Train, Refine, Temper

練形術

Art of training the body

煉石補天

Refine the stone to repair the innate

千錘百鍊

After hard work and numerous revisions

練, 煉 and 鍊, are all pronounced liàn. They are all made of 柬, to select, but written with different radicals*. They all can be used as to describe one's training. Even if they seem interchangeable, those three characters actually refer to different parts of training in internal arts.
Indeed, 練 is  external training, the body, 煉 is Qi refining and 鍊 ways to fortify either the body or the organs by using techniques close in spirit to quenching and tempering metal. It can be also interesting to notice the relation of the two first terms with the five elements.

練, Training the Body

As always, Martists are going to play with the character in order to try to describe what their training is about. 練 is officially composed of 糸, thread (of silk), and 柬, to select, the latter being made of 束, to bind and 八, eight, but to be taken in its old meaning, to differentiate, in this case, "从束从八". 束, to bind, is made of 囗, to encircle, and 木, wood, "从囗木". Therefore, the character 練 contains the notions of thread, to select, to bind, to differentiate, to encircle and wood.
Let us see how the internal arts, mainly focusing on the fascias as far as the body is concerned, are going to use such breaking down of the character:
The threads (糸) are, of course, seen as a reference to the connective tissues, the fascias, which usually surrounds other tissues (囗), and which shall be connected or unified (束). In order to do so, training aims at straightening the fascias while keeping the backbone as centred and as straight as possible, the waist being the main control, hence 木 (see the complete explication in 術 in the post 武術, War for Peace), and 八 refers the capacity to differentiate each line of fascias according to one's needs.

This, of course, has also to be reconciled with the expression stating that externally one trains the tendons, the bones and the skin "外練筋骨皮".

煉, refining the Qi**

In training, and especially internal alchemy, some concepts have more than one interpretation, allowing people to evolve according to their abilities, 煉 is one of them. If 囗, to encircle, may immediately be linked with the phrase "氣圍繞周身", vapours surround the whole body, it seems more appropriate to start with a simpler and easier breaking down of the character

煉 has 火, fire, for radical instead of 糸, thread (of silk), heat being what is needed for refining in order to create vitality. Even if the other part, 柬, to select, is the same in 練 and 煉, in order to explain what is refining the Qi, the usual breaking down of the character in 囗, 木 and 八 will be deliberately changed. It will become 十, usually ten but fullness in this case, 囗, to encircle, 米, grain but essence by extension*** and 八, eight but as representing change in this case. Therefore, the character 煉 will mainly contain the notions of fire, fullness, to encircle, essence and change.

Indeed the idea is to obtain a fullness (十) of essence (米), mainly the essential liquids contained in the organs, vaporised by fire (火). To do so, one had to keep one's organs shelved in their right place (囗), which was improving the visceral fascias through heavy stretching, actually one of the most important basic training. One had also to understand the theory of changes, 八, eight in this case representing one of the pillars of such theory, the eight trigrams.

Improving the organs through fascias, where external meets internal, and heating them to vaporise part of the nutrients they contain, called essence, is the beginning of the refining. 

Then one has to go to a deeper understanding to fully comprehend the expression "內煉精氣神", internally one refines essence, vapours and spirit.

鍊, quenching and tempering

Here, the character was used more for its meaning, tempering, than its structure. Indeed, like for the metal, a process similar to quenching and tempering was used to improve the body, the organs and the mind. It was, in a way, advanced techniques since they required an extremely good health at least and normally to be young, at an age where the body changes rapidly, puberty being the best period, during drastic transformations which settle more or less one's body.

First quenching could be used as a mean to avoid a too virtuous circle becoming a vicious one****, like overheating since a lot of the work is about heat, as we will see, for example, in a further post on sweat.

Then, it was also used as a mean to strengthen the body and/or the organs. Similar to quenching and tempering in metal, the training would go from an extreme to another and then back slowly to the original state. Hyperactivity to dozing then back to activity or overheating to cold then back to warmth were usual trainings. One typical exercise was to have a young student train till exhaustion, have him rest and then, as he was falling asleep, wake him up and force him to train again, but slowly, and until he would be awake again. This type of training, of course, would be totally irrelevant and dangerous if the practice is a hobby and not in a secluded environment. Needless to say that it is more than risky and almost always negative to undergo such training if one is well over twenty years old.

Furthermore 鍊, as to forge, represents also the fact that the training was also a question of when doing what. A simple example would be the time and intensity of one's training. Since internal arts were about profoundly transforming the body, the timing, as for forging, was essential. Hence, too much too early or too little too late were obvious pitfalls. In other words training ten hours a day, and especially for the internal alchemy, could be totally fruitless or even counter-productive if done too early or too late, the body being not ready for the change. Hence the expressions "练功要掌握火候", to train skills one has to master the crucial moment, or "傻吧練", stupidly training (for people just relying on quantity).

Five Elements

練

It originally meant to boil silk, so water and fire. Those who study fascias should know the need for them to be well hydrated. Well, if not, at least the link between tendinitis and hydration is well-known. And heat increase flexibility. So, as far as the five elements are concerned, the training of the fascias is essentially a relation between fire and water, sweat being one of the effects.

煉

It meant to melt metal, so metal and fire. The traditional breaking down of its right part contained 木, wood, and the non-traditionnal one 米, grain but as a reference to earth by extension. Only water was missing but since what one has to refine is vapours, it makes the whole process having the five elements. That is why some texts describing how the internal alchemy works do it in a seemingly obscure way by referring to the five elements or the four cardinal directions plus the centre, or a mix of those. It is, after all, revolving around mainly liquids contained in the five organs, another link with the five elements.

Finally, in the eight trigrams theory, 練 is ☵, 坎, and 煉 ☲, 離.

Once again, whether 練, 煉 or 鍊, it was mainly a question of method.

*Being lazy, here is the definition from Wikipedia: A Chinese radical (Chinese: 部首; pinyin: bùshǒu; literally: "section header") is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. This component is often a semantic indicator (that is, an indicator of the meaning of the character), though in some cases the original semantic connection has become obscure owing to changes in character meaning over time. In other cases the radical may be a phonetic component or even an artificially extracted portion of the character.

**煉 means also to condense, a notion linked to the Cinnabar Fields to be developed in a further post

***精 is essence but also means good rice and, originally, choosing grain/rice, hence the link with 米, grain, rice.

****物极必反, the theory of the extremes