Sources and editions

The editions we work from

The seated routine taught on this site is the official Health Qigong Twelve-Section Brocade. It exists in one Chinese original and two English editions, and the two English editions are translations of the same Chinese text rather than different routines.

What is inside the official edition

The book is shorter than its subject suggests — 99 pages — and its structure is the same in every edition. Knowing the shape of it tells you both where the useful material is and where the unusable material is.

• Chapter I — Origins and development: where the routine comes from and how it has been handed down
• Chapter II — Characteristics: what distinguishes it, in the traditional vocabulary of quiet and movement, form and spirit
• Chapter III — Practice tips: hand and body form; breathing and intention; basic postures. This is the chapter that governs how the movements are actually performed
• Chapter IV, Section I — Movement names: the list of twelve, with the preparation and closing
• Chapter IV, Section II — The movement descriptions: illustrated step-by-step instructions, points for attention, and a section on functions and effects
• Appendix — Acupuncture point diagrams

What we take from it

• The order of the twelve forms, and the preparation and closing that bracket them
• The official English movement titles, quoted verbatim so you can check them against your copy
• The technical points from Chapter III and the points for attention attached to each movement
• The hand and body forms, and the guidance on breathing and intention
• The historical account of where the routine comes from, checked against the Ming source text

What we deliberately do not reproduce

Two parts of the official material do not appear on this site. The first is the section on functions and effects attached to each movement. It describes what each movement is said to do for specific organs and conditions, and reproducing it would mean publishing health claims that this site does not make. The second is the same material in the movement titles: as noted on our editorial policy page, two of the official English titles for the standing Baduanjin routine contain a medical claim inside the title itself.

We also do not reproduce the section on qi and meridian theory as explanation. It is part of the traditional framing and we describe it as such, but we do not present it as mechanism.

None of this is a criticism of the book. It is written for a different context — teaching material for a national programme — and the sections we leave out are the ones a general English-language audience would read as medical advice.

The official edition of the standing eight

The standing routine taught on this site also has an official English edition: Chinese Health Qigong — Ba Duan Jin, published by Foreign Languages Press (ISBN 9787119047812, about 101 pages, with a DVD). It comes from the same series as the Twelve-Section Brocade edition, with the same four-chapter structure.

One passage in the publisher's own description of that book is worth quoting, because it settles a question this site gets asked. It records that the eight-section brocade is practised in two ways, standing and sitting, and that the standing style was taken as the basis for the official compilation because it is easier and better known. In other words, the seated practice is not a modern invention, and not an adaptation made for people who cannot stand. It belongs to the tradition, is acknowledged in the official material, and was left out of the standard routine by choice.

That is the reason this site gives the seated form its own pages rather than presenting it as a fallback. It is also why the Twelve-Section Brocade pages here start from a routine that is already seated, rather than from a standing one with the standing removed.

Buying the official editions

All four editions are in print and are copyrighted publications. This site does not reproduce them, in whole or in part, and has no connection with their publishers or with the Chinese Health Qigong Association. If you want the official reference, buy a copy — the ISBNs are at the top of this page, and any bookshop can order from those.

What we publish is our own writing: descriptions of the movements in our own words, our own safety notes, and the chair adaptations, which do not appear in the official books at all. Where we quote an official movement title or a fact from the source text, we say so and attribute it to the edition it came from.

How to check our work

Each form of the Twelve-Section Brocade on this site carries the official English title from the published edition. If you have the book, you can put the two side by side: the title, the movement order and the technical points should all match. If they do not, tell us — corrections from people working from the printed source are the most useful input this site gets.

For the standing eight, the headings here use short descriptive names rather than the official titles, but the sequence is the official sequence, so you can check it against the contents list of the official edition.

Note that the site uses short descriptive names for headings, because the official titles are long and were written as literal translations. The official title is always given alongside, in the banner at the top of each movement page and in the quick-facts card.