Breathwork / Old Man Burning the Cinnabar

Inside Tai Chi Neigong, movement is never really the point — it’s the vehicle. “Old Man Burning the Cinnabar” sits at the very end of the Yang sequence in the Cheng Tin Hung lineage, and it’s there for a reason: it’s the exercise that seals everything else in. Where the rest of the practice builds and spends energy, this one is about conserving it.

That inward shift matters. Everyone’s talking about “breathwork” for stress and recovery now — this is the same idea, tested and refined over generations, not a recent discovery.

How it’s done

You stand centred and balanced, rooted but relaxed. Hands start at your sides, palms in and slightly down. They circle inward, deliberate and unhurried, drawing toward the Dantian — your body’s centre, just below the navel. As your hands arrive, the palms rotate to face you, and the movement finishes with a kind of “seal”: hands resting at centre before you begin again.

The breathing is the real work

The core of the practice is a rhythm the old texts call “spitting out the old, taking in the new” — breathing out stagnant, stressed energy, breathing in something fresher. It’s not just background to the movement. It’s what actually regulates your system, teaching your body to store energy instead of leaking it out constantly, which is what most of us do without noticing.

It builds over time

You start at 18 repetitions — just enough to sync breath and movement. As your focus deepens, that grows to 111, then eventually 333 for practitioners going deep into the internal work. Each stage asks more of your concentration and pays back more in return.

What it actually does for you

This isn’t just tradition for tradition’s sake — the effects are concrete:

• Steadier mood. Conserving energy this way tends to make people calmer and less reactive under pressure — less likely to snap or spiral when something goes wrong.
• Sharper thinking. The old texts specifically describe this as increasing intelligence — which lines up with what we now understand about attention and neuroplasticity: a calmer nervous system processes complexity better.
• Fewer mistakes. Clear-headedness isn’t just pleasant — it’s functional. When the noise drops out, high-stakes decisions get made with more precision.

On its own, it’s a genuine reset

You don’t need the rest of the system to benefit from this one. No equipment, barely any space — just you, your breath, and a few minutes. If you want a way to reset mid-workday without leaving your desk, this is one of the best tools in the whole practice for exactly that.

This is one piece of the full internal skill system. [The Tai Chi Neigong Course →] — £490