Qigong Can Be Hard
Three 'Ying Qigong' Stories
1. Hard Qigong
One Saturday afternoon in the early 1980s, my first teacher Brien Gallagher and I arrived at Master Raymond Chung’s studio where students were watching a VHS tape showing demonstrations of ‘hard qigong’ (ying qigong 硬氣功) featuring masters from China. We watched the various demonstrations of qigong masters having bricks smashed over their heads, concrete slabs smashed on their chests with sledgehammers, razor-sharp knife edges pushed onto their bodies, and more strange and stunning exploits. The performers seemed to be made of steel and I was as mesmerized as any of the others viewing the tape. The only one who seemed less than impressed was Brien.
Once we were in the car, I asked Brien what kind of training would be required to do these kind of things.
“You could do most of them now,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” I responded, “and wind up in the emergency ward.”
“No, no. Most of it is simple physics. It looks impossible but depending on the materials, the angles, and, to some degree, one’s conditioning it’s all fairly easy.”
I couldn’t forget the image of the keen-edged sabre first macheteing through a block of wood and then, amazingly, not causing any harm to the qigong master who was being whacked-at with the sharpened edge of the weapon. I told Brien that this looked impossible.
“I’ll show you,” said Brien as we pulled into his driveway.
We went directly into the backyard and he asked me to wait a minute. He disappeared into the garden shed and emerged with two concrete sidewalk slabs and a sledgehammer.
“Ok, lay on your back,” he said.
I wasn’t sure I liked this game.
I reclined into the lawn and he asked me to put my jacket over my eyes to protect them from any pieces of flying cement. He then rested the flat concrete slabs on my chest. To put me at ease he first tapped the thick grey panels with the sledgehammer a few times so I could get a sense of what was going on. I could feel the light blows being dispersed by the concrete.
“Now I’m gonna hit you.”
Wham! The slabs split in two and I didn’t feel any pain at all.
Now, I’m not saying, “Try this at home kids,” but I could instantly see how it would be possible to work up to enormous blocks. In fact, the larger the stone the more the weight and impact are distributed, both through the stone itself and along the surface of the body.
“That doesn’t explain the sabre though,” I said. “It’s like those qigong masters had a protective shell rather than bare skin.”
“Okay,” he said, “follow me.”
Brien and I went to his kitchen whereupon he produced a huge Henkel kitchen knife that he used to slice roast beef. There was no question as to its sharpness. In fact he shaved a piece of wood, just like in the video, to demonstrate it’s sharpness. I’m sure it had a sharper edge than the one I’d just seen in the hard qigong film.
“Take off your shirt,” Brien instructed. “Now, remember how they did it.”
I slightly expanded my chest an he struck me with the knife, first gently—‘tap,’ ‘tap,’ ‘tap’—then, firmly—‘thud,’ ‘thud,’ ‘thud’—and then, finally, with fairly strong whacks. Nothing. A bit of a red mark—but no cut, no blood, no problem.
“It’ll only cut if you slide it, if it slices,” he explained. “With a heavier knife and a heavier hit you could potentially break the skin, but the trick is in knowing your limits and your equipment.”
In those days I was willing to try pretty much anything. I was in very good condition and I could take a lot of physical force. But actually, these examples of ‘qigong’ could have been performed by almost anyone.
I’m not saying that there is no skill to these kind of demonstrations or that anyone can walk off the street and do all the feats of a trained expert, however, there is a certain element in this type of skill that has to do with creating illusions. Some qigong masters rely less on this and some rely almost exclusively on it.
2. Hou Shuying
In the early 1980s a very famous ying qigong master from China, Hou Shuying, came to Vancouver and gave demonstrations. I was fortunate to see him perform in person at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Having now had a few more experiences with the subject I went to the show with Brien wanting to see up close as the master performed his qigong magic. From front row seats I watched keenly to see if I could spot how he did his tricks. I wanted to know how much was physics, how much was showmanship, and how much was real power.
Hou Shuying could break an iron bar in half—a feat that required a force of 1,500 kilograms according to members of the Chinese Institute of Mechanics. He could also take random stones 5-10 inches in length and smash them with the heel of his hand. He would place the stone on a larger flat-stone surface and, while holding the small stone in place with his left hand, smash or cleave the object with his open but flexed right palm.
His wife, son, and daughter were also part of the act. His wife and daughter would act as platforms for the sledgehammer-breaking-stone just as I had done with Brien. Master Hou would also break stones on his son's head with a hammer and, amazingly, hold the boy upside down by the ankles and use his young head to smash a thick cement block!
Breaking spears with the throat, dropping cinder blocks on the head, walking on spear tips, wrapping and unwrapping metal bars around the neck, laying on bed of nails—there was no question that the wide range of stunts involved the cultivation of special strengths and skills. Yes, some feats were more like illusions relying on simple physics but others required real power and training.
During the demonstration there was one small stone that the master was unable to break. He tried over and over again but did not succeed—it was the only ‘miss’ in the show. A brief moment after he’d given up, while the impressed crowd was cheering Master Hou for his outstanding persistence, a prominent Vancouver taijiquan master ran out from the audience up to the performance area and grabbed the stone that the qigong master had failed to break and then disappeared from the room.
“Why did he do that?” I asked Brien.
“He stole the master’s power,” Brien answered.
3. Now that is a hat!
In 1994, I was in the city of Taiyuan in Shanxi Province studying with the well-known Yang-style Taijiquan masters Yang Zhenduo and his grandson Yang Jun. I was enjoying an excellent opportunity to attend a master class held for Yang Zhenduo’s Shanxi Province instructors. While the ten-day course kept me busy with training, there was plenty of free time to explore the city in the evenings.
One night, I was walking in the park near where I was staying late one evening when I noticed I was being followed by three young men. Earlier in my visit I had been informed of attacks on foreigners so I was feeling quite cautious. I changed direction several times but they persisted. Now I knew I was being followed.
“Were they going to rob me?” I asked myself.
I decided on a direct approach. I turned on walked directly toward them.
“What do you want?!” I asked as intimidatingly as possible.
“Can you speaking English?'“ one of the young men asked.
As it turned out, they were following me in hopes of that they could practice their English language skills. They were students from the local university. We had a great conversation which eventually came around to the subject of taijiquan. One of the men was a student of taijiquan master Bian Shanyan of the ‘Wudang School of Pure Yang.’ He asked me if I’d like to meet his teacher.
I had been touring and performing around China all the previous month and a half with a forty-three member North American martial-arts team led by masters Liang Shou-Yu, Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming, and Madame Wang Ju-Rong. We gave televised exhibitions across China and, as national quasi-celebrities, had the fortune of meeting many of China’s exceptional masters.
I was, truthfully, a little burned-out with meeting new martial-arts masters and so, politely declined his offer.
He explained that his teacher could do extraordinary things like break bricks with a single punch, a feat I’d by now witnessed many times. Again I declined. He continued, explaining how Master Bian could crush glass with his teeth. “Hard qigong tricks,” I thought, and again declined.
“Also,” he persisted, “my master practices taijiquan wearing an eighty-pound cast iron hat.”
“What?” I asked.
I couldn’t quite understand him through his accent. It sounded like he was saying his teacher practiced ‘wearing an eighty-pound cast iron hat.’
“Can you say that again?”
He repeated himself and again I had to clarify if what I was hearing was what he had meant.
“Did you say your teacher practices wearing an iron hat?” I asked.
“Yes. It is very heavy. None of us can do it. He is very old.”
“When can we go?” I asked.
A few days later I met the young men at their eight-beds-to-a-room dormitory at the university and we set off on foot to meet Master Bian. We started along a main street and then took side streets that let to smaller side streets that led to little alleyways. I had no idea how I’d get back if I happened to lose touch with my hosts.
Eventually, we came to a small garage-like taijiquan gym where Master Bian lived and taught his art, a mix of Wudang-based taijiquan and ying qigong. In addition to my companions there were a couple or other students already exercising in the five-by-five metre training space that was directly adjacent to the same-sized living space.
Upon introductions we immediately began a spirited discussion on matters of taijiquan, neigong, and gongfu in general. Master Bian eagerly demonstrated brick pummelling, glass eating, and the trouncing of other objects. He didn’t use his palm on the construction-grade bricks, he used his fist.
He was very curious about my approach to push-hands and asked me to demonstrate on his students who, good naturedly, went flying in all directions. I could not break the bricks or eat the glass but Master Bian delighted in my push-hands skills which had been developing for about fifteen years by this point.
A highlight of his display was the Wudang ‘Eight Immortals Sword’ which evidenced incredible depth and agility. He showed me a nationally published martial-arts magazine that featured his award winning performance of this same sword routine and a profile on his life and gongfu.
Master Bian asked me if I practiced neigong methods and I showed him the ‘Eighty-one Breath Placement Method’ and how I could use it in receiving and neutralizing force during push-hands. He asked me how I knew such things being from outside China and I regaled him with stories of Brien Gallagher, Masters Chung, Liang, Dr. Yang, and Jou Tsung Hwa all of whom had contributed to this knowledge. I also showed him a copy of Douglas Wile’s T'ai-chi Touchstones: Yang Family Secret Transmissions and he was surprised to see how much taijiquan information foreigners had access to.
In another rather astonishing moment, he asked me to strangle or choke him at the neck (once he knew I’d studied judo). At first, I squeezed a little and he admonished me to make more of an effort. So, I tried a bit harder.
“Really do it!” he exclaimed.
So I set about applying judo’s mae hadaka jime (前裸絞) the ‘front naked choke’ also known as ‘the guillotine.’ I had applied this technique on experience judoka in the past causing them to tap out or even pass out. I applied the waza with full force and focus as he slightly grimaced. However, although extraordinarily thin, his neck was like a rubber tire and the technique had no effect whatsoever.
“Wow,” I said, “that is amazing!” “How did you develop this?” I asked him.
At this moment he pointed to a rack of training objects arranged like a row of dumbbells. They were strange looking hats shaped something like a World War One British Brodie helmet although much thicker. The cast-iron hats had two bent metal rebar pieces welded in to act as lifting handles and the hats sat upside down so that the practitioner gripped the handles to lift the heavy piece of headgear up to one’s head top.
The training helmets were numbered for weight, smallest to largest, and the heaviest of these was a neck-crushing eighty pounds!
“What is the purpose of this kind of training,” I asked.
The student translated Master Bian’s explanation:
“In taijiquan we must be rooted deep into the ground and also we must ‘Empty Neck, Raise Spirit’ (xu ling ding jin 虛領頂勁). The weight of the hat makes the legs very strong and we cannot afford to let the neck bend or the neck will be harmed.”
In wearing the weighted helmet the taijiquan player must be aligned, develop leg strength and root, and must raise the spirit during the entire practice. Master Bian then donned the eighty-pound hat and proceeded to slowly perform the entire long form in the Wudang style. His legs, his torso, and his neck were firm and aligned yet he was deeply relaxed under the pressure. I was astonished at the focus and clarity that were demanded to perform such a task.
“He’s achieved a perfect balance between the ‘hard’ and ‘soft,’” I thought.
We sat and drank tea, discussed the state of wushu and taijiquan as it was currently being practiced. Dying arts, he lamented. We passed another hour, enjoying the exchange of an older and younger man, a Chinese and a Western person, a true master and, possibly, a hope for the future.
He asked me to teach his students some push-hands for a while as he composed the following letter:
From the School of Pure Yang Gong—Bian Shan Yan
Dear Maxiqi, my good friend.
I’m greatly honoured to meet you. In your taijiquan the hard and the soft complement and feed of one another. Your ‘shou, yan, shenfa, bu’ (hands, eyes, body movement, and footwork) is excellent, ever changing, transforming in myriad ways. Your gongfu, your mastery of of taijiquan has already reached soaring heights.
We hold you in high esteem and wish to learn from you. Meanwhile, we hope you would continue to work hard and train to make even greater progress—to be one with heaven and earth, and to be healthy and strong through all seasons.
Breath in and out, rise and fall. live long and prosper!
Your very good friend,
Pure Yang Gong—Bian Shan Yan
Taiyuan City Qigong sciences research study organization (leader)
Taiyuan City Cui Yang Qigong Organization (leader)
Cui Yang Qigong, Neigong, Yuangong, Yinggong, Wugong (famous teacher)
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Has anyone actually made or used devices like the training helmets described in the article?
Thanks for sharing your stories. I find this quite intriguing. To learn from your experiences through different style.