Iron Breath

治身：天門，謂鼻孔開，謂喘息闔，謂呼吸也¹

Cultivating the body: the Heavenly Door, called opening the nostrils, called closing gasping and resting², which is called exhaling and inhaling³.

天門亢，擤鼻，旡

The Heavenly Door is haughty, blowing one’s nose, to choke⁴.

Iron training and its main breathing technique, empty breathing, are exercises less and less witnessed in internal practices. They target the capacity to tense all and any part of the body while relaxing and stretching. They use an old type of respiration, sometimes linked to Taoist practices, which consist of taking a long exhalation to empty as much as possible, not only the lungs but the stomach and the whole trunk for the least, and keep at all costs this state while inhaling. 

I. External Tension Through Relaxation

Here the fact that the body has been really transformed, especially the muscles, plays a crucial role. If altered enough, one has to deepen the relaxing and stretching muscle reflex.

1.1 Prerequisite

It is important to mention again how the muscle structure is different in internal arts and how it influences the body mechanics. This part is often not understood by students and most of the time overlooked, which actually makes it impossible to really reap the benefits of internal practices. Indeed, if one cannot even acquire the external shape needed, how can he/she further develop the internal skills sought for?

Internal arts train different kinds of stretching, all over the body, to break and lessen the muscle mass. Sometimes, the image that one has to go from round and hard muscles to oval and tender ones is used.

This follows many purposes:

- The first and most important one is a keystone of internal arts goals: endurance. Muscles burn off a lot of energy, reducing their overall mass improves stamina. The issue is then, what about power? One then has to refer to a known martial art saying, ‘Without force is the better force’, 無力優力.

- Structure as a means of power is preferred in internal arts (if trained from an early age, bones are actually the major indirect source of force, however that’s another topic). Diminishing the muscle mass allows the fascias to grow more, reinforcing one’s structure but also making it more flexible.

- Muscles will be then mainly used to create motion, making what is left of them more reactive and even less energy consuming.

- More fascias and less muscle mass reduces considerably the pressure on the joints, another means to make the body more resilient.

- This type of training, instead of pushing the veins out of the body, will have them, oppositely, embed deeper in the body, improving insulation and, by extension, endurance.

…

It is then not really hard to check if one has reached the right muscle mass and structure. Some parts, like the biceps, are quite obvious, becoming tender, long, flat and with no apparent veins in opposition of the hard, short, rounded and veins sticking out ones. Still, if one comes from a non-sporty background, with very lax muscles, the change may be harder to spot. In this case, it is all about form. Indeed, it will be the difference between looking flabby and having a firm shape, lax against tender.

1.2 The Bow

One always has to go back to the bow image, tensed by stretching. Once the right muscle structure is obtained, the student will, little by little, learn to differently use his/her muscles. Instead of creating tension through their contraction, the idea will be to relax them as much as possible while stretching more and more. The stretch will then extend to all the fascia tissues, which will create the tension.

In other words, taking the arm as an example, tensing the bicep by contraction is usually done by bending the arm and then shortening the sarcomeres. Doing it through stretching is straightening the arm and lengthening the sarcomeres. 

That’s where structure becomes crucial. Indeed, when stretching them, the first fail-safe of the body is actually to create a sort of bounce-back reflex where the muscle will contract and resist the stretch. Now, if the stretch is strong enough, another fail-safe in the tendons will be used, creating the opposite effect, causing the muscles to relax and lengthen⁵. Therefore, as far as structure is concerned too hard muscles would not be able to stretch too much, neither too lax ones. Like the limb of a bow, the wood has to be firm but flexible…

Going for iron, another issue will have to be solved, how to tense all and every part of the body. This one will be dealt through alignments. Indeed, to reach the whole body power, everything shall tense or relax at the same time and with the same intensity. The issue is then to find which muscle/fascia part or the body does not tense while the rest does. Then, one will have to look for a proper alignment which will make it do so. Till nowadays, one may witness the remains of such training, when one person is performing his/her routine while another one checks the performer’s body, pointing out parts that do not tense.

Beyond muscle relaxation and extension, another method was used to tense the whole body, ‘empty breathing’.

II. Internal Tension Through Emptyness

It may be useful, at first, to explain again what empty breathing means and, then, describe its link with tensing the body through stretching.

2.1 Understanding Empty Breathing

This is an ancient breathing technique which basic exercise is actually quite easy to understand. One has to very slowly exhale as long as possible while trying to empty every part of his/her body. In doing so, one has to prioritise the perineum area to then move to the lower stomach, then the upper, the chest… Hence, there is an order to follow. That is also why this technique is also referred as the ‘flat stomach’ or ‘swallowing the stomach’. In time, one will not only try to push back the swallowing reflex that comes at the end of such a long exhale, forcing the body to inhale again, but will have to make the transition and inhaling itself as light and slow as possible. For some styles, this type of breathing is referred in Chinese as 吐納. This is often translated as rejecting vitiated breath and sucking in new breath. But this is, after all, also what normal breathing accomplishes. Therefore, to understand the more the practical side of this technique, it is necessary to understand that 吐, to spit, stands actually for 吐絲, extruding silk (as do silkworms, caterpillars, spiders…). The idea is to have a very light exhale (as if extruding a very tiny silk thread), regular but with no interruption or abrupt change in rhythm so that the thread is never broken. For those who practise silk-reeling, 纏絲功, this is the breathing equivalent.

Unfortunately, this technique has prerequisites in internal practices. They are two: understanding, having trained and mastered the Cinnabar Fields up to compressing and improved cutaneous breathing. When not, the stomach will empty but not really tense. Indeed, to reach such state, one has to understand the concepts of 灌 and贯. Basically, one first learns to make a sort of ball of air in the stomach, making it tense without the help of the muscles. This technique is known by the name of Sinking the Cinnabar Field(s), 沈丹田, it is the accumulation skill. Further on, one has to learn to reduce more and more this ball, it is the compression skill, reducing the stomach until it becomes flat but still tensed in the same manner as the ‘ball of air’ (the easiest place to check if it is done correctly is at the Middle Cinnabar Field). Those two processes are not too hard to achieve. Still, a lack of knowledge of the existence of the second one, plus an oversight of the goal behind wearing a belt has led to fat bellies for those who only practise what is now called reverse breathing.

Empty breathing goes further, it is what is referred as the third stage. Outside, it is very hard to differentiate it from the last phases of compression breathing. Indeed, since this blog describes internal practices, this is where knowing what happens inside the body and might not be visible becomes crucial. The first difference is that compressing can be done without tensing the whole body while a proper empty breathing will end up by naturally and unwillingly tensing it. The other main difference is that every type of breathing has its own particular goal. In the accumulation/reverse breathing, one trains it to improve the capacity the Cinnabar Fields to conglomerate air/gas around them. Compressed breathing is not, at first, the training of the Cinnabar Fields, but of all the facia and muscle tissues to resist the accumulation by not extending and protruding and even, at later stages, receding. Still, this added pressure is also a means to improve the cinnabar fields by pressuring them even more. Those two stages are what is referred as the full breathing where one inhales and tries, while exhaling to lower as much as possible what is seen as air/gas in the stomach⁶. Empty breathing is a total different process that comes from the principle ‘From nothingness comes existence’, 無中生有. Basically, one will exhale and empty as much as possible the stomach for as long as possible, the inhalation becoming just an automatism. Even when one naturally reaches the swallowing reflex, there are techniques, like yawning but not inhaling, to delay it and pushing further the exhale. Of course, while doing that, one will train the capacity of what is called ‘piercing through the cinnabar fields’, 貫丹田.

2.2, Emptying to Stretch and Tense

The basic training is done relatively slowly. When reaching the end of a long exhale, managing to resist the swallowing reflex, the whole body will then tense, provided of course the muscle/fascia tissues have been transformed as described in the first part of this post. This has to happen naturally, without any intention to tense, it can only be a result of a proper empty breathing. Such heavy tension will also have another impact, it will force the body to align itself, noticeably reducing the arms and legs motion. It is important, indeed, to remember that iron training is in essence a lock training.

Quite a few styles used to divide their moves in two parts, an extending part and a retracting one. The extending phase is usually when one is throwing one limb away and the retracting when he/she brings it back. The rhythm is then as follows, a slow and long exhale when extending. A stop at the end, as long as possible, trying to push further the time of the swallowing/inhaling reflex. Then, when either inhaling for real or cheating the body with the yawning but not breathing in technique, one will retract the body, slowly but altogether at a faster pace than when breathing out. In short, the exhale has to be noticeably longer than the inhale. For those who trained flexibility, like the splits for example, there is some similarity to the breathing out longer to try to get even more down method. In doing so the body will tense to its utmost while exhaling but at a lesser degree while inhaling, relaxing the minimum bit to be able to retract.

This basic kind of training has also another goal, to find or to regain a union between breathing and motion. Unification is not coordination, it is very important to make this distinction. Coordination will be seen as a question of matching speed between the two while unification revolves around the absence of a shortness of breath. Breathlessness, as far as training is concerned, is also an often misunderstood concept. It does not only encompass being out of breath during a hard training, but also just having a shallow breathing while being motionless. Slightly irregular, halting or jerky respiration may be hard to spot, but they are the indication that the body and the breath are not unified. When slowly practising iron and empty breathing, anytime they are not united becomes obvious, the respiration will be halted and one will automatically start to pant.

Finally, once mastered, one will have to revisit other breathing techniques, such as navel, feet, gulping/throwing up and so on… Indeed, empty breathing is another realm which revisits them, not only because exhaling comes first, but also for its impact on the body, how it will tense it to its utmost. 

Iron training gives the student the tools to tense as much as possible the body using muscle relaxation and stretching. Still, even if it will strengthen the body and one will finally fully understand how to generate power other than with muscle contraction, it cannot directly apply to fighting, since it would be, for the least, counterproductive as far as endurance is concerned (speed is actually covered when training empty gulping/throwing up breathing). Hence the cotton training, which aim is to learn how to maintain just the right level of tension. But not the next post, sorry ,-p.

1. 老子河上公章句, 能為, Laozi’s Heshang Gong Chapters and Verses, Ability.

2. 喘息 is often just translated as breathing while 喘 refers to panting and 息 then, in opposition, to a resting (relaxed) breathing. Therefore, some schools oppose both characters this way, the former seen as the wrong way to breathe while the latter the correct one. Here the quote seems to point out another difference: mouth or nose breathing, hence 喘息 should be seen mainly as a reference to mouth breathing in this instance.

3. 呼吸 is the general term for breathing. In searching ‘empty breathing’ one has to take in consideration that it is 呼, exhaling, which comes first.

4. Reaching this point in training, a student does not have a lot of martial arts sayings he/she can use to further one’s research. Most of the time, they are an exclusively oral transmission which has been lost as fewer and fewer people owns those kinds of skills. These three terms are helping when looking for ‘empty breathing’, 旡 being taken out of 炁.

5. For those interested, look for muscle spindle and Golgi Tendon Organ or GTO.

6. The Upper Cinnabar Field issue has been left out of this topic on purpose, since it is quite a different and hard process to describe.