Jing, qi and shen: the three treasures of inner alchemy

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 18 October 2026 · Reading time: about 11 minutes

In short

• What this is: Jing (精, essence), qi (气, breath or vital energy) and shen (神, spirit) are three of the most important words in Chinese thought on the body. Later Daoist texts call them the “three treasures” (三寶, sānbǎo). This article follows each word from its early uses to the named triad and to the inner-alchemy formula “refine essence into qi, qi into spirit, spirit back to emptiness”. It is the fifth article of our neigong series.
• What the evidence says: The history of the words is well documented. The words themselves are traditional concepts, not measurable substances. Popular ideas such as “jing is a finite life battery” or health claims for semen retention go beyond what either the texts or research show.
• What it means for your practice: These words come up constantly in Qigong and neigong teaching. Knowing their history helps you hear them as the tradition’s own language, not as physiology.

What tradition says

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history), unless marked otherwise.

Three words, many meanings. Each of the three words had a range of meanings long before they were grouped together. Jing (精) can mean fine, pure rice and, more broadly, “the refined, pure part” of anything; it can also mean semen [1]. Qi (气) is both the air we breathe and the subtle “breath” of life. Shen (神) means spirit, and also gods and spirits in the plural. The scholar Fabrizio Pregadio translates the three as Essence, Breath and Spirit [2], and we follow him.

The Neiye: essence is the refined part of qi. The Neiye (內業, “Inward Training”), chapter 49 of the Guanzi collection, is dated by scholars to the second half of the 4th century BCE [2]. It opens: “The essence of things is what gives them life. Below it produces the five grains; above it becomes the stars. Flowing between heaven and earth, it is called ghosts and spirits (鬼神); stored in the chest, it is called a sage” (凡物之精，此則爲生) [3]. It then defines the relation of the first two words: “Essence is the refined part of qi” (精也者，氣之精者也) [3]. The heart that is calm and settled can become “a lodging place for essence” (精舍), and “when essence is preserved, life comes of itself” (精存自生) [3]. Here jing is not a bodily fluid but the finest part of the qi that makes up all things.

The Zhuangzi: guarding spirit, not agitating essence. In the Zhuangzi, in chapters usually thought to be later than the core “Inner Chapters” [4], the words appear in advice on self-cultivation. The sage Guangchengzi tells the Yellow Emperor: “Do not tire your body, do not agitate your essence, and you can live long” (无勞汝形，无搖汝精，乃可以長生) [5]. Another chapter says: “The way of purity and simplicity is to guard spirit alone” (純素之道，唯神是守) [6]. And a third gives the shortest definition of qi as life: “A person’s life is a gathering of qi: when it gathers there is life, when it disperses there is death” (人之生，氣之聚也，聚則爲生，散則爲死) [7].

The Inner Classic: essence, spirit and the organs. In the medical classic Huangdi neijing, the words take on more specific roles. Chapter 8 of the Lingshu, “Rooted in spirit” (本神, Benshen), says: “What life comes from is called essence; when two essences meet, that is called spirit” (故生之來謂之精，兩精相搏謂之神) [8]. The Suwen calls essence “the root of the body” (夫精者，身之本也) and says that the kidneys “receive the essence of the five zang and six fu organs and store it” (受五藏六府之精而藏之) [9]. It calls the heart “the ruler, from which the light of spirit comes forth” (心者，君主之官也，神明出焉) [10]. In medicine, then, jing is the stored foundation of the body, including the essence involved in reproduction; shen is the spirit or mind, linked with the heart; and qi covers the many kinds of breath and energy that move through the body.

Two different “three treasures”

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

The phrase “three treasures” is older than the triad jing, qi and shen, and it does not always mean them. In chapter 67 of the Laozi (Daode jing), the speaker says: “I have three treasures, which I hold and keep: the first is compassion, the second is frugality, the third is not daring to be first in the world” (我有三寶，持而保之。一曰慈，二曰儉，三曰不敢為天下先) [11]. These are virtues, not components of the body. In Buddhism, the “three treasures” are the Buddha, his teaching and the community of monks and nuns [1]. When Qigong books say that “Laozi’s three treasures” are jing, qi and shen, they are mixing up different triads.

When jing, qi and shen became one triad

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

The clearest early statement that we could verify presents the three as one system: “The three qi are one: one is essence, one is spirit, one is qi. These three share one position; they are the root of the qi of heaven, earth and humankind. Spirit is received from heaven, essence from earth, qi from the central harmony… Those who wish for long life should cherish qi, honour spirit and value essence” (三氣共一，一為精，一為神，一為氣) [12]. The words come from the Taiping jing tradition; the Taiping jing (Scripture of Great Peace) itself originally dates from the 1st or 2nd century CE [2]. The passage is not, however, in the surviving chapters of the scripture. It survives in two later digests of it: the Taiping jing chao (太平經鈔, Excerpts from the Scripture of Great Peace), in its last part, and the Taiping jing shengjun bizhi (太平經聖君秘旨), from which we quote [12, 19]. In his standard edition of the Taiping jing, the scholar Wang Ming places the passage in the lost final part of the scripture; he attributes the Taiping jing chao to the Daoist Lüqiu Fangyuan (d. 902), at the end of the Tang dynasty, and suspects that Lüqiu also compiled the Shengjun bizhi [19]. The scholar Grégoire Espesset is more cautious: these attributions are possible but not confirmed, and material from the digests is often wrongly quoted as if it came from the Han-dynasty scripture itself [20]. So the triad may well be older than the Tang, but we cannot date this exact wording.

In later Daoism the grouping became standard. Pregadio summarises the mature view: the three treasures are the main components of both the cosmos and the human being; each has an “original” or “precelestial” form and a form in the manifested world. In a person, spirit appears as the mind, qi as breath, and essence in bodily fluids such as saliva and tears, and as semen in men and menstrual blood in women [2]. This is the sense in which inner alchemy uses them.

The inner-alchemy sequence

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

Inner alchemy (neidan, 内丹) turned the three treasures into stages of practice. The first clearly identifiable neidan tradition, Zhong-Lü, appears to have developed from the second half of the Tang dynasty onwards [2, 16]. Its main dialogue already gives a three-step form: “refine essence to produce true qi, refine qi to unite with the yang spirit, refine spirit to unite with the great Dao” (煉精生真氣，煉氣合陽神，煉神合大道) [13].

The standard wording, “refine essence and transform it into qi, refine qi and transform it into spirit, refine spirit and return to emptiness” (煉精化氣，煉氣化神，煉神還虛), appears in the Zhonghe ji (中和集) of Li Daochun, a Daoist master of the Yuan dynasty, who calls the three steps the “first, middle and upper passes” [14]. The scheme is older than his text. Li himself quotes an unnamed “book of the elixir” (丹書) that already names the three passes, ending with “refine spirit and transform it into emptiness” (煉神化虛) [14]. And the undated preface of the Jindan sibai zi (金丹四百字, Four Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir), attributed to Zhang Boduan (d. 1082), describes the same three steps in other words: “essence transforms into qi, qi into spirit, spirit into emptiness” (以精化為氣，以氣化為神，以神化為虛) [21]. Pregadio doubts that attribution [22], so we cannot date the preface exactly, and we could not find the standard wording itself in a securely dated text earlier than Li Daochun. Another Yuan author, Chen Zhixu, explains the logic in his Jindan dayao (金丹大要): in the “forward” course of life, “emptiness transforms into spirit, spirit into qi, qi into essence, essence into form”; alchemy reverses that course, “refining spirit and returning to emptiness” [15]. Pregadio notes that the classical three-stage practice was developed on the basis of the Wuzhen pian and the teachings of the Southern Lineage [16].

Two points matter here. First, these texts describe a religious path whose final goal is to transcend the world and return to the Dao; they speak of long life and healing too, but they are not, in the first place, a method for health or fitness [16]. Second, they promise outcomes, such as immortality, in their own religious language; we report that language, but make no such promise. Li Daochun himself warns against reading the “three passes” as fixed points on the spine: “those who take the coccyx, the spine between the shoulder blades and the back of the head as the three passes are only dealing with technique, not with what is essential” [14].

Jing, qi and shen and the three dantians

Label for this section: Tradition only (traditional concepts).

In later texts, the three treasures are matched with the three dantians. The Zhong-Lü chuandao ji says that “the upper field is the dwelling of spirit, the middle field the storehouse of qi, the lower field the region of essence” (上田神舍、中田氣府、下田精區) [13]. In Pregadio’s summary of the later standard scheme, the lower dantian is the seat of essence, the middle of qi and the upper of spirit, and the stages of practice move the inner elixir from the lower field to the middle and then the upper [17]. Our article “The three dantians: what the classical texts say” describes the dantians themselves, and our article “The triple burner: ‘a name but no form’” explains why the three burners are a separate concept.

Medical and alchemical use: the same words, different jobs

Label for this section: Tradition only (traditional concepts).

• In medicine (the Huangdi neijing and later), jing, qi and shen describe the body’s foundations and functions: essence stored by the kidneys, the many kinds of qi, and spirit linked with the heart [8–10]. They are part of a theory of health and illness.
• In inner alchemy, the same words describe stages of a spiritual path that runs against the “forward” course of life, from essence back towards emptiness [14, 15]. The aim is religious.

Teachers today often move between the two uses without saying so. Asking which one is meant avoids a lot of confusion.

What science says

Label for this section: Tradition only (traditional concepts).

Jing, qi and shen are traditional concepts. They are not measurable substances, and research has not tested them as such; as stated, they are probably not testable. They remain useful as the language in which the tradition describes the body and its practice. They should not be read as statements about physiology, hormones or fertility.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: Speculative.

• “Jing is a finite battery: you are born with a fixed amount and can only use it up.” This is a common modern image, found for example on practitioners’ websites [23]. It turns a traditional concept into a quantity. The classical texts describe essence as something to be preserved and refined, and the Suwen describes it as declining with age [3, 5, 9], but no research measures a store of jing, and the battery image is not found in the classical sources we quote.
• “Retaining semen boosts energy, testosterone or health.” In the tradition, jing includes semen but is much broader [2], and the alchemical texts speak of refining essence within a religious path [14, 15]. Modern health claims for semen retention go beyond the evidence. A small 2003 study on testosterone after a period of abstinence, which spread widely online after a 2011 Reddit post [24], was retracted by its journal in 2021 because it overlapped heavily with an earlier Chinese paper by the same lead author [18]. The retraction does not settle the question either way; it simply means the study cannot be relied on.
• “Jing, qi and shen are Laozi’s three treasures.” See above: the Laozi‘s three treasures are compassion, frugality and not daring to be first [11].
• “Refining jing into qi and shen gives you supernatural powers or immortality.” These are the religious promises of the texts themselves [13–15]. We describe them as history; we do not promise them.

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

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history); Raymond’s own approach is marked as his, and its link to the science of vibration is labelled Speculative.

The oldest text of the six sounds, the Yangxing yanming lu, first written down between the 6th and 8th centuries, presents them in a chapter on breathing practices, as six ways of breathing out; the alchemical sequence of the three treasures belongs to later texts. You can read more in the history of Liu Zi Jue. In modern Qigong and neigong teaching, the three treasures are a common frame for explaining what practice works with, and our series introduction, “What is neigong? An introduction“, shows how neigong draws on inner alchemy. Our next article, “Neidan, inner alchemy: an introduction for practitioners“, looks at that tradition as a whole.

How Raymond’s practice relates to this. Raymond’s 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.

Label for the next two paragraphs: Speculative, based on Raymond’s own description. Raymond links the sounds to the science of sound and vibration: in theory, it is possible that making these sounds affects the organs and sets them vibrating. This has not been shown, and he does not claim that it works. What is measurable is more modest: when you voice a sound, the vibration is physical and you can feel it, for example at your throat, as What is resonance? explains. We know of no measurements showing that a particular sound sets a particular organ vibrating; see our article on vowels and formants.

Alongside this, Raymond draws on the visualisation side 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). This is an act of imagination, not a physical claim. It rests on his own experience and that of his participants, which is anecdotal, not a scientific finding. He says himself that this is not scientific, and describes his work as bridging the gap between the science and the experience. None of this is a health claim. His practice does not teach neidan or its refining stages (refining essence into qi, and so on), and makes no claim to work on essence or spirit. If you have a health condition, please read who should be careful with breathing practices first.

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

Next in our neigong series: “Neidan, inner alchemy: an introduction for practitioners”, on external and internal alchemy, the Zhong-Lü tradition, the Wuzhen pian and Quanzhen.

Sources

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Source quality note: [3], [5]–[15] and [21] are primary Chinese texts, read in Wikisource editions; [12] and [13] were also checked against the Kanripo editions of the Daoist Canon, and for [13] we follow the Canon’s reading 神舍. The translations are our own working translations. The dating of the Neiye and of the Taiping jing follows [2]; the triad passage in [12] survives only in two digests whose date and compiler are uncertain [19, 20], so the date of its exact wording is uncertain. The preface of [21] is undated, and its attribution to Zhang Boduan is doubted [22]. [2], [16], [17] and [22] are by a leading scholar of Daoism and alchemy; [4] is a scholarly reference work; [19] is the standard modern edition of the Taiping jing, and [20] is a scholarly review of its textual history. [1] is an official dictionary and gives modern definitions. [18] is cited only to show that a study widely shared for semen-retention claims has been retracted; [23] and [24] are cited only as examples of popular claims and of how the study spread online, not as evidence.