Quiet sitting.

Three things to regulate

The tradition organises sitting around three adjustments, taken in order and returned to endlessly: regulating the body 調身, regulating the breath 調息, and regulating the heart-mind 調心.

The body comes first because it is the part you can actually check. Seat, pelvis, spine, the line of the head, the hands. The breath is left alone at first and simply watched; it lengthens on its own once the body stops interfering with it. The heart-mind is last, not because it matters least but because it is the one that will not be forced.

The Yinshizi method 因是子

Jiang Weiqiao's early twentieth-century method gives us a practical way in. It was unusual in its time for holding no sectarian prejudice — combining Daoist circulation with the Buddhist practice of calming and insight 止觀 — and it remains one of the clearest introductory frameworks available. We use it for exactly that: as an entry, not as the whole of the tradition.

Guarding the One 守一

An old practice, older than most of what surrounds it: holding attention on a single point or a single unity rather than letting it disperse. What is guarded, and how, is taught in context rather than described in the abstract — a great deal depends on what the practitioner is actually able to feel at the time.

Sitting-in-forgetfulness 坐忘

From the Zhuangzi. Not forgetfulness in the ordinary sense, and not something to be attempted directly on a first sitting. It is approached late, on a foundation, and discussed honestly — including the fact that most descriptions of it, ours included, are describing the outside of something.

How it is taught

In the Daoist session, sitting comes after a short standing or moving warm-up — most often the Eight Seated Brocades 坐式八段錦, which end with the practitioner settled and the breath already quiet — and before the text. Sittings are short to begin with. Nobody is examined, nobody is asked to report experiences, and no particular result is expected.