Breathing

A principle, not a technique

Many systems of practice begin with a breathing technique: counting, lengthening, holding, leading the breath through the body. Yiquan deliberately does not. There is a single basic rule: breathe naturally, through the nose, evenly and without sound. The breath is neither lengthened nor held. Whatever changes in it over time is a result of practice, not its aim.

This is more than a simplification. When Yiquan speaks of qi, Wang Xiangzhai mainly means the breath: “When we are talking about qi, you need to know that it is about breathing.” The question of how to “cultivate” qi thus becomes the question of how not to disturb the breath.

Wang Xiangzhai: from breathing exercise to natural breathing

In 1928 Wang still describes the traditional exercise: long exhalation, short inhalation through the nose, qi in its circuit. But the critique that will remain is already there. Whoever practises with crude force bulges the eyes, stamps the feet, holds the breath first and only then uses strength; afterwards comes a long sigh through the mouth. In this way, he says, one harms one's own vitality.

In 1939 Wang withdraws the breathing exercise. He names three faults in practice: forced breathing, clumsy effort, and pushing out the chest and belly. He rejects both popular fashions, pumping with the chest as much as sinking the qi into the lower abdomen; both make the qi stagnate instead of filling the whole body. His sentence on it is short: raising qi is a mistake, but sinking qi is a mistake too. Whoever aims at sinking it becomes unnatural. The principle is natural breathing, without haste and without straining the will, “so you will not be aware of breathing while breathing”. A big belly, he adds, is no sign of mastery.

Wang goes further: besides breathing through the nose there is breathing through the skin. The pores open, the whole body breathes in harmony with the nose — “breathing through the nose is calm, breathing through the skin is even”. More room for the lungs comes not from a tensed chest but from sunk shoulders and an empty chest.

In the 1940s all he says is that in the stance the breath “becomes even and calm”. It belongs to what standing puts in order by itself, alongside the nervous system and the muscles.

The family and the health stances

Wang's family passes the rule on unchanged. His daughter Wang Yu Fang asks for natural breathing and rejects holding the attention in the dantian. Her son Jin Tonghua says natural breathing is enough, and asks back which animal thinks about breathing while asleep. In the health stances the rule reads: 不讲求调息 — no regulation of the breath; and 精神集中，周身放松，呼吸自然: the mind gathered, the body released, the breath natural.

What changes in the stance by itself

Whoever stands regularly notices the change without doing anything. At first the breath is simply free. With practice it becomes deeper, calmer and more even and sinks into the belly; some texts call this “qi sinks to the dantian”. That is a description, not an instruction. At the end stands what Wang means: the breath becomes so effortless that one forgets it. One image for this is the sea turtle swimming slowly and calmly in the depths.

A difference from ordinary strength training follows by itself: in Zhan Zhuang the breath is never held, even when the legs burn. Exactly where it gets hard, holding the breath is the first reflex — and the first place where one can notice it and let it go.

The breath in force

That the breath is not led does not mean it plays no part in force. In his late text on the four forms Wang counts the force of the diaphragm among the inner forces and calls it 呼吸弹力, “breath spring force”. The effect of Hun Yuan Li in combat, he says, depends entirely on it; he puts it in two verses: 吐纳灵源合宇宙 — breathing in and out joins the source with the cosmos — and 喊声叱咤走风云, the shout drives wind and clouds. The warning follows in the same sentence: as soon as the diaphragm tightens, it is wrong.

This side of the breath is trained not in the stance but in Shi Sheng, testing the voice. Wang calls it a supplement to Shili “by using breathing” and gives it two more names: internal breathing, or back-abdominal breathing. Fa Li shows the same: at rest the lower abdomen is “relaxed round” and becomes “solid round” only in the moment force is released. Even then nothing is pressed.

Without mysticism: why the breath of all things

Breathing is the only vital function one can also influence at will. The lungs are governed by the voluntary nervous system and the autonomic nervous system at the same time. Inhaling raises the pulse, exhaling lowers it again; this fluctuation counts as a sign of the calming, parasympathetic side. That is why a calm exhalation deepens relaxation, and why the breath is the lever in almost every relaxation method.

Yiquan uses this lever in the restrained way. It starts with the stance, the posture and the imagination and lets the breath follow. The shift to calm happens, as everywhere in the autonomic system, by taking away rather than by switching on: not doing more, but disturbing less.

Other readings

In the internal martial arts outside Yiquan reverse breathing is widespread: on the in-breath the lower abdomen draws in, on the out-breath it widens. It is meant to build internal pressure and to couple opening and closing to the breath. These schools distinguish the normal breathing of the adult, shallow in the chest, from the natural breathing of the infant, in which belly and spine breathe along, and teach reverse breathing only after this natural stage, with the advice not to practise it tired or ill. Qigong readings make leading the breath the core. Both are teachings of other systems, not Yiquan. The distinction between stunted and natural breathing does meet Wang's finding, though: what is “natural” often has to be found again first.

Common mistakes

1. Holding the breath as soon as it gets hard — in the stance, in Shili, in releasing force. 2. Pushing out chest or belly to breathe deeply or to “feel something”. 3. Leading the breath, counting it, lengthening it or trying to sink the qi on purpose. 4. Breathing through the mouth; Wang insists on the nose, which “commands” the breath. 5. Tightening the diaphragm, especially in Shi Sheng and Fa Li.