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. 

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. 

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.