“The authentic man breathes ‘from his heels,’ in other words, to ‘his foundations’; the common man breathes only ‘from his throat’.” (François Jullien – Vital Nourishment – Departing from Happiness Chapter 7)
What gives breath-energy its vitalizing and nourishing power is its circulating, penetrating, and therefore irrigating-inciting character.
Among a Myriad of Valleys
To “feed one’s life” is not a matter of providing nutrients to one’s life to make it stronger and more resilient as a Westerner would readily understand it. It is a matter of connecting with the breath-energy (qi) of the natural dynamism of life, the way one would plug in a tool to an electricity socket to make it work. The breath-energy is everywhere, in nature and our body, going in and out from one to the other. Jullien writes: “On earth, we find this energetic breath in the form of winds that waft about the slightest features of the landscape and through the smallest fissures, instigating harmonious waves and vibrations (this motif is one of the oldest in China (for example, there is the notion of “wind-scene” or “wind-landscape,” feng-jing). We also find it beneath the earth, coursing endlessly through its veins, causing mountains to rise vertiginously, tracing the undulations of the earth, promoting prosperity, and attracting geomancers in search of sites for palaces and tombs. I also find it forever circulating within my own physical being, maintaining its rhythmic pulsation in all the channels through which energy flows (and which the acupuncturist endeavors to free of all obstruction). This communicativeness of the energetic breath links my internal parts to one another and also connects me to the principle of the world’s evolution and transformation: a vision at once global, unified, and astonishingly simple – indeed, impossible to grasp, owing to its simplicity. For dualism may fret and dramatize, but it also builds. This unitary function of the energetic breath, at once communicating and vitalizing, can only be varied – poetically.”
For the Chinese moralist, evil is a blockage of our moral reactivity, for the Chinese physician, disease is a blockage of our vital reactivity
Seen from the Western standpoint of a metaphysical pre-order of reality by an omniscient and omnipotent God, both evil and disease are seen as breakdown of the order into disorder through an interference (Satan). From the Chinese standpoint of a world animated by vital energy, evil and disease can only be apprehended as due to a blockage of the breath-energy. In Jullien’s words: “For the Chinese moralists, evil is nothing other than the blockage of our moral reactivity, which dulls and paralyzes our sentiment of humanity (to the point where I no longer react to the intolerable when it threatens others and I lose all ‘pity’). By the same token, for Chinese physicians, disease is nothing other than the blockage of my vital reactivity, which first traps and then saps my energy.”
This is what the story of Duke Huan in the Zhuangzi is meant to teach us. Jullien writes: “When Duke Huan suddenly falls ill because he thinks that
he has seen an evil spirit, his counselor easily proves to him that he suffers from self-inflicted harm rather than a curse. His malady, though quite real, comes solely from the fact that his fear has created an internal obstruction. For if the accumulated breath-energy ‘disperses and does not return’, ‘it will no longer be sufficient’. ‘If it goes up and does not come back down,’ ‘the man will be driven to rage’. If it goes down and does not come back up’, ‘the man will be inclined to forgetfulness’. Finally, ‘if it neither goes up nor down’ and collects in the man’s heart, ‘sickness ensues’. From this typology, which leads to a diagnosis and clearly mingles the moral and the physical indiscriminately, it follows that the breath-energy should not be allowed either to disperse or to be blocked, either to accumulate or to be oriented in a single direction. Instead, it should be encouraged always to flow in all directions, bor both our (physical?) health and the ‘full (mental?) form’ of our faculties depend on it.”
“Respiration is the most practical application of the vital flux and suffices to set me on the path to wisdom”
Jullien writes: “Respiration shows that the function of the breath-energy is to maintain the vital circulation within.” In fact,“Respiration is the most practical application of the vital flux and suffices to set me on the path to wisdom.” Jullien then mocks Marcus Aurelius denouncing the inanity of respiration, when he says disdainfully: “See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same … but every moment sent out and again sucked in … Rather than see the alternation of breathing as a sign of inconsistency to be compared unfavorably with the identity of being, Chinese thinkers commonly saw respiration as an act of renewal that makes us participants in a vast movement of communication by way of concentration-dispersion, a movement that continually activates life. What characterizes the sage, according to Zhuangzi, is the fact that his breathing is ‘deep-deep’. Not only does it embody harmonious regulation in its alternation, but, moreover, the intensive implied by the repetition of the word tells us that respiration must extend throughout the physical being to the very extremities: ‘The authentic man breathes from his heels’, in other words, to his foundations; the common man breathes only ‘from his throat’.”
“Various techniques employed by the adepts of long life were already known to Zhuangzi”
These involved inhalation-exhalation exercises aimed at a specific organ, deep versus shallow breathing, as well as the well-known gymnastic exercises based on “‘extending and contracting’ (‘hanging like a bear’ and ‘stretching like a bird’) to free up all the difficult passages where communication might be inhibited throughout the physical being.” Formulas and prescriptions collected in manuals all aimed at “breaking down obstructions” with, Jullien adds, “using the ‘inner eye’ to follow and monitor the circulation of the breath so as to ensure that it brought its regenerative power to the location of the malady.”
Source:
François Jullien – Vital Nourishment, Departing from Happiness (2007)