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In the last issue of T’AI CHI, I summarized the recommendations of a few authors on the methods of coordinating breathing with Taichichuan movements. The following are my person suggestions for students.

1. Beginners who aim at doing the classical Taichichuan seriously should completely forget their breathing in learning the exercise, except to breathe through the nose. By forgetting the breathing, you have natural abdominal breathing. the breathing of Taichichuan experts is light and slow. But you do not aim at that either. When your Taichichuan is in order, these will automatically follow. The paying attention to your breathing, as such, may alter your breathing pattern.

Beginners should pay full attention to the techniques of doing the exercise correctly and well. If you aim at a higher level of achievement, you cannot afford to divert your attention to your breathing during the stage of learning, correction, and improvement. There are derivatives of the Yang Cheng-fu style which, from the very beginning, completely match breathing with all movements in all postures. By subordinating all movements to breathing, their forms and the principles of doing them are all changed very far from those of the Yang family. Their Taichichuan becomes primarily a breathing exercise of very different forms. They may have merit, but are not the same as the regular Taichichuan. Beginners may, separately from their daily Taichichuan exercise, practice the abdominal breathing and lengthen their breathing pattern. Gradually, they will improve their breathing in Taichichuan without special effort.

2. Intermediate students, even after years of practice, but without correct postures and movements or before getting the real essence, should continue to improve before attempting to coordinate breathing with movements. Separately from their daily practice of the one-person, continuous exercise, however, they may, if they like, choose selected postures to experiment with exhalation when they extend to issue their strength for an attack, and inhalation when they contract their body to draw or store up their energy. When skillful, they may selectively apply the method to their self-defense practice when needed. But they should read items 3 and 4 below before trying to incorporate the matching.

3. If the advanced students want to try the matching in the one-person series without sacrificing the merits of the classical forms, movements and methods of doing them, they should start by doing some experiments. You may try in selected postures to exhale when you extend to issue energy, and for other selected postures to inhale when you contract to yield or store energy. But do not aim at perfect matching.

Since being able to do the movements slowly with the continuous, integrated, supple energy in your advanced state is an accomplishment, you do not change the tempo of your movements and sacrifice your achievement to suit your breathing rate. For example, you may exhale on your approaching selected destinations when you extend your limbs to issue energy and inhale on your approaching selected destinations when you contract limbs to store energy or to withdraw, if this is the pattern of matching you want. You do not pay attention to insert short exhalation and inhalation in between.

When you only aim at matching exhalation and inhalation in selected postures on your body’s approaching the destinations and forget your breathing in between, you subconscious brain will make such adjustments automatically, better than you can consciously. If you do not feel yourself so comfortable as compared to the matching of breath and movement, then you return to natural breathing. In particular, you should not alter the postures and the tempo of the movements simply to match them with your breathing.

For your testing of the matching, you may try to start with the postures: Repulse the Monkey and Wild Horse Parts Its Mane of the Yang form. You may inhale when you circle your hands to store up your energy and exhale when you extend your limbs to issue your energy. Provided that the speed of your steps is about the same as your breathing rate, you may find that the matching can be continued for several consecutive steps without much difficulty. But you should not aim at perfect matching in the untested postures, but follow the principles described above.

4. An article on coordinating breathing is not complete without going into the problem of full matching. It must be remembered that the breathing method described in my December article is basically for self-defense needs, and self-defense was the original purpose of the system. The one-person, continuous series as practiced currently becomes primarily for health. The trend has been to do it slower and slower. While around 1914 both Yang Cheng-fu and Wu Chian-chuan did one round of the exercise in slightly over eight minutes, their disciples, at present, do each round of the same series in 20 minutes or so.

If the early experts did fully matching breathing in the one-person exercise, then to use the same method of matching with the same movements at present will require the slowing down the breathing rate to the extent that each exhalation and inhalation takes two and one-half times as long as in 1914. In other words, if you breathe at the rate of 18 exhalation and inhalations per minute in the second decade of this century, you have now to slow down your breathing to 7-1/2 exhalations and inhalations per minute to match with the movements in the same manner. While this breathing rate can be done in sitting meditation after some training, not many persons can breathe at this rate continuously for some 20 minutes while doing Taichichuan seriously, with uninterrupted, supple energy.

There have been published in the 1970’s certain derivatives of the Yang Cheng-fu style prescribing 100 percent matching of breathing with movements. These authors indicate specifically in each posture when to inhale and when to exhale. For example, in a 1975 book, the author requires exactly three inhalations and three exhalations for the posture Single Whip. Accordingly, the movements of this posture have to be clearly divided into three parts of equal time to justify the convenient movement for the change between inhalation exhalation. In a 1972 book, another author requires two inhalations and exhalations for the same posture. If the breathing rate is the same, the speed of the movement, according to the 1972 book, must be exactly 50 percent faster than recommended in the 1975. This is very arbitrary and unnatural.

Before beginners can do the Taichichuan correctly and relaxedly, their oxygen consumption during the exercise is considerably more than that of the expert. A study in Taiwan shows that they consume four times as much oxygen as the standard consumption for the exercise. This means that a matching formula designed by an expert suitable for himself is not suitable for beginners.

Chang Chi-hsien, a student of Cheng Man-ch’ing, wrote in his book of 1969 that matching breathing with Taichichuan movements is "similar to trimming the feet to suit the shoes." This can be illustrated by one example. In the preface to a 1972 book which prescribes 100 percent matching for the Yang style, Han Chen-hsing, then chairman of the Chinese Taichichuan Research Institute in Taiwan, wrote: "Because of the difference of the forms in the book from the Yang style, people consider that this book is not a real Yang style." Since the preface is published in the book, it implies that the book author must have agreed to what Han wrote. In fact, Han’s statement is also applicable to certain other series prescribing 100 percent matching. The choice could be between a. in essence, primarily a breathing exercise, and b. in all aspects, a real Taichichuan.

According to sports medicine, the respiratory center of the brain, which receives chemical, reflex, somatic, and cerebral inputs, is a good computer in automatically regularizing the rate, depth and pattern of respiration under various situations. Artificial regulation during physical exercise is not the best for health. (See "Journal of American Medical Association" 246:1967, 1981)

The term used should not be to "match" each exhalation and inhalation with movement, but to allow breathing to be naturally "harmonious with" or "corresponding to" movement, based on the need from time to time. The best way to achieve this is to leave the adjustment to the automatic function of the brain.

A related article on ch’i and breathing will be discussed in an article in the next issue of T’AI CHI,