On Breathing in Tai Chi Chuan

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Breathing, Natural breathing, Reverse Breathing, Taoist Breathing

There are a a few different meanings on, and things written about, breathing in Tai Chi Chuan. Especially if you have two different teachers who teaches different things, it can be hard to understand what is correct and what is wrong. In my own opinion, there are certainly things that many people say about breathing that are wrong, but for me personally, it took some time to reach to the point where I could be confident enough to express a strict view on how it should be done.

Breathing should be deep and full. Yet, it should be natural and be left alone. You need to teach your body to do what it should do. And then you need to learn how to trust your body that it understand what to do and when. I will tell you this: Your body is always smarter than you, so you just need to learn how to let go of the control and let the body work by itself.

There are some important things to understand about breathing in Tai Chi. First, there are two different opinions about how to coordinate, or not coordinate, breathing with movements. And then, people usually distinguish two different types of breathing.

Coordinating breathing or not in Tai Chi practice

There are two different main opinions on how to breath in Tai Chi:

• Breath should be consciously coordinated together with the movements of the form
• Breath should not be controlled, but follow the movements naturally.

So, some people say that you should coordinate your breath together with the movements. And others say that you should let the breath be and let it naturally follow the movements. To not linger and make this unnecessarily complicated, I will just say that the first is wrong. To actively trying to coordinate breath and movement is a mistake that might have become common by Tai Chi being influenced by modern Qigong. Tai Chi is something else.

Instead, you should forget about the breathing and let it the movements and the body, what you do, let decide how you breath. Yes, you should breath deep and full. But this does not come from trying to force the breath. Correct fullness and depth of the breath comes by you learning to relax and calm your mind and body.

And to be frank, I don’t think I have seen anyone, not even those who preach active coordination, that actually coordinates movement and breath will practicing form. Trying to do this will just make both your breath and movements uncomfortable and unnatural. But remember that one of the keywords in Tai Chi practice is always Ziran, or keeping things “natural”.

Most of the people who believe that you should coordinate breath and movement say that when you start the form and lift the arms, you should breath in. When you sink the arms, you should breath out. Also, when the arms move out from the body, you should breath out and when you move the arms back, towards the body, you should breath in.

The funny thing with some of the people who preaches about this type of coordinating the breath consciously, is that they believe that it should take one hour to do the long Yang style Tai Chi form. Think about this for a minute. If one single movement, as in when you open up your arms in “Split the wild horses mane”, “Single Whip” or “Crane shows its Wings”, takes 20 or 30 seconds to do, you would need to breath, very, very slow, and it would surely often become tense and unnatural. If you do like this, you will have broken one of the most important rules – Ziran, or moving in a “natural” manner.

So obviously, it is impossible to coordinate the breath in an exact pattern while practicing a form or drills, and at the same time keep the breath natural and unrestrained. The correct way is to let the breath be left alone and learn how to trust your breath to let it regulate itself.

Understanding deep, natural breathing through the trinity of mind-breath-body

The easiest way to learn how mind, breath and body is integrated as a whole is to just stand in a natural form starting position, or wuji stance, with the feet parallell and shoulder width apart. Now, stand comfortably and just relax your body, put your awareness to different parts of your body as jaws, neck, chest, shoulders, lower back, knees.

Take your time and feel the tension in these areas and release the tension. Get rid of unnecessary tension by relaxing. When you have gone through the body with your awareness a few times, you will soon understand that the relaxation and calmness of mind, breath and body are completely connected with each other. If you relax either mind, body or breath, the other two will follow. Relaxing the body relaxes and deepen the breath as well as it calms down the mind.

Therefore, Tai Chi practice focuses mainly on relaxation of the body while in movement. As relaxation demands attention of the mind, the breath and mind will automatically calm down and breath will automatically follow the movements when you are relaxed. The only thing that might prevent you from deepening this process is if you are a beginner and need to think too much about how movements should look like or about what movement follow next.

So if you are a beginner, it’s better to not force yourself with daily practicing a long sequence of a form until you really remember the whole form without the need to think about the sequence of the individual movements. Do the form as much you remember occasionally until you know it well. But for your daily practice, it’s better to practice individual movements or to break out a short sequence and practice those.

If you practice like this and always train to calm your mind and relax your body, the breath will learn by itself how to regulate itself, how to stay deep and it will shift naturally between inhaling and exhaling according to your movements.

Two types of breathing

Teachers usually speak about two different types of breathing in Tai Chi:

• Natural breathing
• Reverse breathing

Natural breathing in Tai Chi Chuan

Natural breathing in Tai Chi is usually understood as the common way people breath in daily life. When you breath in, the belly goes out. And when you breath out, the belly goes in. But exactly how, or how much, depends on how deep or shallow your natural breathing is.

Reverse breathing in Tai Chi Chuan

Reverse breathing, also called Taoist breathing, is, in contrast to natural breathing, usually explained as a learned way of breathing where the belly expands as you breath out, and contracts inwards as you breath in. This is often regarded as an advanced type of breathing that should not be tried until at least two years of practice.

Reverse breathing in Tai chi explained

So, there you have the two types of breathing as how different teachers usually explain them. Now you might see a problem here. Or maybe not, but I will explain: If you believe that breath should always be consciously controlled in a certain pattern, then you will not have any contradiction between the common explanations between natural and reverse breathing.

But I have already said that this is a mistake, you should not control and try to coordinate the breath. So how will you learn reverse breathing if you should not coordinate your breath? My personal answer is that I believe that most things about reverse breathing, how it is understood and explained, are wrong and based on mistakes. Many teachers just keep on repeating what they have read, or have heard their teachers say, without doing much thinking by themselves.

Reverse breathing is not an advanced type of breathing. It’s not some kind of special Taoist breathing method that will make your Qi stronger or enhance your martial arts skills. It’s not even something that should be taught at a certain stage. All of this would be wrong.

Instead, reverse breathing is nothing else than a natural functional breathing pattern. The breathing is functional as it means that you have understood the functions of the movements of the form and perform them in the same way as you used them as applications against a partner.

Think and imagine how you breath and how the body naturally coordinates itself when you push something heavy, as a car. Or what happens to the belly when you blow up an inflatable beach ball or a balloon. When you breath out, your chest will flatten and your belly will move out, expand. This is not something you ever need to think about, but something which occurs automatically without even needing to think about how you breath.

In the same way, when you practice your form, as you move your arms forward to push, you should breath out and the belly should expand. The diaphragm presses downward on the abdominal cavity, which bulges forward. So what is called reverse breathing is a “belly breathing” method, also called diaphragmatic breathing, but with the inhale and expansion of the belly reversed.

There should be nothing unnatural or tense about this type of breathing. It should come natural and regulate itself according to your own movements. But to understand how to breath this way, you need to first learn how to deepen the natural breath, from chest breathing to diaphragmatic breathing. You would probably also need to have spent some time practicing push hands and form movement applications with a partner, so to learn the proper functions of the movements of the form.

So, when you know how to naturally breath deeply, and have had sufficient partner training so that you understand how Tai Chi works in practical practice, you should be able to move and breath correctly throughout the whole form. And this is also a reason why practicing Tai Chi as a martial art is essential for an overall correct understanding of Tai Chi solo practice.

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Was Baguazhang really invented by Dong Haichuan?

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Bagua, Baguazhang, Internal Arts, neijia

Baguazhang, or Bagua (older romanisation: Pa Kua or Pa Kua Chang), meaning “Eight Triagram Palm” is just like Xingyiquan one of the “internal” sisters arts of Taijiquan. If you don’t know about this art or have no interest in it, I doubt that you will have any interest in what I write here. Hang on if you want.

The origin of Baguazhang is debated, but it has become generally accepted that a eunuch and tax collector with the name of Dong Haichuan(1797 or 1813 – 1882), would be the inventor of this art. But in fact, there are some evidence that points to that the art of Baguazhang should be older and might have been taught by other people.

Dong Haichuan lived in closed quarters as a bodyguard for Prince Su, and later he got the mission from the Prince to collect taxes. This means that he only had a few students and not much time to teach except for Yin Fu who travelled nine years with Dong. The others he didn’t teach for a long time, and also, he acted as a teacher mostly later in life when he was old and poor and lived together with his students. As his students learned from Dong in different times and for different amount of times, they adapted Dong’s teachings in very different ways. Most people associate Bagua with the expression of Cheng Style from Cheng Tinghua, which was also adapted to Sun Style Bagua, but in fact, the variations of Bagua Styles and schools are big and they can look very different.

However, all Bagua styles have in common so called “circle walking”, some basic movements and the same kind of structure, though the content of what is taught can be more or less complex. The most common story, of how Dong originally learned his art, says that Dong learned exercises from Daoists and adapted them to martial arts. But the thing is that no one knows exactly what kind of exercises he learned. No one seem to be able to even come up with anything similar. Some people suggest that the circle walking comes from chants or religious ceremonies.

As this is a theory not backed by any kind of proofs and made up without any kind of explanation, I would suggest to leave those speculations alone and look at facts. One fact we can mention, is that it’s a very common thing in Chinese duel kind of swordplay, to walk around in circles, in order to try to find openings and angles to attack the opponent. Also, the basic movements of Bagua can all be made with a Chinese broadsword or dao (large saber). Even the rear hand in broadsword play, that is used to support and stabilise the weapon mostly for defensive movements, is evident in the basic Bagua movements.

So it’s very simple really, the circling and basic movements all come from basic swordplay, things that Dong had to practice and become skilled in due to the services as a bodyguard and tax collector. In many Chinese styles, the exact same movements that are performed in barehanded boxing systems can be performed with different kinds of weapons, so this adaption is not something new or original. But the footwork in Bagua is not adapted from what was commonly used in battlefield combat, and that you can see in many other martial art styles, but comes more from one-against-one duelling and defence against only a few opponents, as robbers and burglars.

However, there is still no evidence that it was Dong Haichuan who invented Baguazhang. One of the clues is something we can find in Sun Lutang’s book The Voices of Sun Lutang’s Teachers. First, when Sun Lutang cites his teacher Chen Tinghua, no one of them ever claim that Dong Haichuan invented Bagua. But even more revealing, Chang Tinghua said to Sun Lutang:

“To practice the method of Bagua Boxing, first find a knowledgeable teacher to instruct you who knows the meaning within the boxing art and the order of the sequence.“

Read it carefully and let this sink in for a moment. What is clearly indicated here is that there are other Bagua teachers. Cheng doesn’t say anything about that only a few taught the art, or that it would be hard to find a Bagua teacher. He says it in the way like it was possible to pick and choose amongst teachers. So from this statement, I can only presume that there must have been other Bagua teachers around except the few well known students of Dong Haichuan.

There are a few others than me who believe that history points to that Bagua should not have been created by Dong Haichuan. Very well respected Martial Arts Historian for instance, William Hu (who was more or less raised in an imperial library and probably has more knowledge than the very most people about traditional Chinese arts, and also a vast knowledge about Chinese culture and history in general), thought that Dong Haichuan was only one of several who taught Baguazhang at his own time. He also claimed that he had seen evidence that the name Baguazhang should be have been in use earlier than his time. Exactly what proofs he had is something he never explained. Sadly he had planned to write books and the internal arts and Taijiquan, but for different reasons, he abandoned a book that was already partially written. However, you can read his basic view about Baguazhang in this classical article.

And the third evidence that Dong Haichuan did not invent the art is maybe the most evident. And this is a related art, a very similar art with a similar name: Yin Yang Bapanzhang. From the records, this art is even older than Baguazhang. Some people believe that Dong Haichuan originally learned this art and was one of three disciples of Yin Yang Bapanzhang teacher Dong Linmeng. However, there is no evidence of this.

That two very similar styles should be developed around the same time by two different people is highly unlikely. Using my own judgement examining the clues together, it seems very unlikely that the art of Baguazhang would have been invented by Dong Haichuan. As this tradition seems to have been mostly practiced by bodyguards, security personnel and similar, some of the art might have disappeared after the need for this kind of people decreased and as firearms became more frequently used. Or it might have vanished as martial arts was banned. We don’t know for sure, maybe we’ll find more clues in the future. But still, it seems like some things might have been lost.