Six Harmonies 六合

Six pairs, one unity

The Six Harmonies (六合, liù hé) describe in six pairs how mind and body should work together. They fall into two groups of three (三合):

• The three inner (内三合): heart and intent (心与意), intent and qi (意与气), qi and force (气与力). Together a chain: the heart leads the intent, the intent the qi, the qi the force.
• The three outer (外三合): hand and foot (手与足), elbow and knee (肘与膝), shoulder and hip (肩与胯, → Kua).

The general account of Xingyiquan gives the same division, so the table does not rest on sources from within Yiquan alone.

Anchored in the name

How deep the harmonies sit in the tradition is shown by a name. The art of Ji Jike, out of which Xingyiquan grew, was called in full 心意六合拳: heart-intent six-harmonies fist (→ Xinyiquan). The six harmonies were therefore not an addition but part of the name.

Yiquan's sequence of names drops them step by step: 心意六合拳 becomes 形意拳, and 形意拳 becomes Wang Xiangzhai's 意拳. Only the intent (意) remains. This matches what Wang does with the harmonies in substance: he keeps them as a description, but no longer as a programme.

What Wang meant by them

In his first book of 1928 Wang still names the Six Harmonies explicitly and defines them by what contradicts them: “No movement and no posture that runs counter to these harmonies — this is called harmony.” Harmony is thus no trick to be added, but the absence of contradictions in the body.

He also knows a second division that forms quite different pairs: muscles and bones, teeth and flesh, lungs and kidneys. That alone shows that what mattered to him was not a particular list but the principle that nothing works on its own.

And he adds a warning:

“The six harmonies tempt one to stress the parts instead of the whole — that does harm.”

Here lies Yiquan's whole attitude to its inheritance. The pairs are a scaffold for learning. Whoever gets stuck on them, matching hand, foot, elbow and knee one by one, misses the point. The point is the undivided force of the whole body (Hun Yuan Li), in which there are no separate pairs any more (demystification).

What the outer three demand

The outer harmonies coordinate the frame of the body. When the hand moves, the foot follows; elbow and knee, shoulder and hip work as pairs. The body thereby moves as one unit rather than as a sequence of separate limbs.

To check it, watch the pairs in the stance: is the elbow above the knee or far off to one side? Does the shoulder rise while the hip sinks? Such breaks show where the frame does not yet hang together.

The family's version

Wang Yufang, Wang's daughter, turns the harmonies into an exercise. In her series of 31 forms, the form “raising the hands” (举手式) carries the inner and outer harmonies explicitly. Two things stand out.

First, she names the inner three more tersely: heart, intent, force (心·意·力). Qi as the middle link is missing. The chain leads straight from intent to force, entirely in the spirit of Yiquan.

Second, she adds spring connections to the outer harmonies, imagined like rubber bands (松紧带相联): little finger to toes, elbow tip to kneecap, shoulder to hip. A rule of coordination thus becomes something you can feel in the stance.

Two further mnemonics from her instructions form the frame. The five necks (五个脖子): both wrists, both ankles and the nape should be released and upright. And 三夹两顶, three clamps and two points: the root of the thigh, the hollow of the knee and the ankle close slightly inward; kneecap and toes press forward.

What the inner three mean

The inner harmonies describe the order in the mind: first the intent, then what it sets going, last the force. Tradition speaks of qi here. In Yiquan this means less a life energy than the bridge between image and body, which shows itself in practice as breath, warmth and tension (→ Jin, Li and Qi). Wang Yufang's short form without qi draws the consequence.

What remains is a rule that carries the whole of Yiquan: the intent (Yi) leads, the body follows.

As a touchstone

Bo Jiacong names the inner and outer harmonies in Jian Wu, the free synthesis of all methods, and quotes Wang on it: “全身之法相合谓之合” — when all the methods of the whole body agree, that is called harmony. The harmonies serve here not as an instruction but as a test: in a free, unpredictable movement, does everything still agree?

Three terms to keep apart

Yiquan has three kinds of “connection” that sound alike and are easily confused:

• The outer harmonies (外三合) are pairs of coordination: hand with foot, elbow with knee, shoulder with hip.
• The inner connections (身内争力) are pairs of contending force within the body: finger against finger, knee against knee, front knee against rear hip.
• The outer connections (身外争力) are projected into the distance: springs from the hand to a far-off tree.

The harmonies say what should move together. The connections say what works against each other.

Two readings from outside

Mike Sigman, writing from a taiji perspective, equates movement according to the Six Harmonies with silk reeling (Chan Si Jin): a whole-body way of moving that conducts the force of the ground (Peng Jin) through the connected body. He explains the outer harmonies through connective tissue running lengthwise (fascia): when the elbow turns in, the knee on the same side answers almost at once.

Peter Zhu expressly contradicts this direction of view. Asked about connective tissue, he answers: “I simply say: whole body. The connective tissue follows that anyway.” It is not the body that follows the tissues but the tissues that follow the whole. That is Wang's reservation in other words.

Yiquan practises no visible silk-reeling choreography. It shares the basic idea with both readings: the body is connected before it moves.

Not to be confused

The Six Harmonies are not the name component of the martial art Liu He Ba Fa (六合八法拳), which Wang came to know in Shanghai. Both arts use a “六合” in their vocabulary, but they mean different things by it.