Internal Alchemy, Taijiquan, and, Qigong
In addition to sitting and forgetting, and, holding onto the One, there is another important Daoist meditation system. It's called “qigong” (“chi kung” using Wade/Giles.) Actually, the term originally used was “neidan”, or “internal alchemy”, which is a more general term that encompasses all the different forms of meditation practice. But for historical reasons, a specific class of meditation practices associated with physical movement became separated from the greater category of internal alchemy and was renamed, hence “qigong”.
The first thing to understand is that internal alchemy was originally identified in contrast with “external alchemy” or waidan. This was the practice of trying to extend one's life through special diets and medicinal concoctions. No doubt some of this effort resulted in improved nutrition as people compared how different foods made them feel. Unfortunately, it also led to a lot of people poisoning themselves through actions like eating mercury and various poisonous plants. Eventually, external alchemy died out and was replaced by various meditation practices, which eventually ended up being call internal alchemy to differentiate it from external alchemy.
Fast forward to the Chinese Republic. At that time the government decided to encourage martial arts and other traditional forms of exercise in order to raise people's self-esteem and general physical well-being. One of the things they wanted to promote were a whole class of internal alchemy systems that were based on physical exercises. This included systems well-known today in the West, like taijiquan, but also other more obscure things like the “eight pieces of brocade” and the “five animal frolics”. There was one “sticking point” for the Republican government, however. It was not in favour of encouraging traditional Chinese religions, as they believed that they were superstitions. As a result, they didn't want to promote these exercises as spiritual systems, but rather just as physical exercises. Part of this campaign, therefore, involved doing away with the old term, neidan, and replacing it with a new one, qigong.
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Taijiquan is a bit of a special case. Many people do not realize that it is actually a martial art, but it is. This is an understandable misconception, as the overwhelming majority of people who practice it do so only as a form of gentle exercise. As such, they only do slow forms practice. But if you want to pursue it as a martial art all the various elements of any other fighting system can be pursued: tumbling, joint locks, kicks, throws, weapons, sparring, bag training, etc.
People who are “into” taijiquan will sometimes say that was created by the Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng after watching a fight between a crane and a snake. The more plausible story is that it was the developed by the Chen clan as its own fighting style. It was eventually adopted by Daoists as its own fighting style and along with Xingyi and Bagua became known as one of the three “Daoist” or “Wudang” “internal martial arts”. This probably came about through rivalry with Buddhism---which had it's own martial arts tradition based on the Shaolin Temple. (The Daoist religion has a competitive “me too” element that results in it trying to come up with its own distinctive rituals and symbols that mirror those of Buddhism.) Eventually, people modified it from a purely martial art into something that could also be used for internal alchemy (qigong) practice.
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What people call qigong (ie: the eight pieces of brocade, the five animal frolics, taijiquan, etc) is yet another venue for the elements that I have identified previously with regard to sitting and forgetting, and, holding onto the One. That is, the practice of learning intricate, complex moving exercises forces the person doing them to learn how to quiet their monkey mind. The taijiquan open-hand set, for example, has over one hundred moves and if you get distracted it is very easy to lose your place. In addition, many of the moves are very complicated and are very hard to learn how to do well. If you start thinking about things like what you want to eat for dinner or what happened at work, you will lose your place in the set and forget how to do those complex moves.
In addition, each of the moves requires very complex analysis of how the geometry of your body works. Your knees have to be “just so”, you have to remember to relax so your centre of gravity will drop, your posture has to be vertical, etc, etc. And in the midst of all this complex thought, you have to remember to breath! And this process never really ends. After regular practice for over thirty years, I still learn new things about the taijiquan form on a very frequent basis. This means that practicing the forms is an exploration of the Dao (or the One.)
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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must dealt with!
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