I put together a playlist on YouTube of my videos discussing kung fu breathing exercises. Most of these videos are excerpts from our weekly online zoom class. If you find these videos to be interesting or helpful, please consider signing up!
Kung Fu Breathing Techniques
There are as many different breathing exercises for kung fu as there are styles of kung fu (many)!
The Chinese have written records of breathing exercises dating back to at least 300 BCE and possibly much earlier. For example, the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi wrote “The men of old breathed clear down to their heels…”
In modern-day, the art of Chinese breathing exercises is called qigong 氣功 (pronounced chi gong). The root word qi 氣 (chi), meaning something like “vital force”, is made up of two characters that mean “steam” or “vapor”, and “rice”. The word qi is a recognition by the ancient Chinese that life is driven by the energy derived from both food and the air we breathe (vapor).
“For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on the earth.”
~Sanskrit Proverb.
Playlist Contents
- Martial Arts Breathing Exercises For Beginners
- How do you breathe in martial arts?
- Maintaining The Center
- Iron Body Training – Breathing Exercises For Martial Arts
- Breathing Exercises For Anxiety | Easy Beginner Technique
- When To Use Special Breathing Exercises
- Mindfulness of Breathing & Walking Meditation
- Qigong Breathing For Health
- Footwork As Moving Meditation
In Chinese martial arts, when we coordinate breathing exercises with specific movement patterns, we consider these to be neigong or internal exercises. Neigong is more specifically martial arts training; neigong training helps you to develop power, protect yourself from injury, and keep your balance, as opposed to qigong which is mostly for health and meditation.
Neigong will help you to understand how to use your breathing to generate more power and protect your inner organs from injury in a fight. In Chinese martial arts, this is also called “Golden Bell” or “Iron Body” training. If you want to get the very most out of your kung fu training, you can’t neglect training neigong.
In his book “The Zen Way To The Martial Arts” the great Zen master, Taisen Deshimaru, when asked by a student about the most important thing to learn arts, answered by saying “Breathing. What condition are you in below the navel? I don’t mean your genitals! I mean the hara 腹, three fingers beneath the navel (note that in I Liq Chuan we consider it to be two fingers below). The way to develop the power of the hara, to assemble all your energy there, is by right breathing.”
If you’d like more personal instruction or guidance with kung fu breathing exercises, consider signing up for our weekly online class or our group classes if you’re local.
