Aqua Wave Breathing Technique

There was currently silence in the clan hall. Adrian and four candidates were trying to calm their mind and enter the state of peacefulness.

Adrian's grandfather, the old grand elder also had his eyes closed while others in the hall were simply waiting so that they would't disturb the candidates.

In a voice which was much lower and softer than he ordinarily spoke, the old man said "keep your eyes closed and listen to my voice. Focus on my voice and only my voice.

Visualize yourself in your mind. Try to imagine what you look right now while sitting there meditating, can you do it? You don't have to reply or nod. You can just confirm with yourself.

As you picture yourself, you should have visualized the surrounding as well, try to remove everyone else, everything else. It should be just you and my voice in your mind."

Adrian felt himself being pulled, he felt like he was floating, he was in a state of sleep but he was also fully conscious. The old man's voice was coming from somewhere. As he was visualizing himself in his mind, he could see the whole clan hall. He could only picture some of the faces distinctly like the faces of his father, the other candidates Kaia, Livia, Tulio and his grandfather as well but the faces of everyone else were mostly blank.

Slowly, people started disappearing one by one from the picture in his mind until there were only few. Next, his father, grandfather and the rest disappeared too like a wisp of smoke in the air. Now it was only him in the infinite darkness of his mind. May be he did visualize the clan hall and it disappeared too or may be he simply didn't. He couldn't bother to think about it. He could only focus on the voice and follow what it told him to do.

Outside there were slow whispers and murmurs among the crowd.

"Whoa! Surprisingly, it wasn't the clan leader's son but the girl Livia who was the first to enter the meditative state of stillness. Pretty impressive." - said one of the observers getting surprised. The meditative state of stillness was a state which was very important for cultivation. How much time it took to enter the state could determine ones speed in cultivation. Also someone who is disturbed with many thoughts were unable to enter the state.

His friend standing beside him seemed to disagree and rebuked. - "hmph, it doesn't prove anything, she might just be devoid of any prior thoughts hence making it easy for her to enter the meditative state of stillness faster."

The one who spoke before thought for a while and said "You're right my friend, it must be because of that but still this could be to her advantage against others. And the girl Kaia seemed to be the last. The frown on her face doesn't seem to go even now, or am I imagining it."

"True, her parents must be furious. She is definitely gonna get some private lessons I'm sure, hahaa." joked his friend.

After waiting for the time it takes to burn an incense stick, Adrian's grandfather, the grand elder could see that all four candidates had entered the meditative state of stillness. Now, the normal whispers, murmurs or background noise couldn't effect them. This was the usefulness of the meditative state of stillness.

Nodding his head to himself, the old man proceeded further - "Take a look at yourself in the picture in your mind. Visualize your beating heart, the blood flowing in and out from your heart. Now, feel your breathing, its slow and steadiness, feel it getting inside your nose, going to your lungs and getting out again. Can you feel it?

The air you breathe in has several properties, when it enters your lungs, some of its properties gets mixed in with blood. That is how the blood gets nourishment from the air. This is a simple concept but you can use this same concept for qi as well."

After a slight pause, letting the candidates experience and feel their heartbeat, their breathing and the process of picturing it, the old man continued -"The technique we will be using to form the core is called Aqua Wave Breathing Technique. This technique uses the breathing as the path and water waves as an imagination medium to help sense and form a heart core."

"We cannot see the air but we can feel it. According to the Aqua Wave Breathing Technique, you have to imagine the air having a color, like the transparent color of water. You can imagine it however you like, it can be blue or it can be silver it doesn't matter, just imagine the first image that comes to mind when you think about water."

"You should now be able to visualize the air you breathe. As I have mentioned before, everything in the world has qi. Same is true for the air you breathe. So as the air also has qi, you can imagine it as small particles that are mixed in the air. The qi being a form of energy is mostly depicted in yellow, orange or red color as the color of sun. But you can picture it to be of whatever color that suits you.

Then, imagine the air full of particles. Or as you gave it the color of water, you can imagine the water to have tiny qi particles mixed in. When the air gets inside your system and into the lungs, visualize the tiny qi particles getting mixed in with blood. Then the blood travelling to your heart, the particles getting absorbed by it."

"Imagine the repeating process of breathing the water color air, the qi particles flowing to your heart along with the blood in waves and getting absorbed at the center of your heart. As the heart keeps absorbing the qi particles, the color of that part of the center of the heart which constantly absorbs qi particle should start changing into the color of qi. Try to repeat this breathing and imagining process and feel your heart for any changes."

After that the old man then took a deep breath and sat down to observe the candidates. He had done his part, now it all depends on the candidate themselves.

Actually, forming a heart core wasn't a difficult process. An adult would automatically possess a heart core even without going through the core formation process. The only thing different would be that they would not be aware of the existence of heart core. Even if they were, the quality of heart core would be worst which couldn't even facilitate them to absorb qi to reach the Novice state.

The Aqua Wave Breathing Technique was one of the more harder techniques of heart core formation. Its highly based on imagining the air as water and breathing it in, which was very difficult to do as breathing water was equal to suffocating yourself. But if one was to have success without any accidents, the quality of the heart core would be great and their future potential limitless.

The old man glanced at Adrian and hoped the boy would not have any problems. The Aqua Wave Breathing technique is a challenge but normally everyone who had have to go through the process would have problems at the stage of imagining the air as a water, or adjusting to imagining breathing in water. Once they overcame this hurdle, the rest of the process would go smoothly.

Various candidates used various ways to overcoming the hurdle during Aqua Wave Breathing Technique. What they imagine, how they master it depends on their own imagination and capability. Some take time, some don't. Their quality of heart core can only be determined once they successfully form it and start absorbing the qi. The amount of qi they can absorb at a time and process is what determines the quality of the heart core.

Now, only they themselves can help them. There wasn't any instruction given for them to overcome the hurdle simply because there was none. In fact, if someone tried to use the way someone else did it, they would face more problems and some even weren't successful at all. That is why, this was left to the candidates themselves. This was the crucial step in entering the world of cultivation.