Pine tree rooted on a misty cliff

Song 松: relaxed and rooted, or how to relax without collapsing in the internal traditions

ByRaymond Hackland

Evidence label: Tradition only

This article describes what historical texts say about relaxation, posture and “rooting” in breathing and movement practice. It is not an instruction in a form and makes no health claims.

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 21 October 2026 · Reading time: about 11 minutes

In short

What this is: Teachers of the internal arts ask you to “relax”, and in the same breath to stay upright, alert and rooted. This article reads what the sources mean by that: the Laozi on softness, the Buddhist master Zhiyi on a body “neither slack nor tense”, the taijiquan “classics” on song (鬆), Guo Yunshen, described by his student Sun Lutang as “heavy as Mount Tai” and “light as a flying bird”, Wang Xiangzhai on standing practice, and the opening stance of the 2003 Liu Zi Jue form. It is the second article of part two of our neigong series.

What the evidence says: The texts are well documented, though several authorships are traditional rather than proven. Research shows that even quiet standing is actively controlled by the muscles, so “relaxed” never means “switched off”; one trial found that a slumped seated posture went with worse mood under stress than an upright one. We know of no study that measures song itself.

What it means for your practice: The sources do not ask you to go limp. They ask for a regulated state between slack and tense: soft where nothing needs to work, upright and supported where something does.

What tradition says

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history).

The word. Song (鬆, pronounced roughly “sung”) means loose, slack, relaxed; as a verb, to loosen [10, 18]. (Dictionaries record an older sense too: the character, written with the “hair” radical, first described dishevelled hair [18].) In simplified characters, used in mainland China since the simplification scheme of 1956 [19], it is written 松, the same as the character for “pine tree” [10, 17]; that is why modern Qigong texts, including the 2003 Liu Zi Jue form, write “relax” as 放松 (fangsong, “let loose”). The older texts below write 鬆, or use other words for the same idea, such as “soft” (柔) or “broad, slack” (寬).

The Laozi: soft and supple. The Laozi or Daodejing (道德經) was not written by one person at one time; according to the scholar Alan Chan, sayings attributed to Laozi were probably written down from the late fifth century BCE, were consolidated during the fourth, and by the middle of the third century the text had probably reached a relatively stable form [2]. Its famous chapter 76 reads: “When people are born they are soft and supple; when they die they are hard and stiff. … So the hard and stiff are companions of death, the soft and supple companions of life” (人之生也柔弱，其死也堅強。…故堅強者死之徒，柔弱者生之徒) [1]. Chapter 10 asks: “Concentrating qi and reaching softness, can you be like an infant?” (專氣致柔，能嬰兒乎) [1].

This is not a posture instruction. But chapter 55 adds a detail that later practitioners could hardly miss. The infant, it says, has “weak bones and soft sinews, yet a firm grip” (骨弱筋柔而握固) [1]. Softness here is not weakness.

Zhiyi: tuning the strings. The Buddhist master Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597) taught under the Chen and Sui dynasties; we read his rules for the sitting posture in “Stillness and posture”. He explains the whole idea with two images. Before a potter can use the wheel, he must prepare the clay “so that it is neither too stiff nor too soft” (令使不彊不懦); before a musician can play a lute, he must first tune the strings “so that slack and taut are just right” (令寬急得所) [3]. The practitioner, he says, must tune body, breath and mind in the same way.

For the body, the summary is “not slack, not tense” (不寬、不急) [3]. For the breath, he gives three methods, the second of which is “relaxing and releasing the body” (寬放身體) [3]. And he describes both ways of getting it wrong. If the mind is too slack, “the will is scattered and lazy, and the body tends to slump” (身好逶迤), and saliva may run from the mouth; then one should “gather the body and sharpen the attention” until “the body holds itself up” (身體相持) [3]. If the mind is too tight, the practitioner feels a tight pain rising into the chest, and should “relax the mind and imagine the qi all flowing downwards”; the text adds that “the trouble will then heal by itself” [3], which is a traditional claim, not a finding. During a long sitting, he says, check the body again: if it has become “slack or tense, leaning or bent, sunk or raised”, straighten it, “with nothing slack or tense inside, level and upright” [3].

Relaxation, for Zhiyi, is not collapse but the right tension, like a tuned string.

Song in the internal martial arts

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history; authorships traditional).

The taijiquan “classics”. The short texts that taijiquan styles treat as classics, credited to Wang Zongyue and to Wu Yuxiang and Li Yiyu, and of debated origin (see “Guiding with the mind”) [5, 6], use the word song only a handful of times, but always in a telling place. A verse says: “keep your attention on the waist at every moment; when the belly is relaxed and clear, qi rises” (腹內鬆淨氣騰然), and in the next line: “the tailbone centred, spirit reaching the crown; the whole body light and nimble, the head as if suspended from above” (尾閭中正神貫頂，滿身輕利頂頭懸) [4].

The Shisan shi xinggong xinjie (十三勢行功心解) puts the pair into one sentence: “When issuing force, be sunk and settled, relaxed and clean, and concentrate in one direction; when standing, be centred, upright, calm and at ease, supported on all eight sides” (發勁須沉著鬆淨，專主一方；立身須中正安舒，支撐八面) [4, 15]. (The Wikisource text has 沉者 and 專注 here; Li Yiyu’s manuscript of 1881 reads 沈著鬆靜, “sunk and settled, relaxed and still” [16].) Relaxed, here, sits next to “supported”. The same text says that “only by being extremely soft and pliant can one then be extremely firm” (極柔軟然後極堅剛), and that “if the spirit can be raised, there is no danger of being slow and heavy; this is what is meant by ‘the head as if suspended’” [4]. And in partner practice, the force should be “as if relaxed, yet not relaxed” (勁似鬆非鬆) [4]: the most exact description of the in-between state in all these texts.

The Taijiquan lun (太極拳論), attributed to Wang Zongyue, adds the warnings. Its posture rule is: “an empty, alert head lifted; qi sinking to the dantian; leaning neither one way nor the other” (虛靈頂勁，氣沈丹田，不偏不倚) [4]. “Stand like a balance scale, move like a wheel”, it says; “sink to one side and you can follow, be double-weighted and you are stuck” (偏沈則隨，雙重則滯) [4]. In the text, “double-weighted” is a fault that leaves you stuck, the opposite of a relaxed, responsive stance.

The root is in the feet. Where does the word “rooted” come from? Another of the classics, the Shisan shi lun (十三勢論), says of every movement: “its root is in the feet, it is issued through the legs, governed by the waist and expressed in the fingers” (其根在腳，發於腿，主宰於腰，行於手指), and “from feet to legs to waist, it must all be one complete qi” [4]. The same text begins: “with every movement the whole body must be light and nimble, and above all strung together” (一舉動周身俱要輕靈，尤須貫串) [4]. Root and lightness are not opposites here. A body is rooted when it is connected from the feet up, not when it is heavy.

Guo Yunshen: heavy as a mountain, light as a bird. The xingyiquan teacher Guo Yunshen, whose stages of training we met in “Guiding with the mind”, is described in his student Sun Lutang’s book of 1924 as “extremely solid in the belly and extremely empty in the heart; in form and spirit heavy as Mount Tai, in movement light as a flying bird” (形式神氣沉重如泰山。而身體動作輕靈如飛鳥) [7]. In Guo’s highest stage of training, no effort is used, yet “even though the whole body moves without effort, it cannot be entirely without effort” (雖然周身動轉不着力。亦不能全不着力) [7]. That is the same in-between state as “as if relaxed, yet not relaxed”.

Guo also warns against seeking either quality on its own: “if you seek only heaviness, you are bound and dragged down by heaviness; if you seek only lightness, your spirit and qi are scattered by lightness” [7]. In his account, heaviness comes by itself when spirit and intention return to the dantian, and lightness when spirit and qi become one and empty [7]. In “Internal and external” we quoted his warning against making the lower belly “as hard as stone” [7]; he continues: “the breath must be left entirely natural” (總要呼吸純任自然), so that the belly is “solid yet as if empty” (腹雖實而若虛) [7]. Sinking, for Guo, is not pushing down.

Wang Xiangzhai: as if bent, not bent. Wang Xiangzhai, the founder of yiquan whose standing practice we met in “Stillness and posture”, writes in his Yiquan zhenggui (意拳正軌), whose preface is dated 1929: “In standing practice, the worst thing is to use force with body and mind; use force and qi stagnates” (最忌身心用力，用力則氣滯) [8]. He warns especially against “throwing the head back and breaking at the waist”, and against elbows and knees “too bent or too straight”; the rule is “as if straight, yet not straight; as if bent, yet not bent” (似直非直，似曲非曲), and even the pores of the whole body should be “as if loosened, yet not loosened” (渾身毛孔似鬆非鬆) [8].

What science says

Label for this section: Early evidence.

We have found no study that measures song as the tradition describes it. What research can say is something about its ingredients: how the body stays upright, and how posture relates to mood. What practitioners describe from the inside, such as Guo Yunshen’s heaviness and lightness, belongs to the tradition sections above: it is taken seriously there as experience, and not presented here as a measurement.

Quiet standing is active. Standing still looks passive, but the body sways slightly all the time, like an inverted pendulum. Ian Loram and Martin Lakie measured the stiffness of the ankle during quiet standing and found that the passive springiness of the foot, Achilles tendon and connective tissue provides on average about 91% of what would be needed to keep the body stable [11]. The rest has to come from the calf muscles, which keep adjusting the force, predictively and in small bursts [11]. In other words, even the most relaxed standing posture is continuously, if unconsciously, controlled. It is a laboratory study and says nothing about Qigong. But it fits the tradition’s warning: complete relaxation would mean falling over.

Slumped and upright. In a randomised trial at the University of Auckland, 74 participants were randomly assigned to sit either slumped or upright, their backs held in place with physiotherapy tape throughout, including a stressful speaking task [12]. Those sitting upright reported higher self-esteem, better mood and less fear, and used fewer negative emotion words in their speech; they also had higher pulse pressure during and after the task [12]. This is one study of seated posture with a laboratory stress task; it did not test standing practice and does not show that upright posture treats anything. It is simply a reminder that “relaxing” by collapsing is not neutral.

Relaxation as an ingredient. Researchers who group Qigong and tai chi as “meditative movement” define them by movement or body positioning, a focus on breathing and a calm state of mind, with the goal of “deep states of relaxation” [13]. As Peter Wayne and Ted Kaptchuk point out, such practices are complex interventions whose parts are hard to separate [14]. None of these studies isolated relaxation, and none tested Liu Zi Jue. For what slow breathing does and does not do to measures such as heart rate variability, see “Slow breathing and heart rate variability” and “Long exhalation and the vagus nerve”.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: Speculative.

“Song means letting everything go.” The sources say the opposite. Zhiyi treats a slumping body as a fault of a mind that is too slack [3], the taijiquan classics pair relaxation with being “supported on all eight sides” [4], and Guo says the body “cannot be entirely without effort” [7]. Physiology agrees that standing still requires active control [11].

“Relaxing opens the channels and lets qi flow.” In the tradition, tension is linked to blocked qi and relaxation to free flow: Wang Xiangzhai’s “use force and qi stagnates” [8], or Zhiyi’s advice to “imagine the qi flowing downwards” [3]. These are traditional images. No study measures qi or channels opening.

“Rooting is an energetic connection to the earth.” The classics’ “root in the feet” describes a body connected from the feet through the legs and waist [4]. Rooting is sometimes described as drawing energy from the ground; we know of no evidence for that. What can be measured is that balance comes from gravity, the feet and continuous muscle control [11].

“Sinking qi means pushing the belly down.” Guo Yunshen warns against exactly this, calling a belly made “hard as stone” an effortful, forced accumulation [7]. If relaxing the belly makes you hold your breath or push, stop and breathe naturally. If you have a health condition, read “Who should be careful with breathing practices” first.

How this relates to the Six Healing Sounds, Qigong and neigong

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history); my own approach is marked as mine, with its own label.

The 2003 standard form of Health Qigong Liu Zi Jue, compiled by the Health Qigong Management Center (see “Liu Zi Jue: where the Six Healing Sounds come from”), starts with the idea of this article. In the excerpts that China Sports Daily published in 2005, the preparatory stance asks practitioners to “smile slightly, keep the mind quiet and the whole body relaxed” (面带微笑，思想安静，全身放松) [9], as described in “Stillness and posture”. The same excerpts show what “relaxed” means in practice. The common error is knees that are too straight or too bent, which tenses the hips and knees; the correction is that the knees should be “as if bent, yet not bent, the joints relaxed” (两膝要似屈非屈，关节放松) [9]. For the opening movement they warn against pushing the chest and belly forwards and against clamping the elbows to the sides [9]. Without naming any older source, the form’s instructions use the same “as if, yet not” formula as the taijiquan classic and Wang Xiangzhai [4, 8]. We have quoted from newspaper excerpts, not from the official 2003 book.

How I practise the sounds. My practice is breath-led: you breathe in quietly through the nose and breathe the six sounds out through the mouth, “voiced through the breath”, not sung, working over time towards a silent exhalation. The breathing stays slow and controlled throughout, with no breath holds and no fast breathing. In my immersions we practise the sounds standing, in the wuji posture (无极, “without limit”), for those who are able to stand comfortably. Neidan is not part of my immersions; we use neigong and visualisation.

Label for the next paragraph: 🟠 Speculative · 🟣 Lived experience, from my own practice.

How I use visualisation. I add a visualisation in the spirit of neigong: you imagine yourself as the resonance, travelling with each sound to its organ, and with xi through the whole body (the triple burner; see “The triple burner”). This rests on my own experience and that of participants in my immersions, not on a scientific finding; I see my work as bridging the gap between the science and the experience. “Guiding with the mind” explains how the classics suggest holding such an image lightly. The texts in this article add the body that holds it: like Zhiyi’s lute string, neither slack nor tense. What can be felt is the vibration of your own voice, as “What resonance really is” explains. Lived experience is an honest account of what people notice; it is not proof, and you may notice something different. None of this is a health claim.

Resonance Heritage Qi is a personal, music-assisted practice inspired by Liu Zi Jue: connected to it, not a replacement for the traditional form or for study with a teacher of that tradition.

Where this series goes next

This is the second article of part two of our neigong series, on inner principles. The next article, “Ren, du and the microcosmic orbit”, looks at the two vessels ren and du: what the medical classics say about them, and how inner alchemy reused them. The emotions and the five organs will follow in a later article. If you missed the first article, read “Guiding with the mind: yi, intention and visualisation”; to start part one from the beginning, read “What is neigong? An introduction”.

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Sources

  1. 道德經 Daodejing (Laozi), Wang Bi 王弼 edition, chapters 10, 55 and 76. Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 20 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/道德經_(王弼本)
  2. Chan A. Laozi. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published 15 December 2001, substantive revision 22 October 2025. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/
  3. Zhiyi 智顗. 修習止觀坐禪法要 Xiuxi zhiguan zuochan fayao, chapter 4, 調和 (adjusting). Chinese text, Wikisource edition (from the Taishō canon), accessed 20 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/修習止觀坐禪法要
  4. 太極拳經 Taijiquan jing (compilation headed 山右王宗岳 “Wang Zongyue of Shanxi”): 十三勢論, 太極拳論, 十三勢歌, 打手歌, 十三勢行功心解. Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 20 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/太極拳經
  5. Henning SE, 1994. Ignorance, legend and taijiquan. Journal of the Chen Style Taijiquan Research Association of Hawaii 2(3), Autumn/Winter 1994:1–7. Online reprints, accessed 20 October 2026. http://bgtent.com/naturalcma/henning.html ; https://crnagorataiji.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/legend-in-tai-chi.pdf
  6. Wile D, 2017. Fighting words: four new document finds reignite old debates in taijiquan historiography. Martial Arts Studies 4:17–35. https://doi.org/10.18573/j.2017.10184
  7. Sun Lutang 孫祿堂 (Sun Fuquan 孫福全). 拳意述真 Quanyi shuzhen (Authentic explanations of martial arts concepts), published 1924: biographical sketch and sayings of Guo Yunshen 郭雲深. Chinese text with English translation by Paul Brennan, Brennan Translation, 2013, accessed 20 October 2026. https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/the-voices-of-sun-lutangs-teachers/
  8. Wang Xiangzhai 王薌齋 (signed Wang Yuseng 王宇僧). 意拳正軌 Yiquan zhenggui, preface dated 1929 (中華民國拾八年菊月), section 樁法換勁 (standing practice and changing strength). Chinese text with English translation by Paul Brennan, “The Correct Path of Yiquan”, Brennan Translation, 2016, accessed 20 October 2026. https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/the-correct-path-of-yiquan/ ; an abridged Chinese text (unproofread) is on Wikisource: https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/意拳正軌
  9. 健身气功·六字诀 (serialisation), chapter 4, 预备势 (preparatory stance) and 起势 (opening movement). China Sports Daily (中国体育报), 25 March 2005, republished by Sina Sports, accessed 20 October 2026. https://sports.sina.cn/sa/2005-03-25/detail-ikftssaq0541200.d.html?vt=4
  10. Unicode Consortium. Unihan database, entries U+9B06 (鬆) and U+677E (松): definitions and variants. Accessed 20 October 2026. https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=9B06 ; https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=677E
  11. Loram ID, Lakie M, 2002. Direct measurement of human ankle stiffness during quiet standing: the intrinsic mechanical stiffness is insufficient for stability. Journal of Physiology 545(3):1041–1053. https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.2002.025049
  12. Nair S, Sagar M, Sollers J 3rd, Consedine N, Broadbent E, 2015. Do slumped and upright postures affect stress responses? A randomized trial. Health Psychology 34(6):632–641. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000146
  13. Larkey L, Jahnke R, Etnier J, Gonzalez J, 2009. Meditative movement as a category of exercise: implications for research. Journal of Physical Activity and Health 6(2):230–238. https://doi.org/10.1123/jpah.6.2.230
  14. Wayne PM, Kaptchuk TJ, 2008. Challenges inherent to t’ai chi research: part I – t’ai chi as a complex multicomponent intervention. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 14(1):95–102. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2007.7170a
  15. Chen Yanlin 陳炎林. 太極拳刀劍桿散手合編 Taijiquan dao jian gan sanshou hebian, 1943, appendix. Chinese text with English translation by Paul Brennan, Brennan Translation, 2013, accessed 20 October 2026. https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/an-outline-of-taiji-theory/
  16. Li Yiyu 李亦畬. Handwritten manual presented to Hao He (Weizhen), 1881. Chinese text with English translation by Paul Brennan, “The Taiji Classics”, Brennan Translation, 2013, accessed 20 October 2026. https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/the-taiji-classics/
  17. 简化字总表 Jianhuazi zongbiao (General list of simplified characters), 1964 edition, table 1, entry 松〔鬆〕. Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 20 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/简化字总表（1964年版）
  18. Ministry of Education (Taiwan). 重編國語辭典修訂本 Chongbian guoyu cidian xiudingben, entry 鬆. Accessed 20 October 2026. https://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/dictView.jsp?ID=10227&q=1&word=%E9%AC%86
  19. 漢字簡化方案 Hanzi jianhua fang’an (Chinese Character Simplification Scheme), with the State Council resolution of 28 January 1956; Table 1 (第一表), entry 松（鬆）, in general use from 1 February 1956. Chinese text, Wikisource edition (transcription of the 1956 publication), accessed 20 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/汉字简化方案 ; scan: https://archive.org/details/hanzi_jianhua_fangan_1956_20220420

Source quality note: [1], [3], [4], [7], [8], [9], [15] and [16] are primary Chinese texts, read in Wikisource editions (for [7], [8], [15] and [16], a translator’s bilingual edition; for [9], newspaper excerpts of the 2003 form), some of them only partly proofread; the translations are our own working translations, checked for [7] against Paul Brennan’s. [2] is a peer-reviewed encyclopedia entry by a specialist. The authorship of the taijiquan texts in [4] is traditional; for their history we rely on a short article by a historian [5], read in online reprints, and a peer-reviewed study [6]. [10] is a standard reference database for Chinese characters, [17] the official list of simplified characters (1964), [19] the 1956 scheme that introduced the form and [18] a standard dictionary. The original 1920s edition of [8] has not been seen; online texts of [8] differ in small details, and the taijiquan texts in [4] exist in several variant readings ([15], [16]). [11] is a laboratory study and [12] a single randomised trial of seated posture; [13] and [14] are methodological papers. None of [11]–[14] tested Liu Zi Jue or the traditional claims quoted above.

Disclaimer

This article is for general education only. It is not medical advice and does not replace diagnosis or treatment by a doctor or other qualified health professional. Qigong and the Six Healing Sounds are traditional practices; we make no claims that they cure, treat or prevent any illness. If you have a health condition, are pregnant, or are unsure whether a practice suits you, please talk to your doctor first.

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