Answering a reader

Some background

An IS reader shared an excellent comment on the last article about Neidan, Qigong and the Martial Arts in which she asked a question and shared her experience about meditation and inner work.

The comment was so good that I wanted to actively answer it here on the newsletter (since it is a public comment I assume it is Ok to answer it here).

I will answer section by section:

1: “Thanks for your Neidan insights, I am finding them very interesting. My own meditation and internal energy arts studies of the past 30 years are primarily from the Oral Tradition, so I’ve read a very great deal less than you and I’m definitely not a scholar, nor a Chinese speaker, though several of my colleagues are.

In the system we practise we do a lot of ‘Neigong’ to support both the traditional Water-Method of Taoist Meditation and the internal martial arts.

I’m curious that Neigong is not a term that I’ve seen you use, though apologies if I’ve missed it, which is very possible!”

This is a good question, I've discussed the term Neigong at length in various places, but as is the issue with a periodical newsletter, any such posts are now deeply buried in the archives and might be difficult to locate conveniently.

The words Nei Gong were used periodically in self cultivation manuals over the last thousand years, but typically it refers to an inner skill which results from certain types of meditation and visualization practices rather than an individual system of training as we see in modern Neigong, Qigong, Neidan etc..

The reason for this is because of a systemic change in Chinese thinking around the late 19^th and early 20^th century in which elements of brand awareness were added to traditional thinking about self cultivation arts.

Traditionally Daoist self cultivation arts are called Xiu Dao and can include many elements such as Dao Yin, Visualization, Breath Work, Meditation of various types and so on...

Although the word Nei Dan is used frequently to describe Daoist Internal Alchemy, it certainly isn't the whole story since there is much training to do after the Internal Elixir is achieved.

For arts like Dao Yin, Visualization, Breath practice etc.. most of the time in old texts these terms are used to describe a genre rather than specific practices.

Individual practices within a system might have names like Eight Silk Brocades, Five Animal Frolics, Grasping and Spitting Etc...

In the old times many names could be used interchangeably for the same art, for instance Neidan could be called:

• Nei Dan (Internal Elixir),

• Jin Dan (Golden Elixir),

• Xing Ming Shuang Xiu (Nature and Life Dual Cultivation),

and various other names.

As previously mentioned Dao Yin behaves like a verb with individual Dao Yin styles being called by their various names.

To further confuse this there are also combined practices which use Dao Yin, Breath Work and Visualization together and are sometimes not named as styles and other times named by the names of other styles (Zhong Lu Golden Elixir is one such example).

Thus when we see terms like Nei Gong and Qi Gong in old manuscripts we have to be cautious not to think of it in the way we would as modern people who differentiate between specific styles lead by individual gurus since this practice didn't really become popular until the late nineteenth century with the advent of family based martial arts lineages in Beijing.

When style differentiation really became important was when it became required for Taiji Quan, Xingyi Quan and Bagua Zhang people to differentiate themselves from Shaolin Quan.

The first advent of this was when the name Taiji Quan was used to describe the Yang family variation of Taiji. Taiji Quan used to be called Mian Quan (Cotton Fist) or just be known by the name Pao Quan or Chang Quan (Cannon Fist or Long Fist respectively).

After Yang Luchan brought Taiji from Chen Village to Beijing the art was renamed Taiji Quan as a result of its similarity to the concept of Taiji.

From there we can also see rebranding of Xin Yi Quan to Xing Yi Quan under Li Luoneng and Zhuan Zhang to Bagua Zhang under Dong Hai Chuan.

The Internal Arts positioned themselves as being inherently Chinese Han ethnic arts which used Daoist principles to obtain their theory and excluded Shaolin as an external art from India as a result of its Buddhist origins.

Around the same time researchers went from Beijing to Shaolin to verify the martial arts practices of the monks there and after returning home claimed to have obtained copies of either Yijin Jing or another text called Nei Gong Tu Shuo (a discussion of Inner Skills Illustrated). I can't remember exactly how the story goes since I follow Daoist and not Buddhist practice, but you can look up the Israeli professor Meir Shahar who has done brilliant work illustrating the actual history of Shaolin. His work is a great way to sort out fact and faction as it pertains to Shaolin arts.

The first copy of the revised Yijin Jing was published around 1886, but many sections of it are based on older Daoist texts attributed to Zi Qing Dao Ren.

The contents of both texts can be said to be Dao Yin, but because of the popularization of Yijin Jing and Nei Gong Tu Shuo, or perhaps as part of an already extant tradition, martial artists began calling their Dao Yin exercises Nei Gong.

This means that traditionally martial artists use the term Nei Gong as half of their basic skill training regimen with the other half being Wai Gong or external skill.

This is approximately still the standard used in China today (I spent years in China studying Wushu and frequently encountered the use of the term Nei Gong to describe both a training activity and as a verb used to describe ability IE: “he or she has internal skill.”).

The term Qi Gong although being used in several texts as a verb was only used to describe the art of Qi Gong in the 1950s.

What we normally think of as Qi Gong today was actually created as part of a government committee by the CCP which sought to use Chinese Medicine, Daoist, Buddhist, and Martial Arts health practices as a way to strengthen the people of China.

Liu Guizhen's Nei Yang Gong (“Internal Nurturing Skill” sounds strangely similar to Nei Gong doesn't it?) was one of the first models of government approved systems which combined various medieval methods across different traditions.

Chen Yingning (who's Xian Xue School this newsletter is named for) was also influential in the development of early Qigong in the 50s and 60s.

Today there are thousands of styles of Qi Gong which are composites of medieval and ancient techniques, some learned by transmission and others through scholarship.

The reason why I rarely use the word Nei gong is because I don't emphasize martial arts training as much in my public teachings and personally I feel that the term has been used to describe practices incorrectly by a few relatively recent social media influencers in the Internal Martial Arts community who have Daoist pretensions but no actual training.

I also think the original adoption of the term Nei Gong into the Daoist vocabulary of the West happened as an interpretive mistake on the part of the venerable pioneers of these practices in the West.

To simmer it down to exactly what I think happened it seems to be the case that as a result of many Internal Arts practitioners in China also practicing and teaching Qigong and Meditation practices to their Western students there was an error in communication, but I have checked this with several prominent masters and there is a common agreement that Nei Gong is a martial arts and not a Daoist term.

I think this is verified in Shahar's work on the Shaolin temple which everyone should read if they are interested in the subject.

As for why I frequently use the word Qi Gong, it is part of my own ethos that we should use convenient terms to describe practice that everyone knows as long as they are relatively accurate.

There are many people in the Daoist community who disagree with me on this topic, but I think there are times when trying too hard to use historically precise language makes communication difficult.

At the same time I try to be very clear which school the particular practices I'm referring to come from and so although I use Qi Gong as a catchall to describe Dao Yin, Visualization, and Breath Work that are not based in seated meditation, I try to include specifics for each subject so you'll know if I'm talking about Dao Yin, Visualization, Breath Work etc...

If I ever teach martial arts I will certainly use martial arts appropriate language to describe those skills as well as being as precise as possible, but I don't view myself as being able to share anything truly special in the martial arts department so I will probably only ever teach small groups and private students rather than adding more noise to the already confusing market place.

2:”I also study and teach Qigong, some of which is 1500 years old and from the Shaolin Temple and some of which is a detailed system created as ‘medical qigong’ in the last century (but massively misrepresented globally in this century). It is clearly based on ancient practices from well before the very modern term ‘Qigong’ was created.

I would struggle to explain exactly how we define the differences between Qigong and Neigong, though I’ll have a go... because they are not considered to be the same and it’s more than just the relative vintage of the terms. Qigong is more about cultivating qi through working on it with physical exercises and fairly soft intent. Many of those exercises are specific to certain meridians, channels, acupoints, or specific health objectives.

Neigong for us is the whole body, deep internal work from the original Taoist qi practices and this is present both within all the physical practices and also within the traditional spiritual meditation. It’s not just there as exercise to support and nurture physical health, including for those spending a lifetime in meditation.”

I like to think of Qi Gong as exercises that intentionally manipulate the Qi of the body and Nei Gong as practices which open the body.

The degree of physicality or spiritual cultivation in any system is largely decided by the teachers who promote it.

Some people like to establish a more spiritualized point of view where they emphasize return to deep stillness, inner and outer awareness, and the use of energy to make the mind stable and calm while other people emphasize the physical characteristics of practice.

I happen to be lucky enough to have access to many private anecdotes about the period in which Qi Gong was conceptualized and developed during its boom in the 80s and am basically aware of how the construction of Qi Gong systems works.

The development of these systems largely revolves around a teacher understanding the core contents of traditional practices and arranging them in ways they think will best benefit their students.

There really is nothing magical about it and every Qi Gong teacher is just a human being at the end of the day. They all eventually get old and pass away and although they are really brilliant they are definitely not deities as some people would make them out to be.

The exact same is true for Nei Dan and Nei Gong, even Wang Chongyang, one of the most celebrated Daoist Immortals died in front of his students (actually many Daoist figures died in front of their students), going to show that even for the greatest master of the genre there is no physical immortality.

Just a few years ago Tian Chengyang, a famous Long Men sect Daoist from Shandong province who started the first Daoist temple in Spain died unexpectedly.

He was a major promoter of Nei Dan and wrote many important essays on the subject, but he still died relatively young in his 50s.

I think we need to respect the arts for what they can actually do which is improve our lives and perhaps add a little extra time if we are lucky enough not to get into accidents, suddenly fall ill, or otherwise perish before old age.

For the masters, we ought to respect them as valuable teachers who show us many wonderful things which help us, but we shouldn't forget that they are just as human as we are and they can also make mistakes and are subject to all the same imperfections normal people are.

I think Western students often get things like enlightenment wrong and don't look for the most obvious answers, instead building up an entire mythology about how special and important all these things are.

3: “The meditation practice we do being a more and more subtle way of working with the physical body (seated, moving, lying down or interactive) to get to the root of consciousness and ultimately to achieve union with Tao. For instance we might use Neigong techniques to pulsate anything from gross to ludicrously subtle blockages in our energy as we work to release and transform our inner world.

Effectively it’s the work/skills that support Neidan.”

I agree, internal practices including Qi Gong, the Martial Arts, Yoga and other systems can improve the meditation experience. I also study Mu'raqabah, a Muslim contemplative tradition which is quite different from Nei Dan, but it works very well to support certain aspects of Nei Dan practice.

There is much to be learned from cross training and once a person is skillful and knowledgeable enough they begin to see where the pieces fit together and they can construct a brilliant jigsaw puzzle of meaning, experience and practice that can benefit themselves and other people! It sounds like you already do this and I'm glad to be in good company!

I have a few main goals at IS:

1: I am a very normal person and I want to promote the idea of not following self styled Gurus:

I'm a completely average person with a hobby I'm serious about and I suspect the vast majority of teachers are just like me in that regard.

Guruship is a really bad thing for people to invest themselves in since usually getting too much adulation from students makes people become depraved in the long run. At the same time giving too much adulation leads to either disappointment or mind control and neither of those are good.

Ideally we are a community of friends who shares together as equals. If I come to you to learn then I respect you as my teacher, just as if you come to learn from me you would extend the same kindness.

In such conditions we can break down much of the needless drama that suffuses the community.

2: I want to be as accurate as possible while not being totally boring:

The thing that is good about my practice is that I have a good pedigree in Daoism, Qi Gong and the Internal Arts and have done the work required to understand Daoist energy practice and Qi Gong from an educated perspective.

Because I've been to weird parts of the community which aren't that common for non Chinese people to visit (for instance I remember going on an expedition in the Hebei City of Hengshui once to unearth the bones of Xingyi founder Li Luoneng to give him a proper burial. Unfortunately the pollution was so bad we had to turn our cars around and couldn't do it, but imagine how trippy it was for me to be invited to such an event) so as a result of being privy to much of the underbelly of the culture surrounding these practices, both first hand and by talking to people who area really deep into it, I feel I have a responsibility over time to improve the discourse by sharing truths that would be otherwise hidden from most practitioners.

There is so much smoke and mirrors in Chinese self cultivation practices and so many partially true, untrue and fraudulent claims that there needs to be at least a few people to actively run the “Bullshit detector.” I hope I can be one of those people.

Having said that, if I said everything I knew about the background of these practices I would probably get canceled because the reality of the situation steps on too many toes.

This is why I always say things in a measured way and don't directly discuss individuals in my posts.

Looking at China as a geopolitical entity it shouldn't be any surprise that every level of Chinese society is infused with politics, intrigue and struggle, so why should anyone assume Daoism is any different.

One of my goals is to be accurate when I write so that even if I can't name names, at least I can share good information which some people might be able to use to avoid toxic situations.

3: I want people to study Nei Dan and Daoist Self Cultivation:

these practices have been so good for me that I want to share them with others and I want people to have the highest chance possible to succeed.

This is why I try to be as low B.S. As possible and only share information I'm absolutely sure about, as well as not making any claims which are impossible to verify in practice.

I hope this response was useful!!