The chi kung system that BK Frantzis created is organized as a loop of 5 Elements, each set corresponds to Water, Fire, Wood, Metal or Earth. There are a lot of different reasons for this, and aspects to it. It's nice though because it makes it easy to see each part in relation to the others.
He took all the chi kung he learned from a lot of study and developed these five sets. The first set Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body is primarily based on exercises he learned from his first teacher Wang Shu Jin in Taiwan. Master Wang liked to stand a lot, so OEG begins with standing and relaxing as its basis. This is the healing aspect, designed to release stuck energy and clenched muscles in a natural way.
The next part of Opening the Energy Gates is Cloud Hands, which is a basic exercise from Wang's class. Taking the same ideas of dropping awareness and feeling "sung" in the body, you begin to work on twisting the muscles and shifting your weight. This is to gently wake up the body, engage the fascia and help the body become unified, connecting the legs and arms by way of the trunk and waist. All the most important alignments of the body are taught there.
Also part of the set are the Three Swings that Master Wang used to teach. These are good for loosening up the body, and begins to teach you about the Three Burners of the body. This is where you develop the smooth, soft and heavy slapping and striking power of internal martial arts. By the time you complete this set you have created whole body power, the ability to put your whole body weight behind a relaxed and casual slap.
The final piece is the Spine Stretch. Every one of the five sets in this system has a different aspect of spine chi kung. Spine Stretch is the first and begins the process of getting your mind into each of the vertebrae, and helping create a miniscule space between each one to improve spine health. The other sets go much further and deeper into working with the spine.
The five sets replicated BK Frantzis's journey in China. The first set comes from his first teacher Wang Shu Jin. Each of the other sets are composed of knowledge from one or more of his other teachers. The final set is Gods Playing in the Clouds, and was the primary practice of his final teacher Liu Hung Chieh in Beijing.
Overall I think it's an elegant and deep system, and well thought out. Obviously Kumar would be able to explain it way better than me, but I've gotten some of his ideas over the years. The five sets recapitulate his experience of learning chi kung, and in the same sense they form the pathway for his students to follow.
The first set is Opening the Energy Gates. Even the name is a pun on the Chinese idea of the teacher opening the gate for the student to enter. This is the public set, taught for the outdoor students and for the general public to get a good start on the thing. Not that the other stuff is better somehow, but if you were to learn just one set, this would be the one. It's for everyone. It can be done without (much) supervision pretty safely and gives good benefits. It's the most "external" of the sets.
The first set is all about alignments, knee safety, engaging the fascia as a whole, getting acquainted with the kwa and the spine. And on a energy level, the felt sense of your mind dropping through your body, actively letting go of tension. Again, this is to set the stage, to clear away the accumulated junk, to make a blank canvass upon which to work.
Once you have things cleared up, the actual training can begin. Most people don't need to go any further, this first set can give you everything you needed, unless you wish to achieve more in the realm of chi gung.
To take the next step, you learn the second set Spiraling Energy Body. This is the initiation into the indoor work, metaphorically. You can't do the later sets until you've activated your energy body with this second set. In the old days this is where the teacher would empower you to be a member of the family and participate in all the more intense work. You'd become a disciple, bow to the altar, hit your head on the floor, give the teacher a gold brick etc.
As a side note, Kumar doesn't take disciples, and teaches his whole system openly to just about anyone. So my metaphor here about "indoor" is my words, not his. He teaches everyone as if they are indoor students. Anyways, Spiraling Energy Body is where you go through each of the energy gates and fill them with energy. In a sense you've gotten your car built with the first set, now you fill it with oil and gas and rev the engine. One by one you've cleared the energy gates, now one by one you activate them with your mind. The energy of the earth is pulled up through the body centimeter by centimeter, always tempered by the dissolving that has been built into the system.
Spiraling Energy Body is the second set because it is essential to moving on to the rest of the system. The first set teaches the downward flow of energy. The second set brings the energy up, through every energy gate one by one, and filling each of the Tan Tians with your awareness.
The first set uses one basic standing posture to dissolve all your tension. Spiraling Energy Body adds 200 more postures, and each one is crafted to help build up the energy pathways in your body. Normally the teacher assigns specific postures to each student on a prescriptive basis so that they work on the pathways that need the most help. No one bothers to learn all 200 unless you were going to be a teacher.
This second set represents the Fire element, energy rising, filling and jumping from place to place. It can be dangerous if you try to rush it all up to your head at once, therefore it's essential to get the Water element in place first as a safety mechanism.
There is a HUGE amount that could go into this discussion, but obviously it's best talked about in person. As I said before, Kumar took all the stuff he learned over the years and put it into the sets in a logical grouping. Much in Spiraling Energy Body comes from the Taoist training he did in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1970's.
The third set is Marriage of Heaven and Earth where you work with the upward and downward flow of energy simultaneously. This is the set that represents the Wood element, living growing pulsing, opening & closing, the power of life between heaven above and earth below. That's a whole different practice and can't be fully experienced without the grounding of the first two sets.
Another aspect of the training is that Opening the Energy Gates contains all the basis for healing, Heaven and Earth contains the fulfillment of martial power, and Gods in the Clouds at the end takes you toward spirituality. It gets a lot more convoluted and interconnected than that, but these are just a few words on how Kumar's chi kung system is constructed.
Note that he has a list of 16 Nei Gung skills, that's the ultimate aim of the 5 sets, and each set specializes in some of those nei gung skills. The five sets were designed as a logical way to develop the 16 nei gung elements. Once you complete the 5 sets, you move on to the internal martial arts where you combine, mix and match the nei gung skills at full speed and under pressure.
Anyways, just putting some of these ideas out there, hope you find it interesting!
In terms of the spine chi gung, that's one of Kumar's favorite topics. One reason being he's had spine injuries and wanted to work toward healing them. Also because that's the center of your nervous system and the spine has to be fully awakened and enlivened to then move on to working with the brain. The first set has Spine Stretch, where you dissolve each vertebrae. The second set teaches you to pull energy up and into each vertebrae, and to spiral the chi between each one. The third set is all about pulsing the space between the vertebrae.
The fourth set is called Bend the Bow, Shoot the Arrow and is entirely focused on spine chi gung. At this point you begin to bend the spine in the shape of a "C", stretching the spine from the top of the skull to the tail bone. By now you've strengthened and opened the spine, so you can begin to work on moving each vertebrae, and getting in touch with the movement of the dura and spinal cord. This type of work is not to be trifled with, which is why each previous set builds on the last so you have a solid sense of being able to feel every nuance within your spine. If you try too hard or too soon you can crank it out of whack.
The fourth set Bend the Bow is also prescriptive, there are many many hand postures used to connect your arms to your spine and manipulate your spine with the pressure of pumping your arms. If one vertebrae needs to be moved, you'll use a specific posture and pump to being gently moving it to it's more natural position.
Eventually you can learn to move each vertebra individually and I've seen and felt people do it with more or less precision. This set can get extremely complex as you move from a general pumping of the spine and associated tissues to insanely precise workings of individual nerve clusters and vertebrae. If the early sets are more like fitness and overall health, this one is more like spine surgery, and requires a comparable level of training if you want to take it to the maximum. It's a deep well of knowledge, that can only be found through your own experimentation and experience. The set gives you the tools to explore, but you can only find the answers through your own efforts, which takes a lot of concentration and care so that you don't hurt yourself by overdoing it. Bend the Bow can be exhausting for this reason. Bend the Bow relates to the Metal element, which emphasizes the Spine and lungs, as this is where Reverse breathing is emphasized along with all the most advances spine training.
In terms of Kumar's sources for the sets, the third set Heaven and Earth is a generic chi kung form that he said he'd learned many times from many sources with many different variations. He made his the most basic and simple form, including Macrocosmic and Microcosmic orbit. The outer shape I suspect is a combination of many forms he learned and the inner nei gung work comes from the Taoists in Hong Kong and China he learned from as well as his chi gung tui na training there and in Beijing. Like I said, it's the most generic of the sets and a real combination of influences from all the different training he did.
The fourth set is Bend the Bow, and I think a lot of that comes from one of his chi gung tui na teachers in Taiwan, Huang Hsi I, who he profiles in his book. Ultimately he gives credit to his last teacher Liu Hung Chieh as the one who helped him put it all together and went through everything with him start to finish and make it all into one big whole. The final set is Liu's personal set that he learned at a monastery in Sichuan province, called Gods Playing in the Clouds. That's where Liu also learned Taoist circle walking which may be one of the influences that led Dong Hai Chuan to creating Ba Gua Zhang.
In Kumar's system, each of the sets also corresponds to the internal martial arts: Opening the Energy Gates emphasizes the softness and relaxed power of Tai Chi. Heaven & Earth teaches the opening and closing, explosive and growing strength of Hsing-I. Gods Playing in the Clouds focuses on the twisting, spiraling, winding movements that support Ba Gua.
In the long run all the 16 nei gung skills are direction signs to try and connect to the Central Channel, the deepest of the energy channels that connects to the primordial life giving energy of the cosmos itself. This requires awakening to the "Xin" called the HeartMind in Buddhism and Taoism, the deeper source of all thought and intention before it is formed. These nei gung skills help you get deeper into your body and mind, and eventually they will help trigger awareness of the Xin and you can return to where you began. That's way over my ability at this point but it's a cool concept and worth investigating!
