How neigong came West: Chia, Frantzis, Cohen and the English word

Evidence label: Tradition only

This article describes how the word “neigong” and related practices reached English-language teaching, and what three well-known modern teachers say about their own systems. It describes their teaching from their own books and websites and from scholarly studies; it does not rank teachers or judge their practice, and it makes no health claims.

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 21 October 2026 · Reading time: about 10 minutes

In short

What this is: Many people first meet the word “neigong”, the “microcosmic orbit” and the Six Healing Sounds not in a Chinese text but in an English book from the 1960s to the 1990s. This article traces that route: Chinese meditation manuals of the early twentieth century, their first English translations, and the systems of three influential teachers in the West, Mantak Chia, Bruce Frantzis and Kenneth Cohen. It separates what these teachers present as their own systems from what the classical texts say. It is the fourth article of part two of our neigong series.

What the evidence says: The history is well documented in books, catalogues and scholarly studies. The spellings “nei kung” and “neigong” appear more often in English books only from the mid-1980s and late 1990s respectively. Scholars describe the best-known of these systems, Mantak Chia’s Healing Tao, as a modern synthesis: built on older Chinese practice, but organised, named and explained in new ways. In our reading, Frantzis and Cohen likewise organise older practice into teachable systems of their own, although Frantzis presents his as an ancient Taoist system. We know of no study that tests any of these systems as such.

What it means for your practice: When a teacher speaks of “neigong”, “the orbit” or “the sixteen components”, it helps to know which part comes from the classical texts, which from a twentieth-century manual, and which from a modern teacher’s own system. All three can be valuable; they are simply not the same thing.

What tradition says

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

An old word with a narrow meaning. In Chinese, neigong (内功, “internal work” or “internal skill”) is first of all a martial artists’ term, as “What is neigong?” explains: skill trained inside the body, in contrast to waigong (外功), “external work”. A manual with the word in its title, the Neigong tushuo (内功图说), was printed in 1881, and it includes the “twelve-section brocade” alongside “external” exercises. The practices that later teachers gathered under the word are older and have separate histories: breathing and stretching from the second century BCE, inner alchemy (neidan) from the eighth century CE, and the contrast between “internal” and “external” martial arts from 1669 (see “Internal and external”). “Qigong”, the umbrella term that now covers many of them, came into general use only after 1949 (see “What is Qigong?” and “The making of modern Qigong”).

Modern manuals in plain language. Between the classical texts and the English books stands a generation of Chinese authors who wrote about meditation in plain, modern language. One of the most influential was Jiang Weiqiao (蒋维乔), who wrote under the pen name Yin Shi Zi (因是子). His first book on meditation, Yin Shi Zi’s Method of Meditation (因是子靜坐法), appeared in 1914 [1]. In it he tells how, during an illness in his youth, his father showed him The Ancient Medical Formulas Explained (醫方集解), “the last section of which deals with the Taoist technique called ‘The Microcosmic Orbit’” (小周天) [1]. Another was the Daoist master Zhao Bichen (赵避尘, born 1860), whose Xingming fajue mingzhi (性命法訣明指) explains inner alchemy step by step [2]. The scholar Elijah Siegler notes that Zhao, like his contemporary Chen Yingning, used “a modern Western scientific discourse” and wanted to reach a large audience [3]. These manuals were already a modern reworking of older material, and they became the first route by which the orbit reached English.

How the words reached English

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

The orbit in translation. The translator Charles Luk (Lu K’uan Yü, 陸寬昱) published The Secrets of Chinese Meditation in London in 1964. Its chapter on the Daoist school translates Jiang Weiqiao’s method and renders 小周天 (xiao zhoutian) as “the Microcosmic Orbit (Hsiao Chou T’ien)” [1]. In 1970 Luk followed with Taoist Yoga, a translation of Zhao Bichen’s book [2]. In its preface he describes the orbit as beginning “at the base of the spine”, rising through three “gates” to the brain and descending “down the face, chest and abdomen”, and he explains that he kept “some terms for which there are no English equivalents”, while translating others, such as lead and mercury, by what they stand for [2]. The circuit described in “Ren, du and the microcosmic orbit” thus entered English through translations of twentieth-century manuals, not directly from the medieval alchemical texts.

The word “neigong”. The romanisation explains the different spellings. In the older Wade–Giles system 内功 is written nei kung; in pinyin, neigong; “nei gung” is an informal spelling closer to the sound. In the Google Books corpus of English books, “nei kung” shows only scattered hits from the 1950s to the early 1980s, rises from the mid-1980s and is most frequent in the 2000s; “neigong” first appears in the 1980s, becomes more frequent from the late 1990s, overtakes “nei kung” around 2012 and reaches its highest level in the 2010s [4]. (“Nei gung” is too rare in the corpus to measure.) Isolated early hits should be read with care, because “nei kung” can also spell other Chinese words and scanned books are sometimes misdated. Library catalogues tell a similar story: the earliest English book titles with the word that we found are C. K. Chu’s The Book of Nei Kung (1986) and Mantak and Maneewan Chia’s Bone Marrow Nei Kung (1988) [5].

Three teachers in the West

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history); each teacher’s account of his own training is his own and is presented as such.

Mantak Chia and the Healing Tao. Mantak Chia (謝明德, born 1944 in Thailand to Chinese parents) describes learning Daoist practices as a student in Hong Kong from a teacher called Yi Eng (一雲, “One Cloud”), including, in Komjathy’s summary of Chia’s biography, “the Microcosmic Orbit, Fusion of the Five Elements, and internal alchemy” [6, 3]. After opening a Natural Healing Center in Bangkok in 1974, he moved to New York, where his centre became the Healing Tao Center (Komjathy dates its opening to 1979; Siegler has Chia moving to New York in 1978 and the name in use by 1981) [6, 3]. His first book, Awaken Healing Energy through the Tao (1983), was subtitled “The Taoist Secret of Circulating Internal Power” [3, 7]; his 1985 book, Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality, presented “the Inner Smile” and “Six Healing Sounds” [8].

Siegler describes the Healing Tao as “a popularized system of breathing, visualization, meditation, and postures, based on the Daoist practice of Inner Alchemy”, whose introductory level includes the Microcosmic Orbit, the Inner Smile and the Six Healing Sounds [3]. Chia’s former chief student Michael Winn, quoted by Siegler, describes their collaboration as producing “seven books on qigong and neigong”, and as converting “a one-to-one ‘ear-whispered’ transmission” into “an open and detailed curriculum of progressive courses” [3]. The religious studies scholar Louis Komjathy writes that the Healing Tao System “contains a systematized internal alchemy set, which may represent a distinctively American form of neidan” [6]. Siegler adds that Chia “uses Western scientific theories extensively” to explain his teachings, quoting the sinologist Douglas Wile [3].

Bruce Frantzis and the “sixteen neigong”. Bruce Frantzis, born in New York in the late 1940s, describes decades of training in Japan, Taiwan, India and China, and above all three years with Liu Hung Chieh (Liu Hongjie) in Beijing in the 1980s, who in this account passed his lineage on to Frantzis before dying on 1 December 1986 [9]. His website states that “It was through Liu that Frantzis was able to organize the qigong system presented in this and other volumes” (an excerpt from his 1993 book Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body) [9, 10]. The core of that system is a list of “16 neigong”, or “internal energy components”: from “breathing methods” and “precise body alignments” to “opening and closing methods (pulsing)”, the spine, the left, right and central channels, and the three dantians [11]. Frantzis writes that the components need not be learned in sequence and that fully activating them all would mean “many lifetimes of work” [11]. The numbered list is Frantzis’s own way of organising his training; we have not found it in a classical text.

Kenneth Cohen and The Way of Qigong. Kenneth S. Cohen (Gao Han) writes that he received a teaching certificate from the William C. C. Chen School of T’ai Chi Ch’uan in 1974, studied classical Chinese and Daoism with academic teachers, and was the only apprentice of the Daoist abbot and acupuncturist Huang Gengshi [12]. His book The Way of Qigong: The Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing (1997) presents Qigong to English readers under a subtitle that pairs “art” and “science” [13]. Cohen’s main word is “Qigong”, not “neigong”. We include him because, in our view, his book is one of the best-known English introductions to the field, and because it shows the same move as Chia and Frantzis: an older practice explained to Western readers through a modern framework.

What they share. These teachers came from different backgrounds and teach different things. What they share is a situation: each presents Chinese inner practice to Western students who have no access to the classical texts, and each organises it into a teachable system with its own vocabulary. The publisher’s description of David Palmer and Elijah Siegler’s book Dream Trippers (2017) says that this “Westernized version of Daoism” is now even “traveling back from America and Europe to influence Daoism in China” [14].

What practitioners report

Label for this section: Tradition only (practitioner reports, sourced; they are not findings).

The felt sense has always been part of this story. Jiang Weiqiao, in the passages Luk translated, describes “some heat moving in the belly below the navel”, after which “suddenly the lower belly vibrates and the whole body shakes”; he writes that this “just happens and should neither be sought nor repressed” [1]. Siegler, interviewing students at Chia’s centre in Thailand, found that they described their bodies as “more energized, balanced, or purified”, and that subjective experience was “the reason for coming” and “the criterion for a successful visit” [3]. These are honest reports of what practitioners notice, and they deserve to be taken seriously as experience. They are not measurements, and they do not tell us what causes the sensation.

What science says

Label for this section: Early evidence (Qigong and tai chi in general); no studies of these specific systems that we know of.

Research on Qigong and tai chi in general is summarised in “Qigong and tai chi: what systematic reviews say”. Those reviews study many different styles under one heading. We have not found a study that tests Chia’s Healing Tao, Frantzis’s sixteen components or Cohen’s programme as such, or that compares them with the classical practices. On interoception, the research on how we sense the inside of the body, see “Guiding with the mind”: it shows that felt sensations are real experiences, partly shaped by what we expect to feel.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: Speculative.

“Neigong is the original chi cultivation system, invented by the Taoists.” This is how Frantzis’s website introduces the sixteen components [11]. On the documentary record, “neigong” is a martial artists’ term, the practices now grouped under it have several separate histories, and no single original system is attested (see “What is neigong?”).

“Thousands of years ago Taoist masters discovered six sounds with the correct frequencies for the organs.” The publisher’s excerpt of Chia’s The Six Healing Sounds (2009) states this, and adds that “a healthy organ vibrates at a particular frequency” [15]. The six-sound method itself is first recorded between the sixth and eighth centuries, and its pairings of sounds and organs changed several times (see “Liu Zi Jue: where the Six Healing Sounds come from”). We know of no measurements showing that a particular sound sets a particular organ into resonance (see “Vowels and formants”).

“Qigong has been practised in China for thousands of years.” The publisher’s description of The Way of Qigong opens by saying that Qigong has been practised in China “for thousands of years”, and it also makes medical claims that we do not repeat [13]. Breathing and stretching practices are indeed very old; the name “Qigong” and the idea of Qigong as one field date from the mid-twentieth century (see “What is Qigong?”).

“These are secret teachings, revealed now for the first time.” Several Western systems present themselves this way; Siegler notes that the Healing Tao offers its teaching openly while marketing itself “through the appeal of secrecy” [3]. A teacher’s account of his own lineage is a personal account. We cannot verify it, and we do not dispute it; we simply present it as the teacher’s own.

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.

For many Western practitioners, the name “Six Healing Sounds” itself comes from this period: Luk’s 1964 book already translates a “Taoist Secret of the Six Healing Sounds” [1], and Chia’s 1985 book put “Six Healing Sounds” in its subtitle [8]. The 2003 standard form of Health Qigong Liu Zi Jue, compiled by the Health Qigong Management Center, is a separate, Chinese line of development, described in “Liu Zi Jue: where the Six Healing Sounds come from”. Practices met in Western classes, such as the Inner Smile or a numbered list of components, belong to particular modern systems; they are not part of the 2003 form or of the oldest six-sound texts.

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”). Like the systems in this article, it is a modern way of sharing the practice, and it is marked as mine. 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. 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 fourth article of part two of our neigong series, on inner principles. The next article, “Zouhuo rumo: when practice goes wrong”, looks at what the tradition says about inner practice going wrong, the Chinese idea of zouhuo rumo (走火入魔), and at practising sensibly. If you missed them, read “Guiding with the mind”, “Song 松: relaxed and rooted” and “Ren, du and the microcosmic orbit”; to start part one from the beginning, read “What is neigong? An introduction”.

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Sources

1. Luk C (Lu K’uan Yü), 1964. The Secrets of Chinese Meditation. London: Rider (scan read: 1969 printing). Chapter 5, “Self-cultivation according to the Taoist school”, with translations from Jiang Weiqiao (Yin Shi Zi), Yin Shi Zi jingzuo fa (1914); chapter 7, “Physical and spiritual culture according to Chinese yoga”, pp. 208–209 (“The Taoist Secret of the Six Healing Sounds”). Read in the Internet Archive scan, accessed 20 October 2026. https://archive.org/details/x-the-secrets-of-chinese-meditation
2. Luk C (Lu K’uan Yü), 1970. Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality. A translation of Zhao Bichen (Chao Pi Ch’en), Xingming fajue mingzhi. Edition read: New York: Samuel Weiser, preface. Internet Archive, accessed 20 October 2026. https://archive.org/details/LuKuanYuTaoistYogaAlchemyAndImmortality
3. Siegler E, 2012. Daoism beyond modernity: the “Healing Tao” as postmodern movement. In Palmer DA, Liu X (eds.), Daoism in the Twentieth Century: Between Eternity and Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press / Global, Area, and International Archive, chapter 11, pp. 274–292. Open access (PDF read), accessed 20 October 2026: https://escholarship.org/content/qt13w4k8d4/qt13w4k8d4.pdf ; landing page: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13w4k8d4 ; partial reprint: https://healingtaousa.com/tao_article/healing-tao-as-postmodern-movement/
4. Google Books Ngram Viewer, English corpus 2019, “neigong” and “nei kung”, 1950–2019, case-insensitive. Accessed 20 October 2026. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=neigong%2Cnei+kung&year_start=1950&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true
5. Open Library catalogue records: Chu CK, 1986, The Book of Nei Kung, Sunflower Press (https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5271808W); Chia M, Chia M, 1988, Bone Marrow Nei Kung, Healing Tao Books (https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2856680W). Accessed 20 October 2026.
6. Komjathy L, 2004. Tracing the contours of Daoism in North America. Nova Religio 8(2):5–27. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2004.8.2.5 ; author’s copy: https://louiskomjathy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DaoisminNorthAmerica_Komjathy.pdf
7. Chia M, 1983. Awaken Healing Energy through the Tao: The Taoist Secret of Circulating Internal Power. Santa Fe, NM: Aurora Press. ISBN 0943358078. Catalogue record, Internet Archive, accessed 20 October 2026. https://archive.org/details/awakenhealingene0000chia
8. Chia M, 1985. Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality: The Inner Smile, Six Healing Sounds. Huntington, NY: Healing Tao Press. ISBN 0935621008. Library of Congress catalogue data via Internet Archive, accessed 20 October 2026. https://archive.org/details/taoistwaystotran00chia
9. Frantzis B. Bruce’s story. Energy Arts, 14 April 2010, including an excerpt by Stuart Kenter from Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body. Accessed 20 October 2026. https://www.energyarts.com/bruces-story/
10. Frantzis BK, 1993. Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. ISBN 1556431643. Catalogue record, Internet Archive, accessed 20 October 2026. https://archive.org/details/openingenergygat00fran
11. Frantzis B. The sixteen neigong. Energy Arts, 5 November 2011. Accessed 20 October 2026. https://www.energyarts.com/the-sixteen-neigong/
12. Cohen KS. About Ken. Qigong Healing (author’s website). Accessed 20 October 2026. https://www.qigonghealing.com/about-ken
13. Cohen KS, 1997. The Way of Qigong: The Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997 (1st ed.). ISBN 0345395298. Publisher’s page for the paperback (Wellspring/Ballantine, 1999, ISBN 9780345421098), accessed 20 October 2026. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/29427/the-way-of-qigong-by-kenneth-s-cohen/
14. Palmer DA, Siegler E, 2017. Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Publisher’s page, accessed 20 October 2026. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo26692000.html
15. Chia M, 2009. The Six Healing Sounds: Taoist Techniques for Balancing Chi. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. ISBN 9781594771569. Publisher’s page with excerpt from chapter 2, accessed 20 October 2026. https://www.innertraditions.com/books/the-six-healing-sounds

Source quality note: [3] and [6] are peer-reviewed scholarly studies; [3] was read in the publisher’s open-access PDF. [1] and [2] are early English translations, read in full scans of the relevant chapters. [9], [11] and [12] are the teachers’ own websites and are used only for what the teachers say about themselves and their systems. [13], [14] and [15] are publishers’ pages; [5], [7], [8] and [10] are catalogue records, used for titles and dates only. We have not read the books of Chia, Frantzis or Cohen in full. [4] is a word-frequency tool based on scanned books: useful for broad trends, unreliable for single early hits.

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.