Chinese xingqi (行氣, "circulating qi / breath") is a group of breath-control techniques that have been developed and practiced from the Warring States period (c. 475-221 BCE) to the present.

The unabridged Hanyu Da Cidian ("Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary"), which is lexicographically comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, defines xingqi in three meanings: There is no standard English translation of Chinese xingqi, as evident in: Within this sample, xing is most often translated as "circulate/circulating/circulation", but owing to the polysemous meanings of qi it is rendered as "breath", "vapor(s)", "pneuma(s)", or transliterated as qi.

(Sivin 1987: 47) The term qi (氣) is "so basic to Chinese worldviews, yet so multivalent in its meanings, spanning senses normally distinguished in the West, that a single satisfying Western language translation has so far proved elusive" (Campany 2002: 18).

It is to be undertaken when you are sitting in a calm and unmoving position, and it enables you to set aside the disturbances of perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and desires that normally fill your conscious mind."

This 45-character rhymed explanation entitled Xíngqì 行氣 "circulating the (vital) breath" was inscribed on a dodecagonal block of jade, tentatively identified as either a knob for a staff or a pendant for hanging from a belt.

Ge Hong's 4th-century Baopuzi (below) quotes Shiji 128 with a different version of this tortoise-bed legend [江淮閒居人為兒時 以龜枝床 至後老死 家人移床 而龜故生], with young rather than old men.

The c. 2nd-century to 1st-century BCE Huangdi neijing (Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor) uses xingqi (行氣) five times in the Suwen (素問, Basic Questions) and three in the Lingshu Jing (靈樞, Spiritual Pivot) sections.

The entire vascular system unites with the secretions [毛脈合精] and passes the force of life on to a storehouse [行氣於腑], which stores the energy and vitality and intelligence.

Veith 1949: 235-236) The c. 139 BCE Huainanzi is a Chinese collection of essays that blends Daoist, Confucianist, and Legalist concepts, especially including yin and yang and Wuxing (Five Phases/Agents) theories.

In particular, the wuzang (五臟, Five Orbs/Viscera; heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys)are important to the Huainanzi because they provide a conceptual bridge among the cosmic, physiological, and cognitive realms.

It regulates and directs the Four Limbs and circulates the blood and vital energy [流行血氣], gallops through the realms of accepting and rejecting, and enters and exits through the gateways and doorways of the hundreds of endeavors.

The c. 3rd-4th century Huangting jing (黃庭經, "Scripture of the Yellow Court") contrasts the respiration of ordinary people and Daoists inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.

Ordinary people's breath supposedly descends from the nose to the kidneys, traverses the Five Viscera (kidneys, heart, liver, spleen, and lungs), then the Six Receptacles (gall bladder, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, triple burner, and bladder), where it is blocked by the "Origin of the Barrier, [guanyuan 關元, the Bl-26 acupuncture point], the double door of which is closed with a key and guarded by the gods of the spleen, both clad in red," whereupon the breath rises to the mouth and is exhaled (Maspero 1981: 341).

In several of Ge Hong's discussions of the sexual arts of self-cultivation, his consistent position is that they, "along with the circulation of pneumas, are necessary supplements [bu 補] to the ingestion of elixirs for the attainment of transcendence."

If you wish to seek divinity or geniehood [i.e., xian transcendence], you need only acquire the quintessence, which consists in treasuring your sperm [寶精], circulating your breaths [行炁], and taking one crucial medicine [服一大藥].

Through circulation of the breaths [行炁] illnesses can be cured, plague need not be fled, snakes and tigers can be charmed, bleeding from wounds can be halted, one may stay under water or walk on it, be free from hunger and thirst, and protract one's years.

Ware 1966: 138-139; times estimated by Needham 1983: 143-144) The current world record for static apnea (without prior breathing of 100% oxygen) is 11 minutes and 35 seconds (Stéphane Mifsud, 8 June 2009).

The taking of medicines [服藥] may be the first requirement for enjoying Fullness of Life [長生], but the concomitant practice of breath circulation [行氣] greatly enhances speedy attainment of the goal.

Ware 1966: 252) Taking a fundamentally pragmatic position on yangsheng Nourishing Life practices, Ge Hong believes that "the perfection of any one method can only be attained in conjunction with several others."

During the Eastern Wu dynasty (222-280), there was a Daoist master named Shi Chun (石春) "who would not eat in order to hasten the cure when he was treating a sick person by circulating his own breath.

The emperor then asked him how much longer he could continue like this, and Shi Chun replied that "there was no limit; possibly several dozen years, his only fear being that he might die of old age, but it would not be of hunger."

The Baopuzi bibliography of Daoist texts lists the Xingqi zhibing jing (行氣治病經, Scripture on Treating Illness with Breath Circulation), which was subsequently lost.

Besides the Baopuzi, Ge Hong also compiled the Shenxian Zhuan (Biographies of Divine Transcendents), in which ten hagiographies mention adepts practicing xingqi along with other methods and techniques.

The Daoist Shangqing School patriarch Sima Chengzhen 司馬承禎, 647–735) composed the 730 Fuqi jingyi lun (服氣精義論, Essay on the Essential Meaning of Breath Ingestion), which presented integrated outlines of health practices, with both traditional Chinese physical techniques and the Buddhist-inspired practice of guan (觀, "insight meditation"), as preliminaries for attaining and realizing the Dao (Engelhardt 2000: 80).

Adepts begin by absorbing the Taiqing xingqi fu 太清行氣符, Great Clarity Talisman for [Facilitating] Qi Circulation), which enables one to gradually abstain from eating grains.

Sima Chengzhen points out that when one begins abstaining from foods and survives only by ingesting qi breath (and repeats this warning for taking drugs), the immediate effect will be undergoing a phase of weakening and decay, but eventually strength returns all illnesses vanish.

This source also recommends the "method of the drum and of effort" (gunu zhi fa 鼓努之法) xingqi breath circulation for creating a Sacred Embryo.

It pours on into the five viscera, it passes the lower [dantian], and reaches [sanli 三里] (the Three Miles, i.e., the genitals) It goes through your hips, your knees, ankles and all the way to the [yongquan 涌泉] (acupuncture points) which are in the center of your feet soles.

Instead of inhaling and holding waiqi breath, adepts would circulate and remold visceral neiqi energy, which was believed to recreate the yuanqi (元氣 "prenatal qi; primary vitality") received at birth and gradually depleted during human life.

His method "was a series of magical procedures endowed with a specific efficacy, allowing one to go into fire without being burned and into water without drowning, in imitation of Master Ning himself.