The Practising Body: From Fasting and Pilgrimage to Qi and the Trigrams

Start with the simplest bodily discipline. The entry names practices from Ramadan and Yom Kippur to Lent and Hindu ekadashi, notes that traditions build in exemptions for the sick, and states that it describes fasting as a religious practice, not a regimen to attempt.

Here the body travels instead of abstaining. The entry ranges from the Hajj, obligatory at least once for those able, to the Camino de Santiago, Bodh Gaya and Shikoku, and records that the Hajj alone draws several million participants in a typical year.

The focus narrows to the hand. The same word covers the gestures on statues that art historians study and the hasta mudras practitioners perform, and the entry records that some Vajrayana ritual mudras are taught only to initiates.

Tantra gathers gesture, mantra and visualization into initiatory ritual. The entry places its organized form in roughly the sixth to seventh century in India and stresses that its texts assume formal initiation and a qualified teacher.

This is the Hindu branch in detail, spanning Shaiva, Shakta and Vaishnava lineages, with Kashmir Shaivism and Shri Vidya among the most studied. It treats the body and the cosmos as mirror images, and notes that certain Kaula procedures are transmitted only through lineage initiation.

The tantric view of the body gives rise to the chakra map. The entry lists the seven classical centres from Muladhara to Sahasrara, and its sources caution that the fixed seven and the rainbow colour scheme are later, and that no scientific evidence supports their existence.

Kundalini is the energy said to rise through the centres. The entry separates the old tantric and hatha concept from the branded discipline Yogi Bhajan began teaching in the United States in 1969, and notes that traditional sources call the rising a process for close supervision.

The trail now crosses to China, where the body is tended as a field of energy. The entry describes coordinated movement, breathing and attention, from gentle exercise to spiritual discipline within Taoism and Buddhism, and records that its health claims were criticized as pseudoscientific.

Movement becomes a martial art. The entry credits Chen Wangting of Chenjiagou in the seventeenth century, and treats the Zhang Sanfeng snake and crane story as an origin myth, not documented history.

The second internal art walks a circle. Its palm changes are named for and mapped onto the eight trigrams of the Yijing, which is why the entry says a martial art belongs in a religion catalogue.

The third internal art goes straight. Its five fists are mapped onto the wu xing, from splitting for metal to crossing for earth, which makes it the clearest case of the five phases applied to a body practice.