Five Animal Frolics

五禽戏

The Five Animal Frolics is probably the most common form of Qigong in China. It is attributed to the third-century doctor and medical theorist Huatuo 华佗 (c.140-208 CE), to whom many developments in the Chinese medical tradition are ascribed, from the specifics of acupuncture needling technique to the first use of anesthetic (a cannabis-based decoction called mafeisan 麻沸散), to the development of this here qigong practice. Like the name suggests the Five Animal Frolics is relatively whimsical as you imitate a tiger stretching, a deer scanning the horizon for predators, a bear ambling through the forest gathering berries, a monkey picking (and eating) bananas from a tree, and a crane stretching its legs and wings. We time this one to practice in the winter because it is probably the gentlest Qigong that we learned during our years in China. It is usually classified as a form of medical Qigong, and I’m okay with that, although ours does get a bit weird when you get into it, involving forms of inner coordination where you’re using the deep interior musculature of the abdomen to shift the placement of your internal organs.

Bird Stretching 鸟伸 from a Ming Dynasty rendition of the Five Animal Frolics, the 17th century *Cinnabar Book of Longevity 万寿丹书*.

Deer Stretching from the same text, an exceedingly interesting compilation of health preservation techniques from Huatuo 华佗, Sunsimiao 孙思邈, and Zhangsanfeng 张三丰, among others.

Painting of Huatuo 华佗 gathering herbs. His contributions to herbal medicine were also quite remarkable.

The version of the Five Animal Frolics that we practice actually does not come from Wudang. Though grandmaster Zhong teaches a more complex and interesting version of the practice that has, through him, come to be associated with Wudang, the version we know actually comes from our master’s home village of Yangxin 阳新, a suburb of Wuhan 武汉. This is the form of Five Animal Frolics practiced by the people in his village, and as such is a quite simple, elegant version of the practice whose specific history is hard to trace. But there’s so much richness to the history of this form of qigong in general that I’m okay with only knowing the immediate history of our particular, folksy version of the practice.

Huatuo is a really interesting character whose name comes across as immediately strange-sounding in Chinese as neither of the characters Hua 华 nor Tuo 佗 is common in to use in a name. The sinologist Victor Mair has speculated that it might be a loanword from Sanskrit as if you look up the ancient pronunciation of Huatuo in reconstructed Middle Chinese it sounds like *ghwa-thā, which, Mair argues, is similar enough to the Sanskrit word for medicine, agada, to make their link an historical possibility. To my ear I would have guessed it might be a Xiongnu 胸女 or Hunnic loanword because it sounds a little like one of my favorite Chinese words,luotuo骆驼, or camel, borrowed from Xiongnu.

Huatuo was active in the era in which Buddhism was first making its way into China, and numerous developments in Chinese medicine, meditative practice, and forms of internal cultivation were affected in this exchange. So it’s not impossible the five animal frolics were influenced by the early Chinese importation of Indic yogas.

The practice is divided into five sections: tiger for the lungs, deer for the liver, bear for the spleen, monkey for the kidneys, and crane for the heart. In each exercise you try to imaginally adopt and somatically embody the qualities of the animal in its most leisurely state: a sleepy tiger waking from a nap, a deer playfully extending its antlers, a dawdling bear leisurely collecting berries (he’s already eaten, he just wants a little dessert), a mischievous monkey picking fruit, and a free and easy crane stretching its legs and wings after a much needed nap.

The movements are:

虎戏 Tiger (肺脏 lungs)

（1）虎举 Tiger stretches up

（2）虎扑 Tiger pounces on its prey

鹿戏 Deer （肝脏 liver）

（1）鹿抵 Deer presses with its antlers

（2）鹿奔 Deer flees

熊戏 Bear （脾脏 spleen）

（1）熊运 Bear steps

（2）熊晃 Bear sways

猿戏 Monkey （肾脏 kidneys）

（1）猿提 Monkey lifts its paws

（2）猿摘 Monkey picks the fruit

鶴戏 Crane （心脏 heart）

（1）鶴伸 Crane stretches its wings

（2）鶴飞 Crane flies