The Chest Relaxes

[Anonymous]

The phrase “the chest relaxes” appears a couple of times in the Bagua Zhang Classics. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I remember Bruce saying that Liu used to say it to him often. This strikes me as a little odd since Bruce had been practicing Bagua for years before he studied Liu. If the phrase only meant sink the chest (don’t puff it up like a military posture), it seems highly unlikely you couldn’t master this in a few weeks or months. So, like everything else in Taoism, this phrase probably has layers of meaning.

I’m personally not satisfied with any of the interpretations of these songs. It would really help to have Bruce publish a translation and interpretation of the Bagua and Tai Chi classics some day. Until then, here is my take on this particular phrase and its meaning. Hopefully I won’t be joining the crowded field of bad interpreters.

The first song includes this phrase and discusses basic posture. On the surface you have to sink the chest; literally drop the tissue down into the belly and round it on both a vertical and horizontal plane. Like everything else we do, the sinking must be balanced by a corresponding lifting. I think there is a lot more to this and the seventh song of the Bagua Zhang Classics gives us a few more clues. The seventh song of the Bagua Zhang Classics mentions rounding the back which implies both directions and dropping the shoulders and extending the arms (this helps the horizontal rounding). It also says that “when the chest is relaxed the Qi will sink” and “When the Qi reaches the dan tien, the hips are tucked under to help the Qi circulate.” So, we know that in the end if we are doing what we are supposed to do, the Qi will sink and reach the dan tien. But how is this really accomplished?

I think one of the deeper meanings of the phrase implies sinking the organs. This isn’t a beginner practice. First you’ll have to be able to feel the organs. You’ll relax the abdominal area and all of the organs up to the level of the diaphragm. Basically you just learn how to let the organs hang off the spine in a far more relaxed manner than you might imagine. We all hold a lot of tension in the organs particulary emotional tension. Releasing the organs really starts opening the energy of the body. It increases the fluid flows mostly by not impairing them. The down side is that you have to start dealing with all of your repressed emotional baggage. I personally think this is where Taoist meditation really helps. Once you can drop the energy of lower organs into your lower tan tien, you then need to relax and open the lungs and heart. The energy of these organs needs to sink and they need to physically relax until the energy drops into the tan tien. In my practice, this didn’t start to be obvious and tangible until I started working directly with the central channel. This make a lot of sense because opening the central channel really implies working with the etheric body. I think the final piece of sinking the chest is to drop the brain into the tan tien. This is a more advance neigung technique but still part of the basic 16 part neigung system.

Unfortunately, I was taught dropping the brain into the lower tan tien way before I was ready to do it. So, for all of the spirtually greedy (including me), a word to the wise: if you go for the more advanced step first (dropping the brain into the tan tien), you don’t have a chance in hell of being successful. The simple reason is that any energy of the brain that you manage to drop will just get stuck at little further down at some level that you didn’t properly open in the first place. Remember this is why your energy isn’t flowing, your holding it all! Your mind is screwing everything up. It has to relax and let the organs go. And before you release them energetically, you have to release them physically; you release the spine and central nervous system. This is much, much easier to say then do. Standing postures are great for working all of this out. I think they are much easier than trying to do this while moving. Remember, one of the reasons there are so many different practices is because there are a lot of different things to learn. The Taoist are very practical. They want you to be able to learn any one thing in the easiest way possible. So pick the easy way. Stand. Work out the emotional crap the easiest way. Sit.

I think “sinking the chest” or “the chest relaxes” ultimately implies the whole progression of dropping the organs and brain into the lower tan tien. My experience was that this was much easier in the opposite direction. I learned to release the abdominal area first, then the lungs and heart, and then the brain. If you are familiar with the procedure for lifting your arms into a posture, this should make a lot of sense. When standing you open spherically from the tan tien expanding out in increasingly larger spheres. So, the lower organs would open first, then the upper organs, and finally the brain.

Oh and don’t forget, you have to learn and embody a whole bunch of the liftings and sinkings before you start to work on releasing the organs physically or energetically. Anyway, that’s the progression I followed after doing it the wrong way for a long time with very limited results. Once I finally worked out the correct order, it all started falling into place. Hopefully this will spare you a lot of the frustration that I experienced.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for another great post. So clear and valuable. I appreciate the time you’re putting in to writing these.

Bruce did a few nights on the Tai Chi Classics this summer in Brighton and one of the biggest impressions I came away with was just how layered in meaning they are. I think you’ve nailed that aspect here too. On the surface you can be telling an advanced practitioner and a complete beginner the exact same thing, like, “drop the elbows, sink the shoulders”, but the same phrase means something completely different for each person. Very cool!

What source are you using for the Ba Gua Classics?

Thanks,
Dan

[Anonymous]

I pulled this one from Frank Allen’s book. I like the simplicity of the translation.

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