When people hear about the seventy-two meditations connected to the 18 Daoist Palms, it sounds mythical. Seventy-two distinct practices, each said to hold deep internal secrets. The truth is simpler. They exist, but they were never widely practiced as a complete set, and none of them have individual names. The surviving recordings are grainy, fragmented, and inconsistently taught, but they reveal a clear intent: to train stillness, awareness, and the alignment of body, breath, and mind.
What Are the 72 Meditations?
The meditations divide into four groups of eighteen:
• 18 Standing Stationary
• 18 Seated Stationary
• 18 Standing Moving (Short)
• 18 Standing Moving (Long)
Together, they form seventy-two distinct practices sometimes referred to as San Yi Gong—often miswritten as Sunn Yee Gong. The phrase probably originated from a Cantonese expression that was never recorded in characters. Interpreted through a Mandarin lens, San Yi Gong likely means Three-Intention Skill—a method for uniting body, breath, and mind.
Jim Lacy described them as “meditations for chi cultivation and mental clarity.” That framing is accurate. The practice is not about mystical energy or hidden powers. It’s about balance, focus, and awareness. The aim is integration, not transcendence.
Why Meditations in a Martial Curriculum?
For students used to forms, stances, and sparring, the idea of seventy-two meditations can seem unrelated. But traditional Chinese martial systems often included both external and internal work. Shaolin had qigong alongside drills. Wudang combined meditation and martial expression.
What’s unusual here is the sheer volume. Seventy-two distinct methods suggest an ambitious curriculum, perhaps meant as a bridge between health practice, inner cultivation, and martial understanding. In reality, most students only learned a few. Lacy focused on the standing and seated stationary sets, knowing they were the most practical for modern learners.
The “18 Levels” Idea
At one point, Doo Wai described the system as having eighteen levels, each using one meditation from each category. That structure gives the appearance of order, but it was never documented in a complete form. It seems more like an organizing framework than a genuine transmission.
Common Misconceptions
The biggest misconception is that these meditations are legendary or secret, as if they promise special powers. They don’t. They’re straightforward Qigong meditations—still, slow, and introspective. Another myth is that mastery requires learning all seventy-two. Even Lacy never made that claim. They were always presented as a library of methods, not a ladder of advancement.
A single meditation, practiced deeply, produces more clarity than seventy-two skimmed lightly.
Reflections
Of everything Lacy said, mental clarity remains the most honest phrase. Chi cultivation may sound mystical, but clarity is practical. These meditations calm the nervous system, slow the breath, and steady attention. They don’t make you superhuman. They make you aware.
Despite the rough recordings and inconsistent preservation, the intent behind them still matters. They remind us that stillness is part of martial study, that insight grows from patience, and that real internal work is simple.
Why It Matters
In a culture obsessed with shortcuts and spectacle, these meditations offer the opposite. They ask you to slow down, breathe, and unify body, breath, and mind—the three intentions that ground all internal arts. Whether or not anyone ever mastered all seventy-two, their message remains timeless: awareness is the foundation of skill.
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Do you think depth in practice comes from learning “more” methods, or from returning to “one” method until it reveals everything?
Thanks for the article, it is very interesting. So you want to say that entire 18 daosit palms “set” is in fact the same as what they call Sun Yi Gong?
Am I correct that what Garry Heartfield represents as SYG in fact the same thing as 18 palms set? And at this point I have got confused. From what I know there is a patchwork which consists of of “laying the foundation” stage + qi enhancing meds + burning palm + “tai chi ” form + iron palms meditations.
Is it the same as SYG or SYG is something different? May be this is just Sifu Garry represented it as SYG? But he has different meds on both SYG and Burning Palm. Can you elaborate on it please?
Thank you for the question. Your confusion is normal. Bak Fu Pai and the 18 Daoist Palms were never preserved as a clean, unified system. They came down fragmented, restructured, and inconsistently taught. Anyone being honest about this material has to admit that.
About Garry Hearfield.
To my knowledge, Garry Hearfield did not train in person with Grandmaster Doo Wai. Like most people, he learned from the same video material that others did, including myself and Jim Lacy. Garry was also a student of Jim and served as his Australian representative during the same general period when I was focusing on Burning Palm methods. Somewhere around 96-98, I think. Jim talked to me about him on several occasions because Garry was also doing Burning Palm.
That matters because video-based learning leaves room for interpretation, reorganization, and rebranding. Different instructors grouped the same source material in different ways. That does not mean one person is lying. It means the source material itself was not cleanly structured – and often times left room for wildly different interpretations, especially if you came from different martial backgrounds.
I want to be clear here. I have nothing personal against Garry. I do not know him directly. I have not studied his San Yi Gong material in depth. Because of that, I cannot make a precise, side by side comparison between what he teaches and what I learned from Jim. My articles are to simplify and write as clearly as possible because I know that so much confusion, misinformation, and mysticism exist online behind this material. But I don’t have his SYG videos to know if he’s teaching the same series or if it’s modifying, changing or calling something else SYG.
Where confusion usually comes from.
San Yi Gong, as I described it in the article, refers to meditations whose explicit purpose is to unify body, breath, and mind. The Seated Stationary Meditations and the Standing Stationary Meditations are both shown on one of Jim Lacy’s 18 Daoist Palms videos from Panther Productions. They were referred to as “Meditations for Qi Cultivation and Mental Clarity.” That’s an accurate description of their function and purpose. I don’t think Jim show’s the “complete” set of 18 for both, but I do have all 18 of the standing being uploaded weekly into my YouTube channel right now. I believe I’m on week 14 or so. They’re also on my TikTok and Instagram. This Spring I’ll upload all 18 of the seated if you care to check them out. I was going to do the seated with the standing but I chose to do a different set of 18 called Heavenly Stars Meditations. They’re short 20 second videos of me doing the meditation. I don’t discuss the breath combinations or “teach” the material or anything. But if you have Garry’s SYG videos you could make an easy comparison. And if you do, let me know what you find.
About the so-called patchwork curriculum.
I believe you are referring to Jim Lacy’s 18 Daoist Palms VHS series produced with Panther Productions. That series can feel patchwork if you don’t understand its intent. The first four volumes were a Year One foundation. They were designed to expose students to a range of practices, not to train mastery in all of them. That was how I learned and trained it. Maybe other’s had different experiences but I know a few who came up before and after me and they say their training was the same as well.
Jim had serious physical limitations due to a traumatic injury earlier in life. He also came from an American Kenpo background. To make the material accessible, he used simple naming conventions so techniques could be identified, practiced, and remembered. That was a teaching choice, not a statement about the art’s origin. The variety of meditations in those early volumes was intentional. It was exposure. Not specialization.
After completing the fundamentals, the qi work, and the 7 Star Continuous Fist form, students were expected to choose a direction. Their own path or specialty. That is where depth happened. Why the other volumes? Because Heavenly Thunder Palms and Sparrow Descending to its Perch were a couple of Jim’s favorite practices. His own specialties, if you will. I didn’t appreciate Sparrow Descending to its Perch when I was younger, but I like it more these days.
Anyways, in my case, I specialized in Burning Palm methods, specifically Tibetan Lama Burning Palm and Song Dan Burning Palm. Later, when I was actively training Muay Thai, I focused more on Iron Body skills because they were directly useful for impact conditioning. I even earned the nickname “Iron Shin” at one point.
So the early material was not meant to be a single, unified method. It was a map. Not the destination.
San Yi Gong is one thread in a much larger curriculum. It trains alignment and clarity. It supports other practices. It does not replace them.
No, you do not need to practice all seventy-two. And I wouldn’t recommend you try unless you plan to dedicate your whole life to this and nothing else.
The idea that these meditations are arranged in levels is misleading. The claim that you must practice one seated, one standing, one short moving, and one long moving meditation per level before advancing has no solid historical support. It is a teaching convenience, not a functional requirement.
A meditation does not work because you are standing. That same meditation does not stop working because you are sit down. Any seated meditation can be practiced standing, kneeling in seiza, or lying down. Any standing meditation can be practiced seated, kneeling, or lying down too.
Posture changes emphasis. It does not change the core mechanism.
Depth matters more than variety.
Going deeply into one meditation that fits your body, temperament, and nervous system produces more results than sampling dozens. Repetition refines awareness. Familiarity removes effort. Subtlety appears only after boredom.
Seventy two methods do not equal seventy two times the benefit.
Most traditional practitioners never trained all seventy two. They selected a small number and stayed with them for years. What actually changes across methods.
Most of the differences between the meditations are not structural.
They are attentional.
• Where attention rests
• How wide or narrow awareness is
• Whether breath is foreground or background
• How movement is paced or restrained
These variables can be adjusted inside a single method. That is why experienced practitioners stop chasing techniques and start refining attention.
The real purpose of having many meditations.
The seventy two were not meant to be mastered as a checklist. They function more like a library. They exist to accommodate different bodies, ages, injuries, temperaments, and stages of life. I can tell you the things I’m doing now at 45 are very different from what I was doing at 20. That’s the natural course of life. What works for a young martial artist may not work for an older one. What works during injury may not work during peak training. Choice was always implied.
Choose one or two practices.
Stay with them.
Let them mature.
If clarity improves, stay.
If agitation increases, adjust posture or emphasis.
If the practice feels forced, simplify.
Progress comes from consistency and honesty.
Not accumulation.
That is the missing piece most people never hear.
I hope that helps clarify. I know it’s long and I apologize for that. Sometimes my brain gets running down an idea and it won’t shut up. But if you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. ~ Take care