Da Xiao Zhoutian

The Chinese entry relies chiefly on Zhonghua Xianxue, which says the named small/great pair is not found in some pre-Tang alchemical texts and becomes visible later. Its first contrast calls the small cycle a circulation of qi and the great cycle a movement of spirit, relating them to different interpretive stages of inner alchemy. It quotes earlier works for imagery, but those quotations should not be presented as proof that the older authors themselves used the later paired label.

A second explanation links small and great to a lesser and greater 'return,' with the account assigning different degrees of inward and outward transformation to them. A third uses the human body as a small world and the surrounding cosmos as a great world. The source itself notes that these explanations can imply different orderings and then suggests the two may coincide. That inconsistency is part of the record, not a detail to remove by inventing a single sequence.

Zhonghua Xianxue reports vivid sensations, renewal of the body, and extraordinary capacities as signs of attainment. They express one tradition's religious interpretation rather than established physiological findings. For research, ask which of the three distinctions an author is using and where the source stands in the text's transmission. This entry does not supply a circulation map, timetable, breath procedure, or medical promise.