The Eight Sections of Brocade also happens to be one of the oldest Qigongs in Chinese history.  It is first mentioned by name in the 12th century Stories Heard by Yijian 夷堅志, a collection of supernatural tales from the Song dynasty.  Descriptions of the physical movements of the Eight Brocades, as well as their medical applications, show up in the Daoist encyclopedia, Pivot of the Way 道樞 (in the chapter 众妙篇), also from the 12th century.  

But if we broaden our scope a bit, we can find the precise movements we learned as the Standing Eight Brocades as early as the sixth century, in Cultivating Spirit and Extending Vitality Record 養性延命錄 written by the father of Highest Clarity Daoism 上清道, Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (456–536 CE).  Going back even further, thanks to recent archeological discoveries in China, we can see that the Eight Brocade exercises, though probably by a different name, were being practiced as far back as the second century BCE as shown by some of the characters from the Diagram of Leading and Pulling Daoyin Tu 导引图 (ca. 168 BCE).

Cibot’s article included a theoretical rundown of the Daoist body and the function of the movements, i.e. the restoration of proper circulation of energy.  He even mentions that these exercises are performed to prepare the body for the alchemical process. The paper was widely circulated in Europe, and in the history of physiotherapy has come to be regarded as a sort of source document due to its influence on Pehr Henrik Ling (1766-1839), the father of Swedish Gymnastics.

As told in a number of recent books, but probably most clearly by Mark Singleton in his 2010 Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, Ling’s gymnastics was hugely influential in the formation of contemporary postural Yoga.  To make a long and very interesting story short, European physical cultivation methods as taught in India in anglicized schools and compulsory military service under British colonialism fused with traditional Indian Yogic disciplines throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to form the contemporary, āsana-oriented practice we know as Yoga today.  So we can trace a pretty unambiguous thread here where the Eight Brocades seep into Modern European physical culture as it modernizes and internationalizes, and through it into modern, transnational, therapeutic Yoga.

In China the story in the 20th century is altogether different.  For most of the century the very things Cibot wrote about in his article were taken as national embarrassments following the fusion of patriotism, magic, and martial arts that fueled the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901).  Following several decades wherein traditional Chinese physical cultivation methods were reined in, standardized, and secularized through bodies like the Jingwu Athletic Association 精武体育会 and Guoshu institute 国术馆, with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, Qigong practice, though not banned, was certainly discouraged.  As with Daoism generally, everything changed after 1979, which for Qigong marked the beginning of a global explosion. The period is today known as Qigong Fever 气功热. Things got a little out of hand and since I don’t want my website to be banned in China, I’ll refrain from writing about certain things in this context. But the CCP put the kibosh on the whole Qigong fever thing at the end of the 90’s.  In 2000 they established the nationalized Qigong Administration Centre which deems only four forms of Qigong as legitimate: The Six-Character Formula 六字诀, Five Animals Frolics 五禽戏, the Buddhist Muscles and Tendons Training 易筋经, and the Eight Brocades 八段锦.