Your Breath expands 6 feet around you in your toroidal field
- Place your palms on your belly (right palm over left for women and left palm over right for men – more on that below, the example is for a male)
- Focus on the lower Dan Tian (see what is a Dan Tian below). As you inhale the belly should expand, as you exhale the belly should contract, like bellows, we call this belly breathing.
- Breathe in through the nose and out through the nose. This may be altered with practice.
- Your breath should be quiet, calm and not forced. Use no more than 70% of your capacity per breath.
- Not by pushing your belly out but by relaxing it and letting it drop. It should feel like the air is being drawn through your lungs down into your belly. Then as you gently breathe out, imagine the air going up your back, along your spine over your head.
- Follow along with a detailed example of breathing postures below.
What and where is your Dan Tian | It’s your Posture | It’s Your Breath |
Follow Qigong Checklist. Gently align your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Keep a relaxed breath, never forcing through the nose or mouth.
| Head aligned to body. Align neck and shoulders. Gently tuck the tip of your chin into your chest. | Gently take a deep relaxing breath in your nose, feeling your lungs expand. Breathe in 5.5 sec. Breathe out for 5.5 sec. We call this the Wu Chi Breath. Feeling your lower Dan Tian expand and contract with each breath. |
As you can probably tell by many of the above items, the most important overall point in finding your Dan Tian is breathing; this is key to RELAXATION. Your entire body must be relaxed to allow your Chi to flow without obstruction. Tension stops the flow of Chi. Your body and mind must also be relaxed to sense, feel, and direct your Chi without distraction. Even before beginners can activate and feel their Chi, they must achieve this state of deep relaxation, which benefits general health and stress reduction.
To begin: Make a mental inventory of the state of relaxation in each part of your body. Focus your mind on each part of your body starting at the top of your head while implementing the key points above. Imagine a string (the pearls) holding you up from the crown of your head. Next focus on relaxing on your neck and shoulders. Then focus on relaxing your arms, elbows and hands letting them hang loosely by your sides. Your arms should feel heavy as they sink down. Focus on relaxing your chest, hips, and stomach letting gravity unroll the bottom of your spine and lengthen it. Finally focus on relaxing your legs, knees and feet letting your weight sink down into the center of your feet. It should feel like wet cement is being poured down into your legs and firming but without hardening.
Now you are ready to begin the breathing exercises.
Loosely place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth just behind the front teeth. This does two things. First it forms a physical valve that makes you breathe through your nose. Second it forms a connection between the two main Chi meridians, the conception vessel in the front and the governing vessel in the back, forming a complete circuit. These are the names in TCM, but they are your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, basically fight or flight and rest and digest.
Breathe in deeply as if into your belly, which is called belly breathing or embryonic breathing. Not by pushing your belly out but rather by relaxing your belly and letting it drop. It should feel like the air is being drawn through your lungs down into your belly. Then as you gently breathe out, imagine the air going up your back along your spine over your head (Small Circulation).
- Sit or lie flat in a comfortable position
- Put one hand on your belly just below your ribs and the other hand on your chest
- Take a deep breath in through your nose, and let your belly push your hand out.
- Do this breath 3 to 10 times
This sounds funny. Of course, the air doesn’t go into your belly or up your back, which often confuses beginners. You’ll often hear all sorts of strange “breathing” described in Qigong descriptions, like foot breathing, kidney breathing, etc. The Chinese word Chi means vital energy, but it also means air. So, when talking about breathing in Qigong, it often means breathing air and using that process to direct Chi energy further throughout the body. What moves through the body at that point is not the air that stays in the lungs but rather a wave of energy that travels further through the body.
Feeling and directing Chi is a form of biofeedback but only using the mind and body rather than electronic devices. Breathing is an autonomic bodily function that can be manually controlled relatively easily. So, you are using the breathing apparatus of your diaphragm to also control and direct waves of energy through your body while you breathe. There are other small muscles around your lower abdominal cavity. By focusing on breathing as if it were from your belly, you can use the diaphragm and other abdominal muscles to do much more than breath. As you breathe, you contract these muscles in a wave that rotates down the front of your abdominal cavity, around the bottom, and up the back of the abdominal cavity in a circle. Once you get the hang of this, you’ll often hear and feel gurgling in your abdomen as it is being massaged by this muscle action when you “belly breathe.”
Feeling Your Chi Breath
This biofeedback control initially allows you to feel and direct Chi through the body. Higher-level practitioners are said to be able to direct and flow the Chi with the mind alone. I have not yet reached that level. So far, I’ve only gotten to the point where I can feel Chi in my hands and forearm, and legs during Qigong practice and odd random places (like the face) during other Qigong practices. The hands are usually the first place where you can feel Chi because the hands are the most sensitive body parts and are easily under conscious control. Many meridians also end in the fingers, so it’s usually these meridians that you become aware of first. When moving the hands across each other, it feels like moving the same poles of two magnets across each other, and you can feel them gently repel each other. So, what is Breathing?
Inhalation: When you breathe in or inhale, your diaphragm contracts (tightens) and moves downward. This increases the space in your chest cavity, into which your lungs can expand. The intercostal muscles between the ribs also open to allow the chest to enlarge.
As your lungs expand, air is drawn in through your nose or mouth. The air travels down your bronchial tube and into your lungs, filling the alveoli (air sacs). Through the very thin walls of the alveoli, oxygen from the air enters the capillaries. At the same time, carbon dioxide passes out of the capillaries into the alveoli air sacs.
When the air expands and fills the body, displacement happens. This means the body can move and expand in various ways to make room for the air in the lungs. Displacement can cause an expansion in the chest, in the ribs in every lateral direction, in the back, and the entire abdomen can enlarge.
Exhalation: When you breathe out or exhale, your diaphragm relaxes and moves upward, making the lungs and chest cavity smaller. Any displacement in the back and abdomen can return to normal. Exhaling requires only relaxing. It is not effortful.
In ancient Daoism and Yoga, the masters developed highly refined breathing techniques in exact ways, such as Pranayama. They considered conscious breath control a type of meditation, internal alchemy leading to strength and balance. Their practices went far beyond relaxing the body and reducing stress. Ancient breathing was considered a portal through which a practitioner could achieve higher awareness and discover the mysterious meeting point between life and the material world. In other words, the breath was seen as the link between the life force (Chi or Prana) and physical existence. This makes the body a sacred temple, very different from an inanimate object like a table.
“Breathing control gives humans strength, vitality, inspiration, and magical powers.”
Zhuang Zhou 369—298 B.C.E.
When you can control your breath, you are the master of your Chi or life force. You can use the breath to dissolve impurities in the body and the mind. You can awaken the spirit. You can heal many otherwise incurable diseases. This is the power of the breath.
The breath is in constant and intimate connection with the organs and body functions: the lungs, heart, digestion, elimination, liver, kidneys, and nervous system. It regulates the most profound energy exchange systems in the body that transform food into thoughts and oxygen into expression and movement. When the breath is under control, outside forces can no longer manipulate your nervous system. You’re immune to mind control and the swaying winds of a changeable society.
Breathing is your link to the divine. By controlling the act of breathing, you can most efficiently control all the systems in the body, including your emotions, instead of being controlled by them. This is within your reach with slow and regular practice.
Ancient practices show a direct correlation between one’s level of health and the body’s oxygen level or O2 uptake. Even clearer is a direct correlation between your level of health and your ability to take long, deep breaths and retain them.
What are the four types of breathing humans do:
- Eupnea
- Hyperpnea
- Diaphragmatic
- Costal
- Eupnea is normal quiet breathing that requires contraction of the diaphragm and external intercostal muscles.
- Diaphragmatic breathing requires contraction of the diaphragm, also called deep breathing.
- Costal breathing requires contraction of the intercostal muscles, also called shallow breathing.
- Hyperpnea is forced breathing and requires muscle contractions during both inspiration and expiration, such as contraction of the diaphragm; intercostal muscles do during the mode of breathing that can occur during exercise or actions that require the active manipulation of breathing, such as singing. During hyperpnea, also known as forced breathing, inspiration and expiration occur due to muscle contractions. In addition to the diaphragm’s and intercostal muscles’ contraction, other accessory muscles must also contract.
The purpose of this is to outline the basic breathing types. The specific breathing practices to count, hold, and move Chi through the body for specific purposes are not discussed here.
Stay tuned for more on how to awaken and feel your Chi with Breath with the following:
478 Breathing
4 4 4 Breathing
7/11 Breathing
The Wu Chi breathing posture you will learn in the “Free Course” is an essential foundation of your practice. Adding this posture, whether standing or seated, meditation 10-20 minutes a day will enhance your rooting in the forms and increase chi flow in the body. Contemplating a Wu Chi posture and breathing during your busy life can also help you relax your mind and body.
These are the primary breathing techniques you will use when you begin your practice. Each area can be expanded with more lessons as you become aware of your body and want to learn the energy movement throughout. If you require further information, don’t hesitate to contact [email protected][email protected] to ask a specific question.