Chang Naizhou (苌乃周). Chang’s mid 1700s training manual is a blend of traditional Taoist meditation, alchemy, and martial arts, which Professor Douglas Wile describes as a “fully mature synthesis of martial arts with military strategy, medicine and meditation.”
The Chang manuscript details how to train one’s internal energy for martial arts purposes. It includes what Wile calls a heterodox description of the way qi responds to body movement (i.e., moving forward when the body arches backward, and reserved when moving forward [ii]), along with a description of how to “issue qi;” a three-step process of concentrating, withdrawing, and then releasing qi, training the qi by combining softness with hardness, and