Mnemonic Breathing

起吸落呼，開合有度

Rising while inhaling, dropping while exhaling; opening and closing (will be) balanced.

蓄勁如開弓，發勁如放箭

Gathering strength is like drawing a bow; releasing strength is like shooting an arrow.

Directional breathing, even though a large part of one’s training from the beginning, is not often mentioned in old practice sayings, maybe because of its versatility. Indeed, from the simple need to find proper relaxation to have the body form the right angles or even tense it, inhaling and exhaling can both be used as powerful mnemonics.

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 unable 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.

Till One's Last Breath

導氣令和，引體令柔

Guiding the vapours to attain harmony, stretching the body to achieve suppleness.

龜縮頸，耕牛之力

The turtle retracts its neck, the strength of the ploughing cattle.

龜尾升氣，丹田煉神*

The turtle tail makes vapours rise, Cinnabar Fields refine the spirit.

What if keeping a flat stomach for the author of this blog requires imprinting various motions on a rather tiny segment of the body while breathing in and out? Devoid of any muscle contraction, this leads, among other things, the abdomen to be swallowed, the whole body fascias to extend, the backbone to straighten all the way up to the cervical vertebrae, the buttocks to tense and the eyelids to open¹.

Pouring, Another Reverse Breathing

氣灌丹田

Vapours pours into the Cinnabar Field

吸自背下五端，呼灌於骨盆轉

Inhaling from the back down to the five extremities, exhaling to pour into the pelvis in a rotation.

Usually, people refer to reversed breathing, 逆呼吸法， as a technique where one expands his/her stomach while breathing out and shrinking it while breathing in. If such a technique, provided one uses a belt to keep the stomach from bulging, is a good start, it is just what we could name as the entry breathing, often called 'the vapours sink into the Cinnabar Field'. As mentioned in a previous post about breathing, one then has to evolve towards other types of breathing, the next one being not sinking but pouring. 

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.