The Bigu Sect 辟谷派

The mountain practitioner — bigu was understood as a method of lightening the body, refining the qi, and gradually loosening the ties that bind the practitioner to the ordinary world.

Definition

Bigu (辟谷, bìgǔ, lit. “avoiding grains”), also rendered as pigu or baohe (保和) in some classification systems, is a term in Taoist cultivation practice referring to the deliberate reduction or elimination of grain-based food, combined with the absorption of qi through breathing techniques. The goal is to shift the body’s nutritional dependence from coarse grain food to the finer energies of breath and qi, thereby refining the physical constitution, lightening the body, and extending life.

The theoretical basis of bigu rests on a distinction between two kinds of nourishment. Grain food (谷气) sustains the body but also feeds the Three Worms (三尸, sān chóng) — internal spirits in Taoist physiology believed to reside in the three cinnabar fields and to cause illness, moral corruption, and premature death. Pure qi (真气), absorbed through breath and supplemented by certain herbs, sustains the body without feeding the Three Worms. To practice bigu is to starve the worms while nourishing the self.

Classical Sources

The earliest literary reference to bigu-like practice appears in the Zhuangzi (《庄子》), “Xiaoyao You” chapter:

“不食五谷，吸风饮露。”
(Not eating the five grains, inhaling the wind and drinking the dew.)

The historical figure most associated with bigu practice is Zhang Liang (张良, d. 189 BCE), the strategist of the Han founder Liu Bang. The Shiji (《史记》), biography of Zhang Liang, records:

“乃学辟谷，道引轻身。”
(He then studied grain abstention and breathing exercises to lighten the body.)

Ge Hong (葛洪, 283–343 CE) provides the most systematic early account in his Baopuzi (《抱朴子》), “Za Ying” chapter, distinguishing two main approaches: breath-based bigu (服气辟谷), in which the practitioner gradually replaces food with absorbed qi; and herb-based bigu (服药辟谷), in which pine resin (松脂), poria mushroom (茅苓), sesame (胡麻), and other substances supplement or replace grain. Ge Hong also records the warning that improper practice — forcing the process through excessive straining or swallowing — leads to violent illness, malignant sores, and strange diseases.

Methods of Practice

Classical bigu practice typically proceeded in stages. The practitioner first reduced grain intake gradually over weeks or months, simultaneously increasing the duration and depth of breathing exercises. The breath was drawn in through the nose, held, circulated through the body’s energy pathways, and released — a process described in the Baopuzi as “swallowing qi” (咏气). Herbal supplements — particularly pine resin, poria, and sesame — were used to sustain the body during the transition period and to accelerate the refinement of the physical constitution.

The warning against improper practice is consistent across the classical sources: bigu is not fasting in the modern sense. It is a gradual cultivation process that requires proper instruction, correct technique, and a body already prepared through prior cultivation. Rushing the process produces the opposite of the intended result — not lightness and longevity, but illness and deterioration.

Zhengyi Perspective

In the Zhengyi tradition, bigu belongs to the domain of personal physical cultivation (养生) rather than communal ritual liturgy. The Zhengyi school’s primary institutional focus is on the jiao ceremony, talisman transmission, and the Three Officials’ theology of merit and sin — not on the individual cultivation techniques that characterize the inner alchemy (内丹) and physical cultivation traditions.

Nevertheless, bigu practice was not foreign to Zhengyi-affiliated priests. The Baopuzi’s author Ge Hong, though not a Celestial Masters priest, was deeply embedded in the same southern Chinese religious milieu from which the Zhengyi tradition drew. The principle underlying bigu — that the body can be refined through the substitution of coarser nourishment for finer — is consistent with the broader Taoist conviction that the material and the spiritual are not separate domains but a single continuum along which the practitioner moves through cultivation. A Zhengyi priest who practiced bigu was not departing from his tradition; he was applying its deepest principle to the domain of the body.

Related Concepts

• What is Qi (气): the energy that bigu practice cultivates → What is Qi
• Taoist Cultivation Methods (修炼方法): the broader category of physical and spiritual practice → Taoist Cultivation Methods
• Taoist Priests (道士): the practitioners who studied bigu alongside ritual practice → Taoist Priests

Source Texts

• Zhuangzi (庄子). Zhuangzi (《庄子》), “Xiaoyao You.” Warring States period.
• Sima Qian (司马迁). Shiji (《史记》), “Zhang Liang Biography.” Western Han dynasty.
• Ge Hong (葛洪). Baopuzi (《抱朴子》), “Za Ying” chapter. Eastern Jin dynasty.