Six pale footpaths meeting at an old pine on a misty hilltop at golden dawn

The Six Roots of Qigong

ByRaymond Hackland

Medical, Martial, Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian and Ethnic Qigong and where the six roots come from

Evidence label: Tradition only This is a history article about ways of sorting Qigong. The classifications themselves are 📜 Documented history: we can show where they are used. The traditions’ own ideas and claims, which they sort, are 🔵 Tradition only.

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 23 October 2026 · Reading time: about 11 minutes

In short

What this is: Many books divide Qigong into five roots: Medical, Martial, Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian. I add a sixth for the breath and movement traditions of China’s ethnic minorities; my teacher Bob Lowey calls this root Ethnic Qigong. This article asks where the map comes from, who uses it and what each root refers to, and points you to the articles in our Qigong and neigong series that tell each part in full.

What the evidence says: The five-way scheme is easy to document in modern books, above all in the Chinese textbook of Medical Qigong used at universities of Chinese medicine. It is a modern teaching frame, not a classical category: the word “Qigong” in its modern sense dates only from the late 1940s and 1950s, and we found no single verified author who first drew the map. The Ethnic root is not an official category: the Chinese six-way lists we found have “folk Qigong” instead.

What it means for your practice: The six roots are a useful way to ask “where does this practice come from, and what was it for?” They are not six sealed boxes. Most practices you will meet, including Liu Zi Jue, grow from several of them.

What tradition says

Label for this section: 📜 Documented history (the classification and where it is used) · 🔵 Tradition only (the traditions’ own ideas and claims).

A modern map, not a classical category

For most of Chinese history nobody practised “Qigong”. People did daoyin, tuna, quiet sitting, boxing, inner alchemy or meditation, each with its own name, teachers and aims. According to the historian David Palmer, before 1949 such body cultivation was “widely practiced in monastic, medical, literati and sectarian circles”, but there was no movement that aimed to unite all practitioners [1]. The word in its modern sense came with the cadre Liu Guizhen and his colleagues in the late 1940s and became a general term only after 1949 [1]. Our article The making of modern Qigong: Liu Guizhen, Tangshan and Beidaihe tells that story.

Once there was one word, the many older practices had to be sorted. The historians Utiraruto Otehode and Benjamin Penny describe how 1950s Qigong therapy “absorbed a range of other practices from Chinese medicine, martial arts, Buddhism, and Daoism”, and how all of them were modified on the way in, with terms considered “feudal”, “superstitious” or “religious” abandoned [2]. That list has four sources, not five.

The five-way form is clearest in the textbook of Medical Qigong, Zhōngyī qìgōng xué (中医气功学), used at Chinese universities of traditional medicine. Its 2016 edition, edited by Liu Tianjun and Zhang Wenchun, has a section titled “Overview of the main Qigong schools” (主要气功流派概述), and the overview chapter of its appendix of classical texts divides them into Medical, Daoist, Confucian, Buddhist and Martial Qigong literature [3]. The English translation of an earlier edition, Chinese Medical Qigong (2010), likewise introduces the “major Qigong traditions/schools” and treats Medical Qigong alongside “Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and Martial Arts Qigong” [4]. Some Chinese authors go to six by adding “folk Qigong” (民间气功, mínjiān qìgōng), methods spread among ordinary people without a clear background in the other five; the Qigong researchers Lin Zhongpeng and Lin Hai report this and criticise all these lists, because they mix worldviews (Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian) with fields of use (medicine, martial arts) [13].

The Qigong world itself thought in similar terms. In a survey of Qigong masters for his history of the Qigong movement, Palmer grouped the traditions in which they claimed a traditional initiation. As his table is reproduced on the Kung Fu Tea blog, Martial (75 masters) and Medical (55) were far ahead of Buddhist (16), Daoist (15) and literati or Confucian (7), and only 158 of 554 respondents claimed any traditional initiation at all [5, 6]. The table also lists other lineages, such as the Book of Changes, extraordinary powers and a Muslim tradition, and some masters named more than one, so the survey does not simply confirm the five-way scheme.

Western teachers did not settle on one map either. What is Qigong? An introduction describes a teacher who uses four overlapping groups. Kenneth Cohen (see How neigong came West: Chia, Frantzis, Cohen and the English word) names four areas of application on his website, from healing to martial and spiritual Qigong [7]. The five roots are one common map among several, and we found no verified source that first drew it. The six roots I use here are the five usual roots plus the Ethnic one.

Medical: yījiā qìgōng (医家气功)

This is the root of daoyin, the old “guiding and pulling” exercises: the Mawangdui chart sealed in 168 BCE, the Zhangjiashan Yinshu, Hua Tuo’s Five Animals, and the Sui-dynasty medical compendium that adds daoyin instructions to its descriptions of disorders. Our article Daoyin: from the Mawangdui chart to modern Qigong follows this line; the historian Livia Kohn traces daoyin from early medical manuscripts to modern Qigong [8]. The 1950s clinics gave the whole field a medical identity, and today’s state-standardised forms carry that history on, though officially as a sport, not a therapy (see Health Qigong: how China’s standard forms were made). Zhang Guangde’s Daoyin Yangsheng Gong, a modern daoyin system created at Beijing Sport University, continues this line: see Who was Professor Zhang Guangde? and The Twelve Daoyin Exercises: Zhang Guangde’s Health Qigong form. Old texts in the Medical root state traditional beliefs about health, not tested results.

Martial: wǔshù qìgōng (武术气功)

Here the aim was fighting skill, and “internal work” meant training for relaxed, coordinated strength. The idea of an “internal” and an “external” school of boxing first appears in the Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan, which the scholar Huang Zongxi wrote in 1669 for that boxer; it contrasts an “internal school” with the “external” boxing of the Shaolin monastery [9]. Our article Internal and external: neijia, waijia and the epitaph of 1669 reads it closely, and What is neigong? An introduction explains what “internal work” means in the martial arts. Standing practice (zhan zhuang), as the boxer Wang Xiangzhai taught it, is another contribution of the Martial root (see Stillness and posture: sitting and standing practice in the internal traditions).

Daoist: dàojiā qìgōng (道家气功)

Here the setting is Daoist self-cultivation: the breath methods of the classics, the three dantians, the three treasures of jing, qi and shen, and above all neidan, inner alchemy, whose goals are religious. The neigong series covers each in turn: Breath in the classics: tuna, fuqi, lianqi and embryonic breathing, The three dantians: what the classical texts say, Jing, qi and shen: the three treasures of inner alchemy, Neidan, inner alchemy: an introduction for practitioners and Ren, du and the microcosmic orbit: channels in medicine and inner alchemy. As I explain below, neidan is not part of my Immersions.

Buddhist: fójiā qìgōng (佛家气功)

Buddhist meditation came from India and developed its own Chinese manuals. The Sui-dynasty master Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597) wrote a short manual on calming and insight, the Xiūxí zhǐguān zuòchán fǎyào (修习止观坐禅法要), with detailed instructions on adjusting body, breath and mind [10]. Its aim is liberation, not health. We look at it in Stillness and posture, Song 松: relaxed and rooted, or how to relax without collapsing in the internal traditions and Zouhuo rumo: when practice goes wrong, which quotes its warnings about meditation going astray.

Confucian: rújiā qìgōng (儒家气功)

This is the smallest of the five classic roots and the one that fits the word “Qigong” least well. Mencius, in the 4th century BCE, speaks of cultivating his “flood-like qi” (浩然之氣), which he says is “produced by accumulated righteousness” (集義所生) [11]. That is moral philosophy, not a breathing method, as Guiding with the mind: yi, intention and visualisation in the internal traditions explains. Song-dynasty Confucians practised quiet sitting (静坐, jìngzuò) and tried to keep it apart from Buddhist meditation; Zhu Xi (1130–1200) told a departing student that someone with no daily duties and food provided could spend “half the day in quiet sitting and half the day reading” (半日靜坐，半日讀書) [12]. The aim was a steady, attentive mind for study and conduct (see Stillness and posture).

Ethnic: breath and movement traditions of China’s ethnic minorities

Evidence label: Documented history (that these traditions exist and how scholars describe them) · Evidence label: Tradition only (their own ideas about channels, winds and the mind)

China is home to many ethnic minorities besides the Han majority, and several, such as the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians, have their own medical traditions [15]. My teacher Bob Lowey calls this root Ethnic Qigong; Chinese lists often have folk Qigong (民间气功, mínjiān qìgōng) instead [13]. It is not an official category: in the Chinese overviews we read, we did not find “Ethnic Qigong” as a standard group. I use the Ethnic root for breath, movement and mind-training traditions that grew within minority cultures, in their own languages and with their own ideas of the body. Their practitioners mostly never called them “Qigong”, just as the older Chinese practices were not called “Qigong” before the 1950s. I name only examples we can source.

Tibetan: trul khor. Tibetan ’phrul ’khor (trul khor), “magical movement”, combines breath, concentration of the mind and particular body movements. The scholar Alejandro Chaoul describes it as present in all five spiritual traditions of Tibet, most of all in the Kagyu, Nyingma and Bön schools, and as part of Tibetan spiritual training since at least the 10th century CE; its aim is to support meditation and the experience of abiding in the natural state of mind, and in his words its history “is yet to be written” [14]. Trul khor is practised across the Tibetan cultural world, inside and outside China. In Bön it belongs to Tibet’s own Bön religion, and in the Buddhist schools to Tibetan Buddhism, so trul khor sits on the Ethnic root and, in its Buddhist lineages, on the Buddhist root as well.

Mongolian: heyi. Mongolian medicine is one of the main medical systems of China’s ethnic minorities and took much of its theory from Tibetan medicine [15]. Its practitioners have asked how Qigong fits their own body concepts: an article in the Journal of Medicine and Pharmacy of Chinese Minorities discusses the relationship between Qigong and heyi (赫依, hèyī, “wind”), in its theory one of the three principles of Mongolian medicine, linked to movement, speech and breathing [15, 16]. This is a meeting of two traditions’ theories, not a tested result.

What we have left out. Uyghur medicine has its own documented history, drawing on Greco-Arabic humoral medicine [15], but we have not found reliable sources for distinct Uyghur, Yi or Zhuang breath or movement practices of the Qigong kind. Rather than guess, I leave them out until they can be sourced.

Where the roots cross

Why can one practice belong to several roots? Because the roots are labels added much later to lineages that always borrowed from each other. A practice gets its root from three things: where it was handed down, what it was for, and who describes it today. All three can change over the centuries. The labels also measure different things: Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian and Ethnic describe a worldview or a culture, while Medical and Martial describe a use [13]. One practice can easily have a Buddhist origin story, a medical use and a Martial training hall all at once. Lin Zhongpeng and Lin Hai give examples from inside the traditions: Zhiyi’s Buddhist meditation works read much like Daoist ones, and some heirs of Daoist inner alchemy, such as Liu Huayang (柳华阳), were Buddhist monks [13].

Four practices show how this works:

  • Yijinjing (易筋经, Yìjīnjīng), the “Sinew-Changing Classic”, has a Buddhist origin story: it is traditionally credited to Bodhidharma and linked to the Shaolin monastery. Historians date the text to the 17th century, and it was practised as strength training in the martial arts (see Health Qigong). Today it is one of the state’s Health Qigong forms. That puts it on the Buddhist, Martial and Medical roots.
  • Baduanjin (八段锦, Bāduànjǐn), the “Eight-Section Brocade”, is first recorded in the Song dynasty; who created it is unknown, and popular stories credit it to famous figures. It is counted among the daoyin health exercises and is now a Health Qigong form: Medical in use, modern in its standard version (see Health Qigong).
  • The Health Qigong standard forms, compiled in 2001–2003 by the Health Qigong Management Center of the General Administration of Sport of China and issued in 2003, show the same thing on a larger scale. The first four (Yijinjing, Wuqinxi, Liu Zi Jue and Baduanjin) come from Buddhist, Medical and Daoist backgrounds and were reshaped into one officially secular sport (see Health Qigong).
  • Liu Zi Jue (六字诀, Liù Zì Jué), the Six Healing Sounds, appears in Daoist and Buddhist texts, in the modern Medical Qigong textbook and in the Health Qigong set, as the section below shows.

Even the famous split between “internal” and “external” boxing crosses roots: the 1669 epitaph traces the internal school to Zhang Sanfeng, a Daoist alchemist of Wudang who it says learned the art in a dream from the god Xuanwu, and sets it against the external boxing of Buddhist Shaolin; historians read it partly as a political statement (see Internal and external). And trul khor, above, is both Ethnic and, in its Buddhist lineages, Buddhist. So if you ask which root a practice belongs to, the honest answer is often “several”. The six roots describe emphases and communities, not separate lineages.

What science says

Label for this section: 📜 Documented history (the classification) · 🟡 Early evidence (research on particular forms, summarised elsewhere).

A classification is not something a study can test. Research looks at particular forms, such as Baduanjin or Liu Zi Jue, usually in their modern standard versions, not at “Medical” or “Daoist” Qigong as such; we found no study that compares the roots. For what research on specific forms shows, see Qigong and tai chi: what systematic reviews say; for how to weigh such studies, see Study types explained: from anecdote to meta-analysis. Our Reading the Evidence article Spotting a misleading health headline looks at how health claims are reported. If you have a health condition, please start with Who should be careful with breathing practices.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: 📜 Documented history (the rebuttals) · 🔵 Tradition only (the claims).

“Qigong has always come in five (or six) schools.” The practices are old; the umbrella word and the neat five- or six-way maps, including the six roots I use here, are modern [1–4, 13]. Palmer’s pre-1949 list names monastic, medical, literati and sectarian circles [1], and Otehode and Penny name four sources for 1950s Qigong therapy [2].

“Medical Qigong is the scientifically proven root.” “Medical” describes a history and a setting, not a result. Old medical texts state traditional beliefs, and the 1950s clinic reports were not controlled trials (see The making of modern Qigong).

“Internal arts are Daoist, external arts are Buddhist.” That contrast goes back to one epitaph that historians read partly as political [9]; see Internal and external.

“Every practice belongs to exactly one root.” Most grow from several, as Yijinjing, Baduanjin and Liu Zi Jue show.

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

Label for this section: 📜 Documented history (where Liu Zi Jue comes from) · 🔵 Tradition only (traditional theory).

Liu Zi Jue shows how the roots cross. Its earliest surviving description is in the Yǎngxìng yánmìng lù (养性延命录), a text traditionally attributed to Tao Hongjing (died 536), a leading Daoist scholar who was also a physician. Zhiyi’s Buddhist manual reports that some teachers worked with six breaths [10]. The Chinese Medical Qigong textbook includes Liu Zi Jue among its forms [3], and the best-known version of Liu Zi Jue today is a Health Qigong sport form from 2003. Our article Liu Zi Jue: where the Six Healing Sounds come from follows that history. The organ pairings of the sounds are traditional theory, not anatomy.

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, wújí, “without limit”), for those who are able to stand comfortably. Neidan is not part of my Immersions; we use neigong and visualisation.

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. No study has tested it, and we make no claims about its effects. Where we use music, tuning forks or particular tones in sessions, these are aesthetic choices and an invitation to listen closely, not health claims.

Where this journey goes next. Planned articles in this series:

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Sources

  1. Palmer DA, 2005. Qigong. In Davis E (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture. London: Routledge. Pre-publication version: https://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/194528/2/Content.pdf ; see also Palmer DA, 2007, Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 9780231140669.
  2. Otehode U, Penny B, 2016. Qigong therapy in 1950s China. East Asian History 40. https://eah.anu.edu.au/40/Otehode-and-Penny/index.html
  3. Liu Tianjun 刘天君, Zhang Wenchun 章文春 (eds), 2016. 中医气功学 Zhongyi qigong xue (Chinese medical Qigong). Beijing: China Press of Traditional Chinese Medicine (中国中医药出版社). ISBN 9787513233910. Table of contents read on the WeChat Read (微信读书) book page, accessed 21 October 2026. https://weread.qq.com/web/bookDetail/ac132f0072496cdeac1a624
  4. Liu Tianjun (editor-in-chief), Chen KW (associate editor-in-chief), 2010. Chinese Medical Qigong. London and Philadelphia: Singing Dragon. ISBN 9781848190238. Publisher page: https://us.singingdragon.com/products/chinese-medical-qigong-1 ; table of contents (sections 1.3 and 2.1–2.2): https://www.qigonginstitute.org/docs/Introduction_to_Chinese_Medical_Qigong.pdf
  5. Palmer DA, 2007. Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231140669. Chapter 3, “The Grandmasters”, survey table of masters’ claimed traditional initiation (p. 93 according to [6]; we have not checked the page ourselves). https://cup.columbia.edu/book/qigong-fever/9780231140669
  6. Judkins B, 2013. David Palmer on writing better martial arts history and understanding the sources of “Qi Cultivation” in modern Chinese popular culture. Kung Fu Tea (blog), 15 March 2013, accessed 21 October 2026. https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2013/03/15/david-palmer-on-writing-better-martial-arts-history-and-understanding-the-sources-of-qi-cultivation-in-modern-chinese-popular-culture/
  7. Cohen KS. Qigong FAQs. Qigong Healing (author’s website), accessed 21 October 2026. https://www.qigonghealing.com/qigong-faqs
  8. Kohn L, 2008. Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/chinese-healing-exercises-the-tradition-of-daoyin/
  9. Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲. 王征南墓志铭 Wang Zhengnan muzhi ming (Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan). Chinese text, Wikisource edition (from 黄梨洲文集, juan 4), accessed 21 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/王征南墓誌銘
  10. Zhiyi 智顗. 修习止观坐禅法要 Xiuxi zhiguan zuochan fayao, chapters 4, 调和 (adjusting body, breath and mind), and 9, 治病 (on illness; used here only for its mention of six breaths). Chinese text, Wikisource edition (from the Taishō canon), accessed 21 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/修習止觀坐禪法要
  11. 孟子 Mengzi, 公孙丑上 Gongsun Chou I (2A2). Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 21 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/孟子/公孫丑上
  12. 朱子语类 Zhuzi yulei, juan 116. Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 21 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/朱子語類/116
  13. Lin Zhongpeng 林中鹏, Lin Hai 林海, 2019. 神形之际：百年气功研究鸟瞰（1912–2011） Shen xing zhi ji: bainian qigong yanjiu niaokan (A century of Qigong research, 1912–2011). Shanghai: Shanghai Scientific and Technical Publishers (上海科学技术出版社). ISBN 9787547838914. Section 功法宗脉 (schools of practice), read in the online edition on the Zhangyue (掌阅) reader, accessed 23 October 2026. https://m.zhangyue.com/readbook/12132767/8.html
  14. Chaoul MA, 2007. Magical movement (’Phrul ’Khor): ancient Tibetan yogic practices from the Bon religion and their migration into contemporary medical settings. Asian Medicine 3(1): 130–155. https://doi.org/10.1163/157342107X207245
  15. Yu E, Amri H, 2016. China’s other medical systems: recognizing Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian traditional medicines. Global Advances in Health and Medicine 5(1): 79–86. https://doi.org/10.7453/gahmj.2015.116 (PMID 26937317)
  16. Wu Xide 吴希德, 1997. 浅谈蒙医赫依与气功的关系 (On the relationship between heyi in Mongolian medicine and Qigong). 中国民族医药杂志 Journal of Medicine and Pharmacy of Chinese Minorities 1997 (S1): 14–15. Bibliographic record: http://dianda.cqvip.com/Qikan/Article/Detail?id=1004639883

Source quality note: [3] and [4] are a Chinese university textbook and the English translation of an earlier edition; we read their tables of contents only, which is enough for how they sort Qigong but not for anything they say inside each section. [1], [2], [5] and [8] are scholarly works by historians: [2] was read in full online; [1] in a pre-publication version; for [5] we rely on the survey table as reproduced in [6], a blog by a martial-arts historian, and have not checked Palmer’s page ourselves; for [8] we read the publisher’s page only and use it for Kohn’s general view of daoyin, which our Daoyin article also cites. [7] is a teacher’s own website, used only for how he groups Qigong. [9]–[12] are primary Chinese texts read in Wikisource editions; the translations are our own working translations or follow our earlier articles. [13] is a book by Chinese Qigong researchers, read in one section of an online edition and used only for how Chinese authors sort Qigong and for their examples of crossings. [14] is a peer-reviewed article by a scholar of Tibetan religion, used only for the history and aims of trul khor, not for the pilot study it also reports. [15] is a peer-reviewed review, used only for the background of the three minority medical systems. [16] is a short article in a Chinese journal of minority medicine; we read its bibliographic record only and use it only to show that the question has been discussed. Everything else in this article rests on the linked articles of our Qigong and neigong series and their sources.

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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