Hearbeats And Dyspnea

如意抽絲，綿綿不断

Like drawing silk from a cocoon, continuous and unending.

綿綿瓜瓞，呼吸悠悠

Like the continuous growth of spreading vines, the breath flows long, deep, and serene.

吸如抽絲，呼如吹灰

Inhale like drawing silk from a cocoon; exhale like gently blowing away ash.

Those three quotes follow the usual trend one can witness as far as breathing techniques are concerned in old practices. Still, this rule, which often makes someone not be able to see the forest for the trees, represents a tendency. Indeed, if taken too strictly, limited to such breathing, one would miss, for the least, the gulping/regurgitation and apnoea techniques. As always, this depicts an oxymoron that has already been solved in this blog.

As for external breathing in internal practices, it often concerns being out of breath (even very slightly, not just coughing up a lung). The quotes just represent the easiest way to, especially at first, reach such a state. Furthermore, such quotes ring very true when one is practising cutaneous breathing.

Pulmonary breathing in internal practices has to be dealt with as a part of the cardiopulmonary system, meaning the heartbeat’s close relation to breathing is what matters. In short, the link between breathing and blood flow is what one is looking for. Once mastered, it becomes possible to improve skin breathing, actually one of the bridges between external and internal respiration.

I. Heartless Breath

As mentioned in the previous post, what counts as a cause and what equals to an effect should be one of the first things to determine, since it’s always the cause one should train. But, of course, the issue concerning breathing and heartbeat presents complexities because the two are intertwined. Hence, if breathing correctly can cause the heart to beat harmoniously, the heart, on the other hand, can disrupt one’s breathing. For this, one way to tackle the issue may be to find out what causes both heartbeats and breathing to become irregular. For internal practices, at least three triggers do exist: muscle contraction, organ exhaustion and emotions.

1.1 Muscle vs Facia

This marks a cornerstone of internal practice: the use of lax muscle extension to tense the fascias against muscle contraction to generate power, training sarcomeres against training the Golgi tendon organ.

Here, the issue boils down to this: muscle contraction automatically leads to being out of breath, while fascia tension through muscle extension prevents it. Since understanding and training this initial issue comes first, it has to come up as the foremost question when gasping for air. If it happens, muscle contraction requires addressing to ensure both smooth respiration and heartbeats.

1.2 Too Much Effort

Internal arts deal with vitality, or energy, coming from the organs. For them, the power needed to generate any effort does not only come from the muscles/fascias but to a greater extent from the organs. A simple example is exercising after burning the midnight oil. Even if the physical body has not changed a bit, one’s performance will still greatly diminish. For internal practices, it shows the importance of the organs in generating power. Maybe for the young, healthy and sporty, the difference may not seem so crucial, but ask professional athletes about it. For the older folks, this becomes obvious.

Because we tend, in modern societies, to prioritise performance over endurance, we all end up, a day or another, pushing the body too far. In such cases, when the organs cannot endure any more, they stress and we start to pant. In the worst-case scenarios, they can even have the equivalent of a muscle cramp: throwing up because of too intense exhaustion…

Therefore, one of the mottos of internal practice is ‘If you can do 10, just do 9 but longer’ and certainly not try to reach eleven¹.

1.3 Emotionless

As just described, the organs directly affect the cardiopulmonary system. For old practices, emotions impact the organs, a domino effect. Therefore, even absent from any physical effort, they can lead to being out of breath (sometimes so slightly one may not notice if not trained to pay attention). For this, internal arts provide different training to detach from one’s emotions.

Of course, one can learn to control their breathing under duress, but the question is how to determine if annihilating the effect has solved the cause. Once pulmonary issues have been mastered, skin breathing can be considered.

II. Calm Pores

This is where internal meets external, and counting more or less as some entry training. As mentioned when it was introduced before, the technique involves a respiration where one ‘mobilises the organs’. This training, especially in the beginning, requires very soft breathing that follows the principles described in the third quote.

2.1 Mobilisation

Old internal practices are all about organ power and how to harvest and use it. So, it is not enough to improve them; one has to understand how they can generate power. The first step is to, then, learn how to muster them.

For the styles opposing supple and firm forms, the basic training will go through the former ones. In other words, while in slow motion and very light breathing, it is about reducing pulmonary breathing to as much as possible, close to or even up to apnoea. At least, it will reach a point where the organs will feel the need to take over and force respiration in any part they can, hence using skin pores.

One can check if the technique is correctly executed in two ways: keeping slow and even breathing, plus a change in the eyes.

2.1 The Softer, The Better

The image of silk reeling remains one of the best comparisons possible. Indeed, everything should be as soft and slow as possible, but not so slow that it breaks the motion. Only while moving so delicately, as if all and any part of the body were cautiously reeling silk, skin breathing and organ mobilisation can be achieved.

Apart from its obvious cardiopulmonary function, internal practices also use inhaling and exhaling as a mnemonic, often called ‘directional breathing’.

1. Another way to often oppose internal practices from external ones. Indeed, in external practices, training and improving performance produce endurance as a byproduct. In internal ones, though, slowly making the body more resilient, like the ‘the continuous growth of spreading vines’, will also make it more performant.