Taixi sits within the broader Daoist internal cultivation tradition alongside related practices such as the microcosmic orbit, which circulates qi through specific pathways along the spine and torso, and both are generally treated in Daoist internal alchemy as stages or components within a longer, cumulative programme of cultivation aimed ultimately at refining jing, qi and shen, the tradition's three treasures of physical essence, vital energy and spirit, into an increasingly subtle and, in the fullest traditional aim, immortal or transcendent condition.
Historical Daoist masters associated with internal alchemy across the medieval and later imperial periods discuss taixi within texts addressed to serious, often monastic or hermit dedicated practitioners rather than as popular instruction for a general audience, and the practice's demanding, gradually cultivated nature has kept it, even within the modern revival of interest in Daoist internal cultivation, a comparatively advanced and less widely popularised technique than some of the more accessible qigong forms that have spread internationally in recent decades. The atlas records taixi's place, meaning and textual history within Daoist cultivation literature here, consistent with treating an advanced internal practice as a subject for description rather than as a set of instructions to be followed from a general reference source.