Flat Stomach Improved Vitality, Directing Breath To Emptiness

 

得胎息者，能不以鼻口噓吸¹

Who obtains the fetal breathing can, without his/her nose or mouth, slowly breathe out and in.

食氣者必謂吹呴呼吸，吐故納新也²

Who nourishes himself/herself from vapours has to be called the blowing and yawning breathing, spitting out the stale and receiving the fresh.

其息深深。真人之息以踵，眾人之息以喉³

Their breathing came deep and silently. The breathing of the true man comes from his heels, while men generally breathe from their throats. 

鼻息無聲神氣守⁴
Soundless breathing through the nose, guarding vapours and spirit

Breathing is a much more complex subject than it seems. It encompasses multiple exercises coming from various and sometimes quite different, if not opposite, traditions. The general term breathing, therefore, can refer to the lungs main function, a cutaneous possibility, an organ-related capacity, a directional practice and so on… Goals are also numerous, from relaxation to waking, from heating to cooling, from posture to movement, from Berzek to emptiness, etc., a myriad of exercises so that one can easily get lost and most of the time ends up practising a mix of now and again actually incompatible ones. Internal practices, following the quotes, tend to search for a inner process which has little to do with the basic lung function. As far as the flat stomach is concerned, breathing main technique is what is called ‘empty breathing’, one of the cornerstones of iron training. Furthermore, breathing as a directional tool can be also be of use when it comes to training the body to take the right alignments. Finally, because it is internal, one cannot in addition leave out the question of internal alchemy and the cinnabar fields, which conditioning becomes different when reaching the flat stomach issue.

I. Empty Stomach, Void Mind

From a basic understanding of how the so-called empty breathing works, one can find the relation between flattening the stomach to empty it and reaching a void with no thoughts.

 

1.1 Basic Understanding

Contrary to a balanced breathing were out and in are more or less equivalent, empty breathing stresses on exhalation, inhalation being as short and as little as possible. It is actually an old technique attached to some Taoist practices under the principle that oppositely to the depletion fullness automatically implies, emptiness can only lead to boosting. Furthermore, this technique is also the key to understand how to improve one’s cutaneous breathing. The idea is to breathe out slowly and steadily until one reaches the point where there is no other choice than to breathe in. One shall then resist the urge to gulp in a big breath (trying to yawn being helpful) and instead start with a short, both in time and size, inhalation and immediately revert back to a very slow exhalation. This is a rather hard exercise to master because it goes right against our preservation instinct which favours breathing in.

From this basic, the technique evolves towards denying more and more the lungs inhaling process, but it would take a very long post to explain all the variations. Still, at a point, a link between breathing out and tensing the body through the fascias by the stretch of the muscles will naturally appear, hence it is one of the favourite breathing techniques for iron training. This will normally force the stomach to flatten even more.

1.2 Emptying to Void

Exhaling to empty the stomach will keep the organs in place and prevent them from moving when confronted to any stimulus leading to an emotion. The idea goes beyond, breathing out is also a way to empty one’s mind. For this, one has to go back to an old definition for a quite often used character when training breathing, 息 : ‘从心自。自者、鼻也。心气必從鼻出。’ ‘From heart and self. Self, the nose. Heart vapours have to come out of the nose’. Then, as one physically empties the stomach, he/she simultaneously does the same thing for the organs and the mind. The idea is to find through exhalation how to pressure so much the organs one’s thoughts start to disappear.

II. Breathing Out a Correct Posture

Since we never stop breathing, old practices tried to attach other movements to this motion. This is actually a bit similar to what has been just previously described.

  

2.1 Directing the Angles

External training is, of course, easy to understand. One shall breathe out a correct posture. Tucking in the butt can be a simple and easy to understand example. Every time one exhales is the tuck, relaxing a bit the butt at the inhalation. It seems easy but it is actually not limited to training posture, or even just training. For old practices, one has to find ways so that it becomes a 24/7 habit with, evidently, different intensities and some exceptions. Still, this has to become just a reflex, tucking every time one exhales, just like putting one foot in front of the other for walking.

Training also 24/7, it was obviously much easier to attain such feat, it is a high level of difficulty for the leisurely world. Nevertheless, this type of exercise remains quite important for, at least, two reasons:

- Limiting posture to just training may not reap the hoped benefits and could even actually lead to the opposite, as mentioned in a previous post. Therefore, being able to breathe out a correct alignment will force the body to maintain the posture almost all the time. Going back to the example, following this should drastically in time change the way one is seating, straightening the backbone so that it lower part does not support most of the pressure. Over time, one can also rediscover the cushion function of the buttocks when seated. 

- This sort of exercise is actually also a way to learn to be much more mindful of the body and more vigilant. Indeed, one has to try to keep his/her concentration on one or more parts of the body (better to start with only one) while doing everyday tasks. This is a kind of double focus in the beginning. Since the brain is not really made for multitasking, one has to reach the point where breathing out the right alignments becomes a learned motor skill, hence not needing any thought to execute (like opening a door by turning a knob). But this goes further, such training is the gateway to understand how to keep dormant a particular activity without totally shutting it down, which is the key to becoming vigilant. Indeed to reach the motor skill level, one has to constantly, since it is linked to breathing, keep at some level some concentration on the part of the body that will become aligned when exhaling. It is a way to learn how to stay alert while doing something else, a quite hard to master skill, especially when one is just training for leisure.

 

2.2 Directing the Flow

Those who train internal breathing end up being confronted, a day or another, with the issue of the vapour flow. Normally, it is considered that emotions hit the organs, which impacts the heart rate, changing our breathing, hindering, slowing or accelerating our vapour flow. The only part of this process one can more easily master is our breathing. Therefore, with or without the theory of the vapour flow, a lot of practices do use a way or another breathing as an integrant part of their training. 

As far as the flat stomach is concerned, the issue is linked to what has been briefly described in The Swallowed Third Foot. It is then, up to the student, to find what kind of directing breathing will even more reinforce the closure of the pelvic area, hence the use of the term 灌 (pouring) in some schools.

Even more internal is the use of the Cinnabar Fields to flatten the stomach, thereby the use of a nowadays homophone, 貫 (piercing), to link the two techniques.

III. Empty Fields

Internal practice put a stress on creating and improving what is called 丹田 (Dantian), Cinnabar Fields. Some schools apply the 沈，灌，貫 (sinking, pouring, piercing) process corresponding to creation, life and void.

Flattening the stomach insists on the lower and middle ones, following the breathing technique introduced earlier in this post with a special attention to the cinnabar fields respective areas.

This is, of course, where writing for all and everyone reach is limited, this type of training can only be taught and understood in person and only for those who already have completed the first two steps. Still, the present post would have been incomplete without mentioning the part Dantians play in the flat stomach.

The versatility of old practices in days when training in the civilian sphere is so standardised is always a bit bewildering for most people. One has to always keep in mind that, being a personal research, it is not what is considered true or not which matters, but what is useful for one’s own training, what will allow personal growth. Furthermore, the idea for training in which change is a cornerstone is to find the next step. For this, flattening the stomach is just a step after learning how to pressure it and before another one to be found.

 

1. Freeing Form Stagnation, Inner Chapters, He Who Embraces Simplicity (Baopuzi), Ge Hong 釋滯，內篇，抱朴子，葛洪.

2. Way, Void, Lunheng, Wang Chong, 道虛，論衡，王充. 

A part of this quote ‘吹呴呼吸，吐故納新’ is also coming from Zhuangzi Inner Chapters in Ingrained Ideas. 

Furthermore, one of the more usual translations of such quote is: ‘The meaning must certainly be that the fluid-eaters breathe, inhaling and exhaling, emitting the old air and taking in the new. “Two points in the difference in the translation must be explained.

‘Nourishes from vapours’ against ‘fluid-eaters’: vapours has already been explained in a earlier post, but more generally this sentence can be seen as a reference to the breathing techniques in which one mimics eating, as if but not really eating air (watch out for flatulence!).

‘Blowing and yawning’ against ‘inhaling and exhaling’ 吹 means to blow and 呴 to yawn (or breathe on) and is also a special breathing technique different from just simply exhaling and inhaling. For those who practise the 吞吐, ‘swallowing and spitting out’, breathing techniques, it is quite a similar process when done slowly.

3. The Great and Most Honoured Master, Inner Chapters, Zhuangzi, 大宗師，內篇，莊子.

4. Emei Taoist Boxing Song, 峨嵋道人拳歌