Is Breathing One of the “Three Leaders”?
By Paul Cavel
Simply put, no, breathing is not one of the three leaders, but rather the first of the 16 neigong.*
The fundamental difference is that a “leader” initiates movement, whereas neigong activates various layers of body during that movement.
The three leaders are:
The kwa — is central to first learning qigong and remains the leader until you establish some degree of body unification in motion.
The spine — upgrades your practice and becomes the leader in intermediate stages of practice.
The lower tantien — further upgrades intermediate practice and makes possible whole-body unification.
This process can take years, even decades to complete and fully develop.
The kwa and spine are not neigong components themselves, but rather leaders of cohesive layers of neigong material.
The lower tantien is both a leader and the fourteenth neigong component because, as you unify the body and all its energy, that which leads and activates the body can seamlessly blend together.
(* For the complete list of the 16 neigong, see my book which I co-authored with my teacher Taoist Lineage Holder Bruce Frantzis, Heaven & Earth Qigong: Heal Your Body and Awaken Your Qi.)
The Kwa: The First Leader
The kwa connects the legs to the spine. This is the primary linkage in all neigong training, including qigong, tai chi and bagua, as without a connected kwa you cannot initiate whole-body motion.
While it is true that if you move your kwa, you will also move and develop qi (through the left and right channels of energy), it is the physical connection of the legs to the spine that is developed in the beginning stages of practice.
Later, if you dedicate enough time and accurate effort to your practice, the focus can shift to the kwa cavities and finally to energetic development of the left and right channels.
The Spine: The Second Leader
The second leader is the spine, again a physical body part that initiates movement. If you have experiential knowledge of working with your kwa, you know that the lower spine is a part of the kwa. So when making the jump from the kwa to the spine as the leader, you simply shift the origination point of motion to the centre of the spine, rather than the tailbone.
However, when moving from the spine, the kwa remains active and you maintain the legs-to-spine connection. If for any reason you cannot maintain this connection, you know you have moved ahead too soon. It is often the case that a practitioner oscillates between the kwa and the spine leading the motion for a period time, until they fuse into one piece.
Moving from the spine allows you to make two big jumps in your development:
Tying in the roots of the limbs (kwa cavities for the legs, armpits for the arms and throat notch for the neck and head), which activates the major fluid pumps of the body.
Indirectly activates the central channel of energy which, to some degree, is influenced by the movement of the spine as they operate in tandem with one another.
Taoist Breathing & Pulsing In Concert with the First Two Leaders
With breathing practice, there isn’t any movement required except for the act of the diaphragm going down and up, and the lungs expanding and releasing in coordination with air coming in and out, respectively. So again this is evidence that the leaders initiate the external motion, while neigong techniques create internal motion.
In this sense and taking a full breath as our example, breathing can open up the insides of your body on a profound level. When Taoist breathing methods have been correctly implemented, released and cleared the body’s internal systems, breathing begins to join, fuse and integrate the whole body into one fabric — the aim of all neigong exercises.
Note that reverse breathing can unify the body stronger than natural breathing, but natural breathing is far easier and does the trick more than adequately for most students' needs.
When you train neigong exercises of any kind, you initially move from the kwa (and later the spine) and breathe by whatever pattern is dictated by the particular movement you are practising. Of course, this is guided by the Rule of Thirds, so you wouldn't use more than two-thirds of your effort in body, mind or qi for either the range of the physical motion, or length and effort used to breathe in and out.
So the kwa or spine initiates the motion, while breathing follows and unifies the body.
Pulsing, the seventh neigong, is another example of the cohesive nature of neigong. When you tune into and get your pulse up and running throughout your whole body, it does not lead, but follows the kwa or spine. When the spine becomes the leader, the cavities at the root of the limbs are activated and it is the cavities that initiate and govern the pulse within the joints, including feeding them with life-sustaining qi.
In this way, you can create centre-to-periphery and periphery-to-centre motion with the spine initiating the movement. This activates the root cavities, which in turn activates the joints out to the periphery and back — the spine leads and the pulse follows.
The Lower Tantien: The Third Leader
Once the basic connections are created through the kwa’s soft tissues and the fluid pumps (via the cavities) coming online with the activation of the spine, the jump to the lower tantien can then be attempted.
From the perspective of the lower tantien, you are in the realm of pure energetics as it is a non-physical space. Your sensitivity must be sufficiently developed in order to feel and move from the lower tantien, but the basic idea is to activate and fuse the lower tantien to the spine and kwa, allowing the lower tantien to lead and govern all motion.
When you reach this stage of practice, the barrier between the leader and neigong component disappears, and they become one. The lower tantien connects to every part of and governs your physical body, and thereby has the potential to feed and lead all motion.
When this process is activated, you will have arrived at the first layer of the sixteenth neigong: connecting every part of the physical body into one, unified energy. The lower tantien leads, unifying the motion of the physical body, breathing and development of qi into one piece of woven fabric. This can be considered the beginning of the advanced stage of practice.
Once all the body’s systems are up and running, and begin to integrate into one, cohesive whole, qi development jumps to a whole new realm, opening doors that the practitioner is usually not even aware existed!
Join Me to Learn More!
Immerse yourself in deep Taoist neigong training on breathing, pulsing and the three leaders in my upcoming courses: