That the yielding conquers the resistant
And the soft conquers the hard
Is a fact known by all men,
But utilized by none.
The power of softness is the foundation of the internal or ‘soft’ styles of Chinese martial arts, which overcome the brute power of hard muscle with the irresistible force of soft, supple energy. Again, the Tao Teh Ching clarifies this point:
The ten thousand creatures and all plants and trees
Are supple and soft in life,
But brittle and dry in death.
Truly, to be stiff and hard is the way of death;
To be soft and supple is the way of life.
In physical terms, to be soft in practice means to be completely relaxed (sung). Energy channels open and energy flows freely through them only in those parts of the body that are kept completely relaxed. Any sort of tension immediately reduces the flow of energy to that part of the body. Keeping everything very slow (man) is one way to help maintain a soft, relaxed state. Another reason for slow-motion movements in chi-gung is to keep the body in tune with the rise and fall of breath, which becomes very deep, long and slow during practice. Slow deliberate movements also foster mental concentration and synchronize the whole system with the deep, low-frequency pulse of the earth, which vibrates at 7.8 hertz (cycles/second), much slower than the human system normally oscillates in ordinary daily activity. When it comes to chi-gung practice, truly it is said, ‘Haste makes waste!’
Smooth (sun) rhythmic movement is the third parameter of chi-gung exercise. Like the planets orbiting the sun and the moon revolving around the earth, like cats walking and fish swimming, all movements in chi-gung are performed with a seamless smoothness in which one step leads naturally to the next, without apparent effort and no hurry. Abrupt, choppy movements and sudden changes of pace have no place in chi-gung practice, for they impede the free flow and smooth transitions of energy which chi-gung is designed to induce.
Balancing Body, Breath, and Mind Together
Body, breath and mind are the temporal manifestations of primordial essence, energy and spirit, and by bringing these three postnatal aspects of human existence into balance, chi-gung induces a similar balance on the primordial level. Balancing the body is the easiest of the three balancing acts, because it’s the most concrete. It’s done by performing a series of loosening and stretching exercises that completely relaxes the body, stimulates circulation and opens the energy channels. Balancing the breath is a matter of learning how to breathe properly, so that the breath becomes deep, long, slow and even and is driven by the diaphragm rather than the chest. When the breath is balanced, all the other vital functions of the body follow suit.
But balancing the mind is a somewhat more difficult and subtle task, because there is nothing tangible with which to work. So the best way to balance the mind is to focus attention fully on balancing body and breath. First of all, it’s important to realize that the mind ‘breathes’ too. Rather than breathing air, or energy, however, the mind breathes thoughts and feelings, which rise and fall as ceaselessly as waves on the ocean. So the first step in balancing the mind is simply to recognize thoughts and feelings for what they really are – the natural breath of awareness – and to let them pass without trying to hold on to them or becoming distracted by them.
Trying to suppress thoughts, or hold on to them, is just like trying to hold your breath: it throws your whole system off balance and impedes the free flow of energy. If you pay no particular attention to thoughts, they simply appear and disappear naturally, like clouds in the sky or bubbles in soda water. It’s your attention that gives thoughts their power to distract your mind and throw your energy system off balance, so the best way to prevent that is to keep your attention occupied by focusing it on the various points of balance in posture, movement and breath, while simply letting thoughts and feelings rise and fall like waves on a distant ocean, far in the background of your mental landscape.
Sacrum and Cerebrum
Throughout our discussion of chi-gung, as well as in all the traditional Chinese literature on the subject, there appears frequent mention of the lower elixir field in the sacrum and the upper elixir field in the brain, but very little mention of the middle elixir field in the solar plexus. All forms of chi-gung, moving as well as still, focus attention on refining energy from the sacrum and then raising it up the spine to the head to nurture spiritual vitality. The middle elixir field rarely comes into the picture.
There is good reason for this. The lower elixir field houses the basic energies and instincts of nature, such as the appetite for food, our survival instincts and sexual drive. In the microcosm of the human system, the sacrum represents the power of Earth. The upper elixir field in the brain is the seat of prenatal spiritual awareness, the postnatal mind and the various cerebral functions, all of which represent the power of Heaven in the human system. The middle elixir field, located just below the heart, houses the unique consciousness of Humanity, including the ego, the emotions and all the complexities of human nature. Inscriptions found on 2000-year-old jade tablets in China state, ‘Celestial energy is activated above, the terrestrial energy below’. Sacrum and cerebrum are the seats of terrestrial and celestial energies in the human body, and the microcosmic counterparts of Earth and Heaven within the human system, while the solar plexus is the seat of the energies of Humanity (emotions and ego).
Sexual energy – as well as all of the basic animal energies of the sacrum – are by nature primordially pure, and therefore they do not cause any problems as long as they remain properly balanced and are expressed naturally. Problems arise only when these energies come under the control of our emotions and ego, which use them for all sorts of deviant, often dangerous, purposes that often prove counterproductive to health and longevity. When this happens, our emotions rob us of these powerful energies and cause havoc in our lives, and our minds must then deal with the messy problems our egos create in our lives and in our relationships whenever they’re allowed to co-opt these lower energies. Our physical senses (‘Five Thieves’) and emotions (‘Chief Hooligan’) steal our power and waste it on activities that ruin our health, shorten our lives and obscure our spiritual awareness, leading us into temptation that can land us in prison, put us in the hospital or bury us in an early grave.
Nevertheless, a tremendous amount of our potential power is stored in the sacral energies, especially sexual energy, and this power, if properly transformed and utilized through internal energy work, can be used to preserve health, prolong life and provide a big boost on the path of spiritual development. Nature deliberately designed sexual energy with so much power in order to ensure the eternal self-propagation of the species, and there is no higher power in the universe than the power to generate life. Taoists have known for a long time that sexual energy, for better or for worse, is the most powerful force in the human energy system, and therefore they developed practices to harness this power for health, longevity and spiritual development, and to prevent it from driving us to act in ways that are counterproductive to these goals.
Sheer suppression of sexuality and other basic drives, as is the custom in so many religious orders, not only produces pent-up emotional frustration that can suddenly erupt like a volcano, it also deprives the individual of his or her greatest source of power. Chi-gung practices were thus designed to draw the energies of the sacrum into circulation in the Governing Channel that runs up the spine, transform them into higher forms of energy, and guide them into the upper elixir field in the head to nurture spiritual vitality. The middle elixir field is usually bypassed in this upward movement of energy from sacrum to cerebrum to avoid inflaming the emotions and diverting this powerful energy to the deviant purposes of the ego.
However, when sacral energy enters general circulation in the channels of the human energy system, sooner or later it is bound to reach the middle elixir field, but not until its Fire has first been cooled and refined into Water in the upper elixir field in the head. This is how it works: sacral energy is first drawn up the spine directly into the head, bypassing the middle elixir field in the solar plexus; in the process of raising and refining this energy, the Fire of sexual and other lower energies is converted into the Water of spiritual energy. Having passed through the upper elixir field to nurture spirit, this Water energy is then brought back down the front of the body via the Conception Channel to the lower elixir field, and en route it passes through the middle elixir field in the solar plexus. Having already been refined into Water, this energy no longer inflames the emotions with raw sexual passion, aggression and other animal instincts, nor does it tempt the ego with lust. Instead, it has a balancing, calming and spiritually uplifting influence on this volatile emotional energy centre.
Human emotions certainly have their role in life, particularly in personal relationships, and the ego is the individual’s only identification tag in society. But if they are allowed to take command of the body’s arsenal of lower energies, without guidance from the higher wisdom of spirit, they invariably end up causing trouble for ourselves as well as others. Hence one of the major precepts of balance and harmony in chi-gung is to place the powerful energies of the sacrum under the firm command of the cerebrum, so that they may be used for positive purposes such as spiritual development. As spiritual power grows stronger through this practice, the mind’s command over the body’s lower energies also grows progressively stronger, making it ever easier to control them. We need all the energy we can muster in life, particularly for higher spiritual practices, so no one can really afford to waste these lower energies. That’s why it’s so important to refine and recycle them with the internal alchemy of energy work, and to keep them from falling prey to the ‘Five Thieves’ and ‘Chief Hooligan’.
Primacy of Energy
All balance and harmony in the universe is achieved on the level of energy. It’s the balance of nuclear forces that keeps atoms and molecules bound together to form matter, electromagnetic forces that determine stability and change when polar fields intersect and interact, and the state of balance in the human energy system that governs physical and mental health. Physics tell us that all forms of matter ultimately boil back down to energy oscillating at various frequencies, while metaphysics reveals that energy is also the primary element through which mind manifests its command over matter and expresses its creative power. Energy is therefore the most fundamental element in the universe, the basic building block of all matter, and the functional bridge between body and mind.
The internal school of Chinese martial arts has an old maxim, ‘Use four ounces of strength to topple a thousand pounds of weight’. This is the essential principle of balance involved in Tai Chi Chuan, Pa Kua, Judo and Aikido. When energy is properly balanced and correctly applied, only a very small amount is needed to deflect the oncoming force of very large objects. The same principle applies in internal alchemy: when internal energy is properly balanced and circulated, it can overcome any obstacles in the physical body, dissolve hard tumours, restructure damaged tissues, and restore normal vital functions. Energy is an extremely efficient tool for repairing the physical body, and it becomes even more powerful when the light of conscious awareness is focused on it during practice.
Integration
Integration is a key precept of balance and harmony at all levels of chi-gung practice. Rather than separating everything into different branches, chi-gung tries to effect an overall integration of all the factors and forces involved in practice. Thus the Three Treasures of essence, energy and spirit and their temporal manifestations in body, breath and mind are all integrated through chi-gung practice in a unified state of functional balance and harmony, and that state in turn is integrated with the rhythmic pulse of nature and the cyclic transformations of the cosmos. Sexual energy, which in some spiritual traditions is spurned and segregated from practice, is also integrated into the mainstream of internal energy work in Chinese chi-gung, thereby harnessing its formidable power for health, longevity and higher spiritual purposes. Practice extends from meditation, breathing and exercise to diet and sex, work and play, integrating every aspect of daily life with the same basic principles of balance and harmony that prevail in the main practices.
When you harness the power of the universe with chi-gung, you are working with the same fundamental force that animates every living organism and the same elemental energy that produces stars and galaxies, atoms and molecules. The only way to tap into that power is to step beyond the limited confines of what one usually regards as the individual ‘self’ and fully integrate all aspects of your being with their macrocosmic sources in the universe. To do this, you must breathe not just with your body but also with your mind, then expand your breath to breathe with the entire planet and the whole universe. That’s integration.
Important Points of Practice
When practising chi-gung, the following points may serve as general guidelines to derive maximum benefit from your practice and keep body, breath and mind in the state of balance and functional harmony required to amplify and regulate the human energy system with the power of the universe.
General Points
1. Always practise in the three-stage format of warm-up, main practice and cool-down. The warm-up stage balances body, breath and mind in preparation for the main practice of mobilizing and circulating energy, and the cool-down stage collects and stores the energy in the lower elixir field centre in the abdomen. If you practise without adequate preliminary preparation, your system will not be properly balanced to work with energy, and if you fail to take measures to collect and store the energy you’ve generated, much of the energy will scatter and be lost.
2. Make your practice an integral part of your daily routine, and practise regularly. If you only practise sporadically, your channels will not stay open, and your system will lose its synchronicity with nature and the cosmos. Only with regular practice will you obtain the cumulative benefits which chi-gung confers. Even if you only have time to practise for 15 to 20 minutes, as long as you do it daily you will still realize the benefits, albeit at a slower rate than one who devotes more time to practice.
3. Chi-gung is not a ‘magic bullet’ that will immediately correct all problems, especially in an unbalanced lifestyle. It works best when practised as an integral part of the overall healthcare system known in Taoist tradition as yang-sheng dao, the ‘Tao of Cultivating Life’. This includes diet, sexual discipline, judicious use of herbal and nutritional supplements, a positive attitude towards life, emotional equilibrium, and other factors that support health and nurture life. Trying to use chi-gung to counteract the ill-effects of poor dietary habits, reckless sexual activities, and other negligent behaviour that ruins health and shortens life is like trying to ‘make merit’ by giving money once a week in a temple or church, then going right back out and doing the very same things you’re trying to compensate for with your donation. Practised within the context of a supporting programme that cultivates every aspect of life, chi-gung is the most powerful tool in the entire yang-sheng arsenal. Without that context, it’s only a device for delaying the inevitable ill-effects of self-destructive habits.
4. Don’t bring the problems of your daily life into your practice, but do bring the results of your practice into your daily life. This will gradually solve all of your problems and integrate all aspects of your life with your practice.
Points of Attention for the Body
1. The spine is the most important part of the body for chi-gung practice. Known as the ‘Stairway to Heaven’, it serves as a conduit for the lower energies of the sacrum (Earth) to rise to the higher energy centres in the brain (Heaven). It’s the central pillar of balance for the entire torso and head and the conductor of nerve signals from brain to body. For best results in practice, the spine should always be kept erect and in straight alignment with the neck and head, with the buttocks tucked in a bit to reduce the curvature in the lower spine. Try to keep the spine flexible and responsive to synchronized movement with the rest of the body by relaxing the muscles along the spine and keeping the vertebrae evenly aligned. Limbering and loosening the spine is one of the main purposes of the warm-up stage of practice.
2. The tensest part of the human body is usually the shoulders and neck area. Tension here blocks the free flow of energy up from the spine into the head, which in turn ‘short-circuits’ the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Orbit circulations (see Figs. 18 and 19). Try to keep the shoulders loose and the neck muscles relaxed throughout a session of chi-gung practice, even if that requires you to take a short break and perform one of the shoulder-loosening warm-up exercises.
3. The tongue is the bridge that links the terminals of the Governing and Conception Channels at their junction in the roof of the mouth. These channels, which conduct the Microcosmic Orbit of energy circulation, meet just below the nose, so by keeping the tongue lightly pressed to the palate behind the upper teeth, it forms a bridge for internal energy to flow down from the head to the throat and chest and onward down to the lower abdomen.
4. Whatever clothing one wears during chi-gung practice becomes functionally part of one’s body. Synthetic fibres such as nylon and polyester tend to serve as insulators, blocking the free flow of energy along the surface of the body and impeding the exchange of energy between the human system and external energy fields. Natural fibres such as cotton, wool and particularly silk are good conductors of energy, and therefore all clothing worn during chi-gung practice should be made of such natural fibres. The other aspect of clothing that influences energy work is colour. Dark, heavy colours such as black, brown and grey tend to hold energy, thereby impairing free flow, whereas light, bright colours such as white, sky blue, pink, light green, purple and yellow allow energy to move freely. White has always been the traditional colour of choice among yogis in India as well as martial artists in China because it reflects and transmits energy. If you want to maximize the movement of energy in your practice, always wear light colours, never black.
5. Remove all metal objects from your body before practice, such as watches, bracelets and necklaces. A small ring or two won’t interfere much, although it’s better to remove them, too. Metal has a tendency to hold energy, so if you’re wearing metal around your neck or wrists, where energy flow is strong, the metal will draw it into its own matrix and reduce the flow available to your system. As for watches, even when you’re not practising you should never wear a quartz crystal watch, because the high-frequency oscillations in the crystal mechanism throw the natural oscillations of human energy off balance, particularly along the wrists, where energy pulses are especially sensitive. Traditional mechanical winding watches do not cause such problems.
6. Always practise on an empty stomach and empty bladder, and if your bowels feel full, try to empty them as well before practice, although it’s not essential to do so. Practising on a full stomach is counterproductive because much of the body’s energy is preoccupied with digestive duty in the stomach, and this could also cause indigestion. If the bladder is full during practice, it will cause uncomfortable pressure, particularly since it is located right in the middle of the lower elixir field. Conversely, it’s best not to eat any solid food for about an hour after a practice session, so that the energy you’ve collected has a chance to get properly settled in the energy centres and channels, rather than be diverted prematurely to digestive duty. Similarly, try not to empty your bladder for at least 20 minutes after a session (another good reason to do so before), because some of the energy collected during practice will initially settle into the bladder’s urinary fluids, due to their high content of electrolyte minerals, so if you urinate immediately after a session, you’ll lose a measure of energy. Within half an hour, however, the energy is transformed and drawn into the reservoirs of the major channels and centres.
7. Chi-gung practice tends to stimulate secretion of beneficial saliva from the ducts below the tongue, but it can also cause you to cough up phlegm from the bronchial tubes. It’s important to distinguish between the two, and only spit out phlegm and mucus, which are waste products, but swallow the clear watery saliva that collects beneath the tongue. This saliva has very potent healing properties and enhances digestive functions in the stomach. It also contains vital essence in the form of enzymes, which are meant to be kept within the system.
8. When practising moving exercises, always pace the body to the rhythm established by the breath, not the other way around. In the beginning stages of practice, before the breath has grown deep and slow, you’ll find yourself moving faster, whereas later, when your breathing has deepened to only four or five breaths per minute, your body should be moving proportionately slower. There is no predetermined proper pace for the physical movements of the body in chi-gung. Instead, they should closely follow the pace established by the breath, which in turn is determined by the mind.
9. Keep the body in balance at all times by using the navel as a point of reference for maintaining directional equilibrium.
Points of Attention for the Breath
1. Make your breath as silent as possible. This requires breathing to be done softly and slowly, without excessive effort or haste. As the 4th-century AD alchemist and writer Ko Hung states, ‘Everyone should make it their aim that their own ears might not hear the sound of either inhalation or exhalation’.
2. Air should flow in and out of the nostrils in a very fine stream, like a silent gentle breeze. It should not come in sudden gusts or rough choppy waves, nor should it be coarse and heavy. As Ko Hung stipulates, ‘One should suspend the feather of a wild goose in front of the nose and mouth so that the feather might not stir while the breath is being expelled’.
3. Both inhalation and exhalation should be very slow. This requires close attention to the breathing process with a calm, quiet mind. If you’re in a hurry to finish your practice, your breathing will accelerate its pace in accordance with your intention, so try to suspend time during actual practice. The slower your breathing becomes, the slower your body moves in harmony with breath, and the stronger your energy will flow through the channels.
4. Make each breath as deep as possible, but without exerting excessive effort on inhalation. Forcing the breath to fill the lungs causes the shoulders to hunch and the neck muscles to tense and also makes the breath rise up to the top of the lungs. As air streams into the bottom of the lungs on inhalation, let it push the diaphragm down into the abdomen to allow maximum expansion of the lungs.
5. Inhalation and exhalation should both be as long as possible. You may progressively increase the length of each breath by gradually breathing more slowly and deeply, and by keeping your mind focused on your breathing.
6. Like all aspects of chi-gung practice, the breath should also be soft. The way to keep your breathing soft is to keep the diaphragm, ribcage and throat completely relaxed. Any sort of tension in the breathing apparatus tightens the breath.
7. The entire breathing process should be continuous. Each stage should flow smoothly into the next, without interruption, like the swinging pendulum of a clock. Compression and intermission should occur as brief natural pauses that do not cause the next inhalation or exhalation to come in a fast gust.
8. The inhalation and exhalation stages should be as even as possible. To breathe evenly, the mind must be calm and quiet and the emotions must be completely pacified.
9. Achieve the above eight qualities of breath gradually. It takes time for the diaphragm and ribcage to expand sufficiently to allow deep diaphragmic breathing. As your practice progresses, you should aim for an average breathing rate of four to five breaths per minute.
10. When it comes to chi-gung practice, ‘silence is golden’. Try not to speak to anyone during a practice session, because speech disrupts the smooth flow of internal energy, diverting it to the throat and thereby scattering energy. If you absolutely must speak during a session, at least be sure not to interrupt a breath to do so. First complete the entire breath through exhalation and intermission, place both palms over your navel to keep your energy centred in the lower elixir field while you talk, then speak very calmly and slowly, with minimum breath and as few words as possible.
Points of Attention for the Mind
1. Turn mental attention and sensory perception inwards. Rather than listening to external sounds, listen to your breath and heart. Don’t let external sights and sounds distract your attention during a practice session. Energy follows the mind, so if you keep your attention focused inwardly, energy will collect internally. If you let external distractions draw your attention outward, energy will pour out with it.
2. Silence the human mind by turning off your ‘internal dialogue’. This does not mean the cessation of thoughts and feelings, which continue to appear and dissolve on their own accord. Just stop talking to yourself about particular thoughts, and instead let the stream of consciousness flow naturally in the background of your mind. Intent is the master of the mind: intend your attention to focus on body and breath instead of thoughts, and that’s what it will do.
3. Set all problems and worries of daily life aside prior to a practice session. Emotional equilibrium is a basic prerequisite for success in practice.
4. Cultivate the ‘Right Mind’ for practice. This means having respect and confidence in your practice, but no preconceived notions about it, and no grand expectations regarding results. Practise persistently and diligently without seeking any particular rewards.
5. Do not harbour any doubts about the validity of the teachings or the efficacy of the practices after you have taken up chi-gung. Any doubts you might have should be addressed through reading or teachers prior to accepting chi-gung into your life. Doubt is a tactical weapon the ego uses to undermine confidence in any idea or practice that threatens the ego’s dominant command over mind. As your practice progresses and spiritual awareness develops, the ego’s importance diminishes, so sometimes the ego tries to defend its position by sowing doubts about ideas and practices that your higher self has already verified and accepted. The most common grounds for such doubt are excessive expectations that have not been met, so by eliminating all expectations from your mind, you leave no grounds for the ego to plant weeds of doubt in your garden of practice.
6. The importance of slowness in body and breath has already been mentioned, but the most important place to move slowly is in the mind. If your mind is racing with thought or in a hurry to do something else during a practice session, body and breath will also become rushed. By suspending the internal dialogue and turning attention inward, ignoring both external distractions and internal thoughts, you can virtually dissolve time for the duration of a practice session, focusing awareness exclusively on the various facets of balance and harmony in breath and body.
7. Stay calm throughout your practice sessions, and try to bring that calmness into your daily life afterward. Any sudden fright or abrupt interruption during a practice session can severely upset energy balance. Cultivate calmness as a spiritual virtue, and your command over energy will increase as a result.
8. Keep the mind focused on the body and the breath as points of reference throughout a practice session. Inevitably your mind will wander off in thought or external distraction, and whenever that happens, body and breath lose their synchronicity. The moment you catch your mind paying attention to something else, simply apply intent to shift attention immediately back to body and breath. The harmony of body, breath and mind is the key to success in chi-gung practice.
Precautions
All of the chi-gung exercises and breathing methods introduced in this book are perfectly safe to practise without a teacher, as long as they are done according to the accompanying instructions and within the general guidelines provided in this and other chapters. Deviations and other problems arise only as a result of negligence to the basic precepts and carelessness in the actual performance of the practices. In order to prevent problems and avoid unforeseen difficulties from arising as a result of practice, it’s a good idea to observe the following precautions:
1. Do not practise advanced forms of chi-gung without the personal supervision of a qualified teacher. This is especially important in the Western world, where poor diet, chronic stress, anxiety and other factors have created some severe imbalances in the human energy system, particularly in young people. Advanced chi-gung practices can severely aggravate such imbalances by bringing them up suddenly. When this happens, it’s important to have a teacher available who can make the adjustments required to correct severe imbalances that manifest suddenly.
2. When seeking a teacher for advanced chi-gung, be very careful and very selective. A good teacher can help you progress swiftly, but a bad teacher can cause you to regress and experience deviations. Apparently minor points of posture and breath can have major impacts on energy in the more advanced forms, so it is very important to have qualified instruction. Furthermore, when studying and practising chi-gung with a teacher, the teacher’s energy field has a direct impact on the energy of the student. Therefore, a teacher’s character and overall attitude is just as important as his or her professional qualifications when it comes to selecting a chi-gung master. Ask around and find out as much as possible about a particular teacher before committing yourself.
3. Once you’ve joined a particular school or practice group, focus exclusively on study and practice, and do not get involved in ‘chi-gung politics’ and ego rivalries between different masters and schools. There is no boundary between mind and energy in chi-gung, so if you allow a teacher’s or fellow student’s personal biases to enter your mind, it will put a negative imprint on your energy as well.
4. To get maximum benefit from chi-gung practice, regulate your sexual activities by adopting Taoist sexual yoga to govern your sex life. This is especially important for males. Essence, particularly sexual fluids, constitutes the basic fuel of internal alchemy, so if sexual essence is constantly depleted due to excessive ejaculation, chi-gung is practised on an ‘empty tank’, which is like running a pump without sufficient water to prime it, and this can cause further imbalances in the energy system. Celibacy is not necessary, nor even desirable, in chi-gung, but one should learn to discipline one’s sexual energy in accordance with the basic precepts of practice. For men, this means practising ejaculation control, carefully regulating frequency of emission, and learning how to fully satisfy a woman’s sexual needs; for women, it means learning how to draw orgasmic energy up the spine to the head and how to ‘digest’ the sexual energy assimilated from a male partner (see discussion in chapter 12). Don’t practise chi-gung immediately after sex, and don’t have sex immediately after a chi-gung session.
5. Pay careful attention to your diet. Especially avoid excessive consumption of refined sugar, greasy and fried foods, red meats and all ‘junk food’. Such products are highly acidifying, resulting in a condition of chronic excess acidity (acidosis) in the blood and other bodily tissues, and this in turn inhibits the free flow of energy. One of the worst things to ingest when practising chi-gung – or any time – is sweet carbonated ‘soft drinks’, which are so acidifying that the body is forced to leach calcium from the bones and teeth to maintain viable blood pH. Calcium plays a vital role in energy transmission within the body, especially in the nervous system, so any sort of calcium deficiency impedes chi-gung practice. Diet provides the basic nutrients for essence-to-energy conversion in chi-gung. Putting the wrong kind of food in your body when practising chi-gung is like putting diesel fuel in a petrol engine, or pouring sugar into a petrol tank. It will cause malfunctions in internal alchemy and greatly reduce the efficiency of the entire energy system.
6. Avoid exposing your body to wind while practising. Chi-gung causes the pores of the skin to open up wide, and exposure to wind can therefore result in catching a chill or some other form of ‘wind injury’. Wind, which is a powerful form of environmental chi, can also cause energy to scatter during practice, making it far more difficult to collect it internally.
7. Similarly, avoid all extremes of hot and cold, both during and immediately after practice. Dress appropriately to counterbalance excessive heat or cold in the atmosphere. Avoid taking a shower or bath for at least 20 minutes after practice, so that the pores have a chance to close again.
8. Do not practise chi-gung when you are angry, over-excited, grieving, or in any other way emotionally upset, and do not permit yourself to get emotionally upset during a practice session. Remember that ‘e-motion’ is ‘energy-in-motion’, and it can have a very harmful effect on your internal energy balance if it erupts during practice, or if you commence practice while it is still running rampant through your system. You can rebalance your emotions with a few minutes of deep diaphragmic breathing whenever you get emotionally upset, but do not commence a full session until you’ve completely calmed down again.
9. Avoid chi-gung practice during thunderstorms, lightning, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes and any other extremes of weather or natural disasters. The human energy system responds directly to changes in weather and ambient environmental energy, so when these changes are extreme or sudden, they can cause abrupt and extreme imbalances in human energy. If you are practising chi-gung at such a time, the aberrant energy patterns prevailing externally can become imprinted on your internal energy system, giving rise to serious imbalances and physiological malfunctions.
10. When feeling ill or fatigued, do not push yourself to practise too much. Practise only to the point that it provides relief, and select simpler, gentler exercises. On the other hand, do not stop practising entirely when you are ill or tired, because that would only prolong the problem. If you are so sick that you are confined to bed, you can practice a few basic breathing exercises in the reclining posture. You can also work with acupressure, light, sound and other types of energy work at such times.
11. Arrange your practice so that you will not be interrupted during a session. Even if you only set aside 20 minutes for practice, it’s very important not to be interrupted during that time, so that you can complete the three stages of warm-up, main practice and cool-down. Take the phone off the hook, or make sure someone else answers it, and be sure that no one is going to rush in and demand your immediate attention during a practice session. Such sudden interruptions can be very harmful to your energy, and if it happens regularly, it will completely negate the benefits of practice.
12. Avoid talking during and immediately after practice. This has been noted above as a point of attention for breath, but it’s worth restating here as a general precaution. Some people feel compelled to talk all the time, and this ‘motor mouth’ syndrome seems particularly prevalent in crowded urban environments and places where mass media play a major role in people’s lives. As the Ching dynasty master Liu I-ming notes, ‘When the mouth speaks, energy scatters’. If this happens during practice, the scattering of energy may occur just when energy is moving through a major channel or chakra, and this can result in energy deviations, headaches, sudden dizziness and so forth. As a general precaution, keep your lips buttoned during practice, except to exhale when mouth exhalation is required, or to sound a healing syllable or chakra tone. Try also to remain silent for at least a few minutes immediately after practice.
If you keep the above precepts in mind whenever practising chi-gung, not only will it prevent deviations and other problems from arising, it will also greatly enhance the quality of your practice, accelerate your overall progress, and increase the benefits you derive from the time and effort you invest in practice. As with any other skill, ‘practice makes perfect’ in chi-gung, but unlike ordinary sports and callisthenic exercises, there is a lot less margin for error in chi-gung, and even the smallest mistakes can make a big dent in the results obtained. And since the mind is so intimately involved with energy in chi-gung, anything and everything that is kept in mind during practice has a direct impact on the balance and flow of energy. Therefore, it’s very helpful to familiarize your mind with the basic precepts that govern chi-gung and memorize the most important points of practice, so that these principles, rather than extraneous thoughts and unrelated ideas, are what come to mind whenever you engage in practice.