What is neigong? An introduction

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

In short

• What this is: Neigong (内功, traditional 內功, nèigōng) means “internal work” or “internal skill”. This article explains where the word comes from, which older practices it draws on, and the three main ways it is used today: in the “internal” martial arts, in connection with Daoist inner alchemy (neidan), and as a broad name for cultivating breath, posture and attention from the inside. It opens our neigong series.
• What the evidence says: The history can be traced in surviving texts: breathing and stretching practices (daoyin) are documented from the 2nd century BCE, inner alchemy from the 8th century CE, and the contrast between “internal” and “external” martial arts from 1669. The concepts themselves, such as qi, the dantians and the triple burner, are traditional ideas, not findings of science.
• What it means for your practice: “Neigong” is not one fixed method with one origin. Knowing the different strands helps you understand what a teacher means by the word, and keeps claims about it honest.

What tradition says

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

The word. Nei (内) means inside or inner; gong (功) means work, effort or skill achieved through practice. Taiwan’s official Mandarin dictionary defines 内功 as a term of martial artists: skill cultivated inside the body that does not show outwardly, trained by moving qi to exert strength. Its counterpart 外功 (wàigōng, “external work”) is defined as the visible side of boxing: the techniques of hands, eyes, body and steps, and of shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips and knees [1]. Today the word is also used much more broadly, for practices that cultivate breath, posture and attention from the inside, as our article on the history of Liu Zi Jue notes.

Older roots: guiding and stretching. The practices neigong draws on are much older than the word. The Zhuangzi, a Daoist classic compiled from writings of the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE, names them in chapter 15, one of the “Outer Chapters” that are generally thought to be later than Zhuangzi himself [2, 3]. In our translation: “Blowing and puffing, breathing out and breathing in, expelling the old and taking in the new, bear-hangings and bird-stretchings: all this is simply for long life. This is what the practitioners of daoyin, those who nourish the body, delight in” [2]. The passage is not a recommendation: it goes on to say that the sage reaches long life without such exercises [2]. Two of its terms became lasting names. Daoyin (导引, traditional 導引, dǎoyǐn, “guiding and pulling”) is a Daoist method of nourishing life, and tuna (吐纳, 吐納, tǔnà), from “expelling the old and taking in the new”, is a Daoist breathing practice of breathing out the stale and breathing in the fresh [1]. The first word in the passage, chui (吹, “blowing”), is also one of the six sounds of Liu Zi Jue.

The earliest pictures. A silk chart found in 1973 in tomb 3 at Mawangdui (Changsha, Hunan), a tomb sealed in 168 BCE, shows 44 figures doing such exercises. Its title, Daoyin tu (导引图, “Daoyin chart”), was given by modern editors. Several captions survive, including a “bear” exercise and one translated as “looking up while exhaling” [4]. A bamboo manuscript on stretching, the Yinshu (引书, “Book on Stretching”), from a tomb at Zhangjiashan sealed in 186 BCE, shares several exercises with the chart [4]. The historian Livia Kohn traces daoyin from these early medical manuscripts of the Han dynasty to modern Qigong, and calls it the forerunner of Qigong [5].

Breath practices. Several old terms describe working with the breath. Lianqi (炼气, traditional 鍊氣, liànqì, “refining qi”) is defined as a method by which practitioners of the Way cultivate breathing in search of long life; fuqi (服气, 服氣, fúqì, “ingesting qi”) as a Daoist method of self-cultivation; and taixi (胎息, tāixī, “embryonic breathing”) as a Daoist art of breathing as if in the womb, without using mouth or nose [1]. The earliest surviving description of the six sounds appears in the Yangxing yanming lu, in a chapter on “ingesting qi” (服氣療病篇), as our Liu Zi Jue history article explains.

The dantians. Label: Tradition only. Dantian (丹田, dāntián, “elixir field”) is a central idea in much neigong. The Baopuzi by Ge Hong (283–343) [6] places “the One” in three locations: the lower dantian 2 cun 4 fen below the navel; the middle dantian “below the heart”, in the “Crimson Palace”; and, going inward from between the eyebrows, the “Hall of Light” at one cun, the “Cavern Chamber” at two cun and the upper dantian at three cun [7]. So in this source the upper dantian lies behind the point between the eyebrows, inside the head, and the middle one below the heart. The term dantian itself first appears in two sources from 165 CE, and later authors differ: some place the middle field at the centre of the chest, others between the heart and the navel, and the lower field is put anywhere from 1.3 to 3.6 cun below or behind the navel [16]. A modern dictionary places the dantian, in the singular, 1.5 or 3 cun below the navel [1]. Sources differ in detail, and a cun is a traditional body-relative measure, not a fixed length.

Inner alchemy (neidan). Chinese alchemy has two branches. External alchemy, waidan (外丹, wàidān), compounded elixirs by heating natural substances in a crucible. Internal alchemy, neidan (内丹, 內丹, nèidān), borrows much of that vocabulary but aims to produce the elixir within the practitioner’s own person [6]. A dictionary definition puts it this way: the body serves as the cauldron, essence and qi are the ingredients, and spirit moves them [1]. According to the scholar Fabrizio Pregadio, the earliest traces of neidan in the surviving literature are in the works of Tao Zhi, who lived in the second half of the 8th century. The first clearly identifiable neidan tradition, named Zhong-Lü, developed in the 9th to 10th centuries. The Wuzhen pian (“Awakening to Reality”), written by Zhang Boduan (987?–1082) around 1075, became the main text of what was later called the Southern Lineage, and the Northern Lineage is the core of the Quanzhen school founded by Wang Chongyang (Wang Zhe, 1113–1170) [6]. The classical three-stage practice, refining essence (jing), breath or qi (qi) and spirit (shen), was developed on the basis of the Wuzhen pian and the Southern Lineage’s teachings [6]. Neidan is a religious path aimed at returning to the Dao, not a fitness method.

Martial “internal” arts. The contrast between internal and external fighting arts first appears in an epitaph by the scholar Huang Zongxi for the boxer Wang Zhengnan, who died in 1669 [8, 9]. Huang writes that Shaolin is famous for its boxing but is mainly about striking people, whereas the so-called “internal school” (内家, 內家, nèijiā) “overcomes movement with stillness”, “and so Shaolin was called the external school” [8]. The epitaph traces the internal school to Zhang Sanfeng, a Daoist alchemist of Wudang in the Song dynasty, who learned boxing from a god in a dream [8]. That is a legend, recorded about five centuries after the time it describes. Some historians read the epitaph’s contrast of a native Daoist tradition with “foreign” Buddhist Shaolin as political, not technical [9]. Today, taijiquan, xingyiquan and baguazhang are usually grouped as the internal martial arts. That grouping goes back at least to the martial artist Sun Lutang, who from 1915 onwards published a book on each of the three arts and, in the preface to a later book (dated 1923, published 1924), called them the three branches of the internal boxing arts [9, 18]. In these arts, neigong refers to internal training that develops relaxed, coordinated strength.

Health manuals: internal and external side by side. Label: Tradition only (documented history; secondary source). The words were also used outside fighting. An illustrated manual titled Neigong tushuo (内功图说, “Illustrated explanation of internal work”) was printed in 1881 by Wang Zuyuan. According to a modern account, its content is identical to an earlier manual, the Weisheng yaoshu, printed by Pan Wei in 1858; Wang gave the book back what he regarded as its original title. It includes the “twelve-section brocade” and a “formula for external exercises, section by section” (分行外功诀) [10]. Internal and external work could sit in the same book.

The modern word Qigong. Qigong (气功, qìgōng) as an umbrella term is younger still. The word appears in a handful of earlier books, but rarely and without its modern meaning. According to the historian David Palmer, the Party cadre Liu Guizhen and his colleagues chose the name Qigong for the breathing methods they developed in southern Hebei at the end of the 1940s, and it became a general term only after 1949 [17]. In the 1950s, “Qigong therapy” became a generic name for two practices, neiyanggong (内养功, “inner nourishing work”) and qiangzhuanggong (“strengthening work”), taught in medical institutions such as the Tangshan Qigong Sanatorium, founded in 1954 [11]. The 2003 “Health Qigong” sets, including the standard form of Liu Zi Jue, came later, as our article on the history of Liu Zi Jue explains. They were compiled by the Health Qigong Management Center [19, 20], founded in 2001 [21]; the Chinese Health Qigong Association was founded in 2004 [19], and many English-language sources credit the form to it [22].

Three meanings, overlapping. Put together, “neigong” today usually means one of three things: the internal training of the martial arts; the breath, posture and attention work that prepares for or accompanies Daoist inner alchemy; or, more loosely, any practice that works “from the inside”. The boundaries between them, and between neigong and Qigong, differ from school to school.

What science says

Label for this section: Early evidence (Qigong research) · Tradition only (qi, dantian, triple burner).

Neigong as such has hardly been studied scientifically. Trials study specific practices, such as tai chi or Liu Zi Jue, and measure outcomes such as walking distance, breathlessness or blood pressure. Clinical research on Liu Zi Jue is mostly small trials in people with chronic lung disease, and the review authors point to methodological weaknesses [12]. We summarise this research in “Qigong and tai chi: what systematic reviews say”.

Qi, the dantians and the triple burner are traditional concepts. Research neither confirms nor refutes them, and they are probably not testable as stated. That is no reason to dismiss them: they are the language in which the tradition describes its own practice.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: Speculative.

• “An unbroken secret tradition thousands of years old.” Breathing and stretching practices are documented from the 2nd century BCE [4], inner alchemy from the 8th century CE [6] and the internal-external distinction in martial arts from 1669 [8]. These are long and real histories, but they are several histories, not one unbroken line.
• “Neigong gives you supernatural powers.” Martial arts novels and films often show neigong letting people fight without contact, fly, or resist weapons. That is fiction.
• “Neigong, neidan and Qigong are the same thing.” They overlap, but neidan is a religious path of inner alchemy, martial neigong is training for fighting arts, and “Qigong” is a 20th-century umbrella term [1, 6, 11].
• “Zhang Sanfeng invented the internal arts.” The earliest account of this is a legend in a 17th-century epitaph [8].

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

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

Liu Zi Jue sits where these strands meet. It is a breathing method in the daoyin tradition, first recorded in a chapter on “ingesting qi”, taught today as Qigong, and often described by practitioners as neigong because it works with breath and attention from the inside. Our article on the history of Liu Zi Jue follows how its sounds and their organ pairings changed over the centuries.

The sixth sound, xi, and the triple burner. In the 2003 standard form, xi (嘻) goes with the triple burner, sanjiao (三焦, sānjiāo), and Zhang Mingliang and Ma Ling describe the triple burner as a division of the body by function [13]. In Chinese medicine the triple burner is one of the six fu organs (六腑), together with the stomach, gallbladder, large intestine, small intestine and bladder [1]. The Nanjing (“Classic of Difficult Issues”) says twice, in difficulties 25 and 38, that it “has a name but no form” (有名而無形) [14]. The Lingshu, part of the Huangdi neijing, describes the three burners by their pathways in chapter 18: the upper burner rises from the upper opening of the stomach, passes through the diaphragm and spreads in the chest; the middle burner, too, starts at the stomach; the lower burner branches off at the intestines and pours into the bladder. It sums them up as “the upper burner is like mist, the middle burner like steeping liquid, the lower burner like a drainage ditch” [15]. Put simply, and following a modern dictionary: the upper burner is the region above the diaphragm (the chest), the middle burner lies below the diaphragm and above the navel (the upper abdomen), and the lower burner runs from below the navel into the pelvis (the lower abdomen) [1].

Three burners and three dantians are different ideas. Classically, the three burners are a concept of Chinese medicine about how the body takes in, transforms and passes on food, fluids and qi [15]. The three dantians come from Daoist meditation and alchemy: in the Baopuzi they lie below the navel, below the heart and inside the head behind the point between the eyebrows [7]; other authors put the middle one at the centre of the chest [16]. The two sets of three overlap roughly in height, but the classical texts do not equate them. Some teachers today connect them in practice; that is a modern teaching choice, not the classical understanding.

How I practise the sounds. In my practice, all six sounds are breathed out through the mouth. They are “voiced through the breath”, not sung. I share xi as the sound of the triple burner and of the whole body, as the 2003 standard form does. The classical texts give the triple burner no emotion. I work with xi as a movement “from fragmented to harmony”, which is my own reading from practice (🔵 Tradition only · 🟣 Lived experience). Over time, my sessions work towards a silent exhalation; the 2003 standard form likewise lets beginners voice the sounds and aims in the end at silent exhalation, as our Liu Zi Jue history article explains. This describes how I share the sounds, not a rule of the classical texts.

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. If you want to go deeper into neigong as a martial or Daoist discipline, look for a teacher of that tradition.

Where this journey goes next

This article opens our neigong series. Planned next articles:

• Daoyin: from the Mawangdui chart to modern Qigong
• Breath in the classics: tuna, fuqi, lianqi and embryonic breathing
• The three dantians: what the classical texts say
• The triple burner: “a name but no form”
• Jing, qi and shen: the three treasures of inner alchemy
• Neidan, inner alchemy: an introduction for practitioners
• Internal and external: neijia, waijia and the epitaph of 1669
• Stillness and posture: sitting and standing practice in the internal traditions

Sources

1. Ministry of Education (Taiwan). 重編國語辭典修訂本 (Revised Mandarin Chinese Dictionary), entries 內功, 外功, 導引, 吐納, 鍊氣, 服氣, 胎息, 丹田, 內丹, 外丹, 三焦, 上焦, 中焦, 下焦 and 六腑, read via the open edition at moedict.tw, accessed 18 October 2026. https://www.moedict.tw/
2. Zhuangzi 莊子, chapter 15, 刻意 (Keyi). Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 18 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/莊子/刻意
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4. Komjathy L, 2024. Caption List of the Dǎoyǐn tú 導引圖 (Illustrations of Guided Stretching). Center for Daoist Studies, posted 15 July 2024. https://louiskomjathy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/DaoyintuCaptionList_Komjathy.pdf
5. 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/
6. Pregadio F, 2019. The Way of the Golden Elixir: An Introduction to Taoist Alchemy. 3rd edition. Mountain View: Golden Elixir Press. https://goldenelixir.com/files/The_Way_of_the_Golden_Elixir.pdf
7. Ge Hong 葛洪. 抱朴子內篇 Baopuzi neipian, juan 18, 地真 (Dizhen). Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 18 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/抱朴子/卷18
8. Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲. 王征南墓誌銘 (Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan). Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 18 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/王征南墓誌銘
9. Sun Lutang 孫祿堂 (Sun Fuquan 孫福全). 拳意述真 Quanyi shuzhen, prefaces dated 1923, published 1924. Chinese text with English translation by Paul Brennan, Brennan Translation, 2013, accessed 22 October 2026. https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/the-voices-of-sun-lutangs-teachers/ · 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 reprint, accessed 22 October 2026. http://bgtent.com/naturalcma/henning.html
10. Sheng Keqi 盛克琦, 2022. 王祖源本《内功图说》介绍 (Wang Zuyuan’s edition of the Neigong tushuo). Sohu, 11 December 2022. https://www.sohu.com/a/616170371_121124385 ; library record: CiNii Books, 内功圖説, NCID BA57708427. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA57708427
11. 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
12. Xiao L, Duan H, Li P, Wu W, Shan C, Liu X, 2020. A systematic review and meta-analysis of Liuzijue in stable patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies 20:308. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-020-03104-1
13. Zhang Mingliang, Ma Ling, 2016. 健身气功·六字诀养生撷萃 (Health Qigong Liu Zi Jue: essentials for nourishing life). Health Qigong Management Center, published 11 November 2016. https://www.sport.gov.cn/qgzx/n5407/c775164/content.html
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15. 黃帝內經靈樞 Huangdi neijing Lingshu, chapter 18, 營衛生會. Chinese text, Wikisource edition, accessed 18 October 2026. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/黃帝內經/靈樞第四卷
16. Pregadio F. Cinnabar Fields (Dantian). The Golden Elixir (Taoist Alchemy dictionary), accessed 18 October 2026. https://www.goldenelixir.com/jindan/dantian.html
17. 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.
18. Sun Lutang, 1915. Xing Yi Quan Xue: The Study of Form-Mind Boxing. Translated by Albert Liu, compiled and edited by Dan Miller. Pacific Grove, CA: High View Publications, 1993; reprinted Burbank, CA: Unique Publications, 2000. ISBN 9781883175030. Catalogue record: https://www.librarycat.org/lib/CtrSacredSciences/item/285521556
19. Xinhua, 20 May 2004. 促进健身气功健康发展 中国健身气功协会成立 (Chinese Health Qigong Association founded). Republished by the Health Qigong Management Center, 27 May 2004. https://www.sport.gov.cn/qgzx/n5401/c666481/content.html
20. Health Qigong Management Center, General Administration of Sport of China (ed.), 2003. 健身气功·六字诀 (Health Qigong Liu Zi Jue). Beijing: People’s Sports Publishing House (人民体育出版社). ISBN 9787500924326. Catalogue record: http://www.queshu.com/book/11392322/
21. Lü Shiming 吕实明, 2021. 健身气功·八段锦的编创与推广 (The compilation and promotion of Health Qigong Baduanjin). China Sports Daily, republished by the General Administration of Sport of China, 11 January 2021. https://www.sport.gov.cn/n20001280/n20745751/n20767239/c21422641/content.html
22. Chinese Health Qigong Association, 2021 (earlier edition 2008). Liu Zi Jue: Six Sounds Approach to Qigong Breathing Exercises. London: Singing Dragon. ISBN 9781839971990. Publisher page: https://uk.singingdragon.com/products/liu-zi-jue

Source quality note: [2], [7], [8], [14] and [15] are primary Chinese texts, read in Wikisource editions; the translations are our own working translations. [1] is an official dictionary and gives modern definitions, not historical evidence. [3], [4], [5], [6], [11], [16] and [17] are scholarly sources; [5] is checked through the publisher’s description only, and [17] through its pre-publication version. [9] combines the 1923 prefaces to Sun Lutang’s Quanyi shuzhen, his own and two by others, read in a translator’s bilingual edition, with a short article by the historian Stanley Henning, read in an online reprint; we use it for Sun Lutang’s grouping of the three arts and for the political reading of the 1669 epitaph. [18] is Sun Lutang’s own 1915 book in English translation, checked through a library catalogue record and the publisher’s description only; we have not read the book. [10] is a popular-press summary by a modern author, checked against a library catalogue record; we did not see the 1881 book itself. [13] is published by the Health Qigong Management Center and written by Zhang Mingliang and Ma Ling. [19] is a news agency report and [21] a retrospective republished by the General Administration of Sport; [20] is a catalogue record of the 2003 book, which we have not seen; [22] is checked through the publisher’s page only. [12] is cited only for the state of clinical research.