Till One's Last Breath

導氣令和，引體令柔

Guiding the vapours to attain harmony, stretching the body to achieve suppleness.

龜縮頸，耕牛之力

The turtle retracts its neck, the strength of the ploughing cattle.

龜尾升氣，丹田煉神*

The turtle tail makes vapours rise, Cinnabar Fields refine the spirit.

What if keeping a flat stomach for the author of this blog requires imprinting various motions on a rather tiny segment of the body while breathing in and out? Devoid of any muscle contraction, this leads, among other things, the abdomen to be swallowed, the whole body fascias to extend, the backbone to straighten all the way up to the cervical vertebrae, the buttocks to tense and the eyelids to open¹. Finally, such breathing reduces the size of such a segment, a feat normally only achievable thanks to external factors. However, it provides a way to check that the respiration happens properly and that its impacts are real and not due to one doing all the above-mentioned by other means, like just pulling up one’s belly. As for everything in training, one should distinguish a cause and an effect, i.e. practising an effect doesn’t produce a cause…

As stated very early in this blog, old practices are about self-discovery, so the author did not name the body part he is referring to for such a reason. Furthermore, the more one advances in training, the more it is necessary to replace precise rules with just general directions. Indeed, each and every one is unique, either physically or mentally, and that greatly influences each and every one’s progress. In other words, at a certain level, whatever protocol may work for someone could harm another person. Since the next posts will be about deepening the understanding of what is called breathing in the old practices, a lot will be left to each and everyone to guess, i.e. brain and sweat away from artificial help ,-p.

Before immersing ourselves in the world of breathing techniques, it seems necessary to get back to define what is referred to as breathing in old practices. One can divide breathing into three categories, as far as training goes:

• Regular breathing, i.e. mainly pulmonary.
• Directional breathing, i.e. imparting some motion when breathing in or out.
• Internal breathing, i.e. working on organs, cinnabar fields, body heat and so on…

I. Flow

Internal practices pay special attention to one’s pulmonary breathing rhythm. Furthermore, they try to improve cutaneous respiration.

1.1 Lungs

Most practices emphasise that one breath should be long, deep and uninterrupted. Still, this general rule may not apply when one is doing particular kinds of training, like apnoea, as it has been pointed out in the previous post. Hence, according to his/her present goals or state, one will alternate various breathing techniques from one to the other extreme, from the very tiny, regular and slow ‘exhaling the old and inhaling the new’ to the noticeable, jerky and fast ‘gulping and vomiting’. Not to mention again, the apnoea techniques. 

In all those exercises, what will always be sought is a special type of flow, which will imply to never, even very slightly, become out of breath, as a sign of correct heartbeats.

1.2 Pores

Far from frog capacities, cutaneous respiration is considered minimal if not insignificant for humans. Still, it is not inexistent, and old practices use techniques close to apnoea to improve it. Similar to lung techniques, a particular type of flow will be sought to strengthen such breathing.

II. Direction

The easiest to understand directional breathing is what almost everybody has heard a day or another ‘exhale and relax’. Indeed, this is the best-known way to direct one’s body through respiration. Internal practices use two approaches: putting one’s body and mind in a certain state, imparting some angles or motion.

2.1 Imparting

Directional breathing works either on the body or the mind. Relaxation is the most commonly known directional breathing, and internalists will practise it even when inhaling. It is sometimes referred to as double relaxation, where one relaxes all the muscles while inhaling and then even more on exhalation. Furthermore, they will subsequently learn to relax the internal organs and then what people refer to as the mind.

Old practices also use various breathing techniques to have the body adopt certain angles or the mind certain states.

2.2 Mnemonic

For this, breathing becomes a mnemonic technique where the body, or certain parts of it, will take certain angles upon inhaling and other while exhaling. This can also be a motion, as far as the muscles are concerned, inhaling and retracting, exhaling and stretching (the latter being quite common for anybody doing stretching exercises). Furthermore, for those who practise vapour flow, they can use inhaling and exhaling to direct them.

III. Internalising

Internal arts usually prioritise exercises made to improve the organs and one’s vitality.

3.1 Protection

One of the aims of internal practices is to learn to concentrate the vapours around the organs at the lower and medium cinnabar fields. It consists of the ability to make what looks like a ball, harder and harder, in those places². The idea is to create a layer protecting one’s organs and compress them so that they grow stronger.

3.2 Alchemy

To create heat to produce vapours, apart from workouts, old practices would train certain types of breathing to make the body warmer. Tibetan Tummo breathing techniques are among the best known.

Opportune breathing can lead to many avenues of research for an internalist, and it probably becomes the centre of one’s practice in his/her latter stages because of its permanence. The next posts will try to further the reflection on every aspect of breathing.

1. Such a feat only works, of course, under the requisite one has deeply transformed his/her body so that, at least, fascia extension takes over muscle contraction as far as generating power is concerned, as it has been described in length in this blog. It also depends on one’s understanding and capacity to do what is often referred to as directional breathing.

2. Feat even more visible to those who don’t practise using a sash to avoid getting a big stomach.