In Master Cheng's New Method of Taichi Ch'uan Self-Cultivation Master Cheng states:
"The four secret words for proper breathing are: fine, long, calm, and slow."
Please help to correct my misunderstandings in my following description. I assume that these four words are a translation of a teaching that from Master Yang or his readings of Chang San Feng. If this is the case then any help in understanding the original meaning would be very helpful.
Long: Extending the breath is a great way to increase relaxation.
Calm: You should allow the breath to come with ease.
Slow: Unhurried, in it's own time.
Fine: This is where I have difficulty differentiating. Most of what I could say about my understanding of how you would breathe 'finely' would be a reiteration of the above. It would seem to be important, though, as he states this as the first of the 'four secret words'.
Google gives back 精细 Jīngxì. The closest I can find to this in my dictionary is jīngzhìde which uses the same character '精' for jīng but has a different second character. The second character xì '细' is used in the same block, and appear to mean a fine distinction. There are probably many different translations it could have given, though, and this seems to be the wrong track.
Does he mean a thin stream? With my low level of skill in Mandarin I fear that I'm hopelessly stuck trying to understand beyond this.