Ascetic Embryonic Apnoea

習閉炁而吞之名曰胎息。

The practice of holding one’s breath and swallowing is called foetal breathing¹.

但能閉至七八十息以上，則臟腑胸膈之間，皆清氣之布矣。

But if one can hold one’s breath for seventy or eighty breaths or more, then clear vapours will permeate all the organs and the space between the chest and diaphragm².

One of the techniques one hardly witnesses any more, in what people still call martial arts, is the apnoea ones: holding one’s breath. It is even to some extent prohibited in some practices, cutting off one’s breath rightly seen as a nervous reaction linked to freezing on the spot. One should not deny that, faced with an assault, freezing and cutting one’s breath counts as a poor idea. As for a lot of issues in leisurely practices, it has then been decided that holding one’s breath is just bad. This goes against the old practices approach, where things neither fall under the category of good nor bad, but have to be confronted with one’s aims and situation. It boils down to assessment and whether the advantages outweigh the drawbacks. Finally, one can observe that predators tend to apparently freeze when they are poised to pounce. 

One can then wonder if it is not how we freeze or hold our breath that causes the problem, rather than the reaction itself.

Breathing is one of the cornerstones of internal training, and apnoea’s first aim is to strengthen the organs and their capacity to relax when faced with pressure. One of the other goals of holding one’s breath is, while having the body totally still, to recreate the same process that some predators undergo just right before they strike, improving, among other things, awareness. Finally, the present post will describe the basic rules for practising apnoea.

I. Stilling the Organs

It is here necessary to differentiate between Regular and Abnormal practices. The former insist on finding a state of void, while the latter use emotions as a drive, among other things (think about the Bersek mode). The present post will only describe the search for the void and the absence of emotions, not its opposite.

1.1 Stilling

Apnoea, for this, represents an advanced breathing technique where one can learn to even better deny the organs the possibility of creating emotions. Basically, as it has been mentioned many times in this blog, for old practices, emotions are a process where some external stimuli of the senses or some internal imbalance cause the organs to ‘move’. And from those emotions will come many thoughts, muddling one’s mind. Hence, one has to find ways to still his/her organs, as far as emotions are concerned. Breathing, on the other hand, not only gives our body a certain rhythm that makes everything move, but it is also very influenced by our emotional state. Consequently, apnoea will make the whole body very still, keeping the organs from ‘moving’, helping in the search for the void.

1.2 Pressured Relaxation

Furthermore, holding one’s breath constitutes a way to learn how to relax the organs when faced with pressure. Indeed, along with the alarm the brain triggers to ask the lungs to fill with air as quickly as possible, one can also feel all the organs tensing. The aim is, then, to relax them as much as and as long as possible. With time, one can learn to relax his/her organs when faced with any pressure.

This improved stillness, which is linked with apnoea, can also help someone to become more aware of the surroundings.

II. Improving Awareness

One looks for the void to clear their mind. For old practices, this relates heavily to one’s organs (hence the second quote) and breathing, to shape them or to check their state (see ‘out of breath’ issues). Also, such a thing does not only come from one’s spirit, but can as well be influenced by one’s body, like posture.

2.1 Still Inside, Clear Outside

Basically, if one manages to still his/her organs and reach a void, whatever happens outside, any stimuli, will turn up more distinct because no other thoughts will interfere.

This may sound a bit obscure, but it is, in fact, quite easy to understand. Indeed, faced with intense emotions, one can be so lost in his/her thoughts that he/she forgets totally about the surroundings and crosses a street without even looking for cars… Then, it becomes a question of luck. Therefore, reversely, if one has absolutely no thought, everything will seem clearer for the mind.

2.2 Body, Mind, Unison

To start to master such a technique, it would be better to do it with a still body first. This follows the same logic, which makes it easier to first learn to calm oneself in a relatively silent environment, not in the middle of a hard-rock concert. The idea is, then, to hold postures from one’s routine and subsequently practise apnoea while doing so. Body and mind still, anything that moves around will become clearer.

Still, apnoea is not just holding one’s breath; there are rules, some of them described in the book, from which comes the second quote.

III. Apnoea Basic

This practice follows certain principles, and is not to be confused with others, as interesting as they may be, like free-diving. As for everything in internal practices, endurance, not performance, is the goal. 

3.1 Prerequisites

Apnoea represents an added training method following the accumulating, compressing and emptying ones (see Iron Breath). For those who follow the 沉，灌，貫 (sinking, pouring, piercing) breathing methods. This one, apart from being called 閉氣, which directly refers to holding one’s breath, can also be named 定氣， stilling (or fixing) the vapours. To reach this capacity, one must already be able to use empty breathing. Then understanding what benefits practitioners seek from apnoea becomes easy.

Furthermore, one must take an empty stomach literally, meaning that one shall not eat before practising, even more, only after enjoying a complete digestion, even of liquids. Knowing that it takes from ten hours to three days to fully digest, such a practice remains available only to those who have enough freedom to be able to control their diet accordingly. That’s why it was normally training limited to those who could retire from the world, at least temporary.

When those two prerequisites are not attained, it is very hard to tell if such practice can have any interest at all. Nevertheless, it definitely will not allow one to achieve internal practice goals, such as the one described in the second quote.

3.2 Controlled Breathing

Holding one’s breath also follows one of the cornerstones of breathing in internal practices: to never to be out of breath, even very slightly. Hence, one shall get out of apnoea the same way he/she had entered it, with a slow and long breath. This outweighs the time that one can hold his or her breath. In other words, it is wrong to end up with a big and fast inhalation after apnoea. It means one has gone too far, looking for performance and not for the process of how to keep on relaxing the organs under extreme pressure.

3.3 Deep Relaxation

To reach the perfect state to start apnoea, it is necessary to, through empty breathing, achieve deep relaxation, where one keeps on relaxing the whole body more and more whether he/she inhales or exhales. Then, while holding one’s breath, it is all about maintaining it against all odds. And, just before the organs cannot any more, resume slow and deep breathing. Done correctly, an even deeper relaxation state can be attained.

Ascetic apnoea represents a technique where eremitic and martial arts practices meet, feeding off each other’s strengths. The former cleanses the body and mind, while the latter trains clarity and stillness. Nevertheless, once this is mastered, one will then have to look for the next stage of breathing.

1. The Biographies of Immortals, Volume 6: Wang Zhen，神仙傳， 卷六，王真.

2. Classified Classics, Volume 28: Cosmological Cycles Category, 類經， 二十八卷，　運氣類.