This essay is drawn from published discussion. It cites classical Chinese books, the words of others, or academic argument, and is meant as cultural reading on the traditional cultivation of life. What it says about the body, and about what practice may do, belongs to the sources quoted or to the original speaker. It is not a medical promise or clinical advice from the people who operate this website.
From 1 to 2 November 2019, training in the practice and theory of the Daoyin Yangsheng Gong Twelve Methods was held at the Haidian District Gymnasium in Beijing. Delegations from various places and representatives of the British Longfei Taijiquan Association took part. Zhang Guangde, founder of Daoyin Yangsheng Gong, attended. He is the first to hold dual ninth duan in wushu and Health Qigong.
The training was hosted by Wang Yanyuan, president of the Haidian District Taijiquan Association of Beijing. The instructor was Hu Xiaofei, then director of the Teaching and Research Section for Sport and Cultivating Life and director of the Daoyin Yangsheng Center at Beijing Sport University. Nearly three hundred people heard this set of Twelve Methods.
Wind Is the Carrier of Qi
In class Hu Xiaofei spoke of “moving like willows with the wind”: wind is the carrier of qi. If one can feel the wind, one can feel qi, and produce the sense of being in qi. If a willow does not sway with the wind, it cannot feel the wind, and is always at risk of breaking. A person is the same. The full discussion of this layer of meaning is written in “Regulating Form in the Twelve Methods: Movement Follows Round Paths, Symmetry and Coordination.” Here only the few sentences he spoke at the time are kept.
Wild Geese Alighting on the Flat Sand and the Yin-Yang Fish
As long as pushing the palm presents an arc, one can keep yin containing yang and yang containing yin—that is, make the eye of the yin-yang fish. The circle is yin and yang. The full discussion of regulating form is likewise in that essay; this piece does not take that essay apart.
At the end of the class he also led everyone through Children’s Ba Duan Jin, which he had created with his doctoral students. Those who took part came from within China and from overseas. The original writes this gathering as: everyone came together for love and for health.