So what about stretchy Dao Yin stuff?

Stretchy Dao Yin Stuff

If you read my posts you might get the idea that I don't like stretchy Dao Yin stuff, but that definitely is not true.

Actually, Dao Yin is a great style and totally worth doing, but you have to understand it according to its own merits rather than trying to fit a square peg into a Neidan shaped hole.

One of the biggest problems with the Western discussion about Xiu Dao is that terminology is not clear yet, so the reason why I write all these excruciating articles which nit pick the various genres to death is because it would be good to learn the terminology in order to be clear about our goals in practice.

I sometimes worry that this way of doing things might be misinterpreted as a polemic, but my intention isn't to bash anything, it is to point out the common way that modern scholars understand and arrange Dao cultivation practices. The best scholar in the field is named Hu Fuchen, but there are plenty of other figures as well, although most of my analysis comes from Hu, Chen Yingning, then the classics of Daoism, not just Neidan texts, but also major tracts of Dao Yin, visualization and breathwork such as Huang Ting Jing, Dao Shu, Xiao Dao Zang etc... The reason why modern scholars like Hu think in the way they do is because this is the overwhelming impression one gets after doing a meta-reading of Daoist cultivation texts across the generations as well as talking to masters themselves. Even Qigong masters such as Pang Ming highly identified with the Neidan way of doing things, although this association is less common in the Qigong world now, or perhaps it would be better to say that today more Qigong people prefer to dress in Daoist clothes and pretend they are part of some special practice that is somehow not Qigong, but that is another story...

My point is that I'm not trying to poo poo on anyone's practice here, but I think authenticity and striving for accuracy are important, and since the genre is poorly understood in the west, and let's say that although there is a general scholarly consensus in China, that doesn't have any bearing on how these arts are practiced in the commons, I feel I have to offer sufficient definition to be able to guide the community toward getting the most out of their practice.

Ok, so on with the point... What is the benefit of Dao Yin as stretching art?

The first thing we have to do is point out that Dao Yin does not only mean stretching, but the problem is that if we can't view Dao Yin according to generations of practice we will have a difficult time understanding what is being communicated in the traditions, since Dao Yin is more than one thing.

The way contemporary scholars tend to organize the content is as such:

• Dao Yin: stretching arts originating during the Warring States period, possibly derived from longevity practices of court magicians and astrologers,

• Cun Xiang: visualization practices which began to become popular around the 3^rd century AD in religious Daoism,

• Tu Na: breath practices either emphasizing retention or exhalation which existed since the warring states era,

• Fang Zhong Shu: bedroom arts which were popular during the Han and until the Sui dynasty.

These are the ancient practices of Daoism, but the scholarly definition is awkward since none of the practices exist independent of each other and because things like saliva collection is not clearly part of any of the above categories and yet exists in all of them.

The implication is as follows:

There are some texts which are relatively pure such as the Huang Ting Jing which is mostly a visualization text which only has some small breathing and saliva collection practices and no Dao Yin, but there are also many texts such as Zhu Bing Yuan Hou Lun (which my friend Dolly Yang did an excellent translation of) have a mix of different methods and sometimes even incorporate period Chinese Medicine ideas.

In other words, definitions can be quite fluid and tricky to understand and almost no one practices pure stretchy Dao Yin, or pure visualization etc.. to the exclusion of other practices.

So now that we have ascertained that, we can talk about a hypothetical Dao Yin that is only stretching. Let's say that it exists, has existed and will exist in the future in arts such as the Martial Eight Silk Brocades, Dao Yin Tu, independent exercises from small scrolls, individual exercises from larger texts etc... These arts are obviously useful since people have taken them seriously for thousands of years, but the question is what they are meant to do?

I'm mainly a Neidan person who also does Qigong and old Daoist practices, so I'll talk about this from a Neidan perspective, please forgive me for having my own prejudices, but I think this is the most accurate comparison I can make.

Stretchy Dao Yin is about the physical body and in the beginning no one ever said anything like “The Yi is the commander of the Qi,” since those ideas came much later (originally as pejoratives in Neidan texts and later in a positive sense in the martial arts). Stretching Dao Yin postures were viewed as ways to maintain the health of the body and treat illness as is evidences in texts like the Neijing which mention Dao Yin and massage briefly as well as unique documents like Zhu Bing Yuan Hou Lun which discuss many types of practice with Dao Yin being a major feature.

If we take this as the early definition of Dao Yin, which I think is broadly fair, then we should view Dao Yin as a kind of ancient physiotherapy.

That's point 1, but the second point is that Daoism and folk practice have something to say about this which casts doubt, or creates problems for that narrative, which is that many people believed Dao Yin was a way to achieve immortality.

This is where you need to understand something important about Daoism, which is that the meaning of immortality has changed several times throughout Daoist history.

The most ancient way of viewing immortals was that they were people who were allowed to live in the heavenly island of Penglai (incidentally, Penglai is a real place in Shandong, but you can just look it up on your own if you want) because they did good deeds and saved people during their time as living humans. Many of these people were sorcerers and practiced magic to save people from disaster, so they were viewed as mysterious and having the ability to ascend beyond the realm of regular people who had to become a ghost after death.

This period of time is when Dao Yin practitioners came to view themselves as practicing an art capable of generating immortality, so you need to know one important thing... Immortals can fly...

So here is how the most ancient system of Daoist Immortality practice worked:

• practitioners stopped eating grains and instead filled the abdomen with breath while quieting their minds,

• they often worked on creating the golden elixir from lead and mercury or according to another recipe which today we collectively know as Waidan,

• saliva swallowing was a popular practice to improve the quality of the Qi in the Dantian,

• Dao Yin stretching was used to limber the body,

• These practices led to greater connection of Qi in the blood, which in turn further relaxed the body,

• obviously they lost a lot of weight during this process since they didn't eat for long periods of time,

The basic idea, it is going to sound silly, but the basic idea is that the body could become so clear and so light that it would be easy to fly away to Penglai....

So let's put it this way, that isn't possible.

Now let's look at the Neidan conception of Immortality:

• the practitioner meditates and transforms their Yuan Jing to Qi, Qi to Shen, Shen to Emptiness, and merge emptiness with the Dao,

• when the perceptual spirits of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, nostrils, body and mind completely revert to non being the practitioner can attain the Yang Spirit which is the enlightened empty spirit no longer dependent on the body, senses or even mind, but instead can exist outside the body as a purified spirit,

• the argument is that this spirit can live on after death so the practitioner does not have to reincarnate.

I don't know if this is possible or not, but it seems pretty far away from becoming so light that your body floats to heaven...

Now let's be more real about both stretchy Dao Yin and Neidan:

stretchy Dao Yin is a health practice which can also be used to calm and balance the mind, at a high level it may have spiritual implications, but without practicing a very particular type of meditation it would be difficult to go beyond the physical limitations imposed by body practice. At the same time, it would be a different practice, which is why Dao Yin people talk about Tai Xi, or Embryonic Breathing, which in itself is a precursor to Neidan and was later imported into the body of Neidan practice in the same way that our bodies have a myriad of bacteria that were gradually brought into multi-cellular organisms over the course of their evolution. In other words, some of the things that construct Dao Yin were reformulated in a Neidan way at a later time, but not the stretchy stuff.

As such, if you want to get your categories straight you should understand that Dao Yin has a view about how to advance in practice which is separate from Neidan.

Another point to make is that Dao Yin changed a lot over time and by the 19^th century Dao Yin really sums up a combination of many exercises which are meant to behave like a body and mind oriented meditative practice which incorporates movement, visualization, breath work, and even meditation.

This is what ultimately went on to become Qigong in the twentieth century.

The basic assumption of this approach to Dao Yin is that there is a faster way to achieve the goals of Neidan which can be achieved through post heaven practices.

This is partly true since Dao Yin and Qigong work faster than Neidan, but what they gain in speed they lose in depth, so this is the reason why even some great Dao Yin texts associated themselves with Lu Di Shen Xian/Immortals Living on Land. They achieve the longevity aspect of Daoist practice, but not the most profound spiritual aspects.

Now here is the big picture that ties it all together... There is nothing stopping you from doing Dao Yin and Neidan, you could get unique benefits from both and they are not mutually exclusive.

However, you will get better results if you understand the different goals and methods of each art, then you'll know what you want and where to look for it. Ultimately self cultivation must be tailored to your own needs. At first it is the job of your teacher to help you find the right path, but later it is your job to differentiate and make the practices your own.

I can't do that part for you, but I can provide this scaffolding to hopefully show the important differences between styles, their conceptions about what it means to succeed in cultivation of the Dao, where their strong points are and how they compare to each other.

My rationale of practices is not vertical, in other words I don't view Xiu Dao as a mountain that starts with Neigong and ends with Neidan, instead I view it as a horizontal model like a room where you arrange different useful things in different places. Neidan may be a light bulb, while Dao Yin could be a chest of drawers, and visualization could be a chair, just as an example of how you might arrange things in a room.

If you think about these arts in that way I think you will see that there is no absolute requirement to do them in a sequence or that one is better than the other. If you mistake the desk for the chest of drawers you are likely to have a table covered in clothing, rather than a useful place to do your work or eat your dinner.

I've written scores of articles about this topic, but there is so much to say and I don't want to do any injustice to any mode of practice, just to try to tell the truth as best as possible given my personal knowledge, to whatever degree it is right or wrong.