Recently, there has been a lot of media coverage on Qigong. Early in 2007 on Oprah Winfrey’s show and again even more recently on Good Morning America, Dr. Mehmet Oz appeared and discussed the physical and emotional health benefits of Qigong. In a prior Oprah show that had aired earlier in 2007, he made a declaration saying that the future of western medicine is “energy medicine” and brought in an acupuncturist and discussed other alternative healing methods. Later in 2008, Dr. Northrup, MD also discussed Qigong and its healing benefits. In trying to help an audience member with a specific problem she explained a very simple Qigong meditation technique and said, “So I want you to know that you can use your mind and your breath to energize” any part of your body. Even a recent episode of the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy featured an energy healer on the show and the Today show did an entire series on alternative health practices in January 2008. Right now, the media is ripe with further examples of this strong trend. It’s nearly impossible not to see a commercial that doesn’t reference yoga, meditation, Tai Chi or other spiritual practices. Even Pine-Sol has an oriental man levitating during his meditation, which is interrupted by the fresh scent of their cleaning product. The Yellow Book ads used David Carradine and so on.
What is Qigong?
Qigong is a highly respected internal system of exercise practice going back over 3,000 years. It is pronounced “Chee-Gung,” which literally means energy work or energy skill and is a unique method of combining the mind, breath, and movement for the purpose of accumulating “life force” energy known as “Qi.” Qigong is used to improve health, reduce stress, calm the mind, improve balance, coordination, and circulation. It improves awareness, induces spiritual states of consciousness, and much more. Qigong practice is intended to improve your health mentally, physically, and spiritually as a complete mind, body, and spirit exercise. As you advance in your skill, you will be able to literally emit your Qi energy to examine and help others in the treatment and remission of their illnesses as well. Through regular Qigong practice, you will likely feel happier, more calm, relaxed, and generally at peace with the world. This type of work is the primary basis of all true yoga systems and internal martial arts the most well known being Tai Chi. However that said, there is something very misleading in many yoga schools across the country. You see, stretching really isn’t true yoga nor is it stretching “with the breath” either. “Well then,” you might ask, “what is real yoga?”
Yoga, Qigong, and Tai Chi are complete systems of self-transformation in and of themselves. They are specialized internal sciences that lead inexorably toward the experience of “yoga,” which literally means “union” with the Absolute, the Universal, the One. This experience of Union, which is also called Samadhi (“absorption”), is the real yoga. It’s sad to say, but most “yoga” teachers today have not experienced this state for themselves. Most “certified yoga teachers” believe that stretching and breathing techniques are yoga, when in reality they are simply a means to an end. Without energy awareness, experience, and skill, it is impossible to reach this end and thus perform true yoga. Most yoga that emphasizes stretching are simply practices that are utilized to prepare the body to sit in full lotus asana for extended periods to prolong meditation.
Qigong is a combination of two ideas:
“Qi” (pronounced chee), means air, breath of life, or vital energy that flows through all things in the universe.
“Gong” (pronounced gung, as in lung) means the skill of working with, or cultivating, self-discipline and achievement.
Understanding Qigong
The real purpose of Qigong practice is to improve human life on all levels, such as improving physical fitness, enhancing creativity, uplifting emotion, and uncovering your hidden potentials. Qigong offers a path to liberate us from our own limitations and social conditioning, allowing us to rediscover higher states of freedom and personal power based on consciousness and wisdom. Through daily Qigong practice, we learn to cultivate Qi to progressively synchronize physical, mental, and spiritual elements of our entire being.
The Basic Philosophy of Qigong
With each and every practice, I improve myself. When I improve myself, I aid in the improvement of all humanity. An improved humanity brings the infinite love of the universe to earth. I am in the universe and the universe is within me. Compassion is the main philosophy of Qigong.
Qigong is different from other exercises such as sports. In Qigong you direct your mind inward while in most traditional exercises the mind is directed externally upon the task or competitors instead of the internal activity within the body. Qigong emphasizes cultivating virtue, refining consciousness, regulating the breath, and gently moving the body. In contrast, sports are mainly focused solely upon performance and bodily movement. In moving the body, dynamic Qigong uses the mind to direct Qi and then Qi to direct the body. The movement of the body thus serves the spirit, mind, and Qi, which allows the experience and mystery of the body in total relaxation. In sports, one is trained to focus on physical form toward the movement of the body or tools to use rather than directing the mind inward. The mind becomes the servant to facilitate and synchronize a sequence of movements, moving muscles, tendons, etc. As a result, the mind and body are not relaxed.
In terms of regeneration within the body, sports promote the consumption of energy, which requires extra nutrition and sleep to recover from the expended energy. Traditional sports and exercise are designed to amplify the quantity of life energy that comes into and flows out of the body during the physical performance. In contrast, Qigong training focuses on accumulating energy from the atmosphere while significantly reducing the body’s consumption of energy. This slows down the process or need for regeneration and significantly increases your life force or “Qi” and vitality, which speeds up healing and recovery on all levels.
Understanding Medical Qigong & Qi Healing Treatments
Medical Qigong is traditionally subdivided into two categories. The first is Internal “Nei Gong” exercises, which consist primarily of specialized breathing, meditation or visualization techniques, and physical movements to aid the individual in overcoming his/her specific ailments thus leading to recovery or remission of disease. It is similar philosophically to the old saying: “teach a man to fish and feed him for life.” Through internal self-practice, the Qi deficiency and meridian blockages are addressed first through specific exercise. Once the primary weakness has been fortified, additional exercises are given to balance the practice and provide a whole body wellness approach. The varieties of disease that have been successfully treated with this modality are too numerous to list. Visit www.qigonginstitute.org and search their “Energy Medicine Database” for more information.
This complementary methodology is used frequently in China along with western medicine due to its wide scale application, which is based upon making the individual both proactive and empowered in his or her own healing process. The effectiveness of this type of healing approach is also evident with regular vigorous exercise, which can be seen on the hit show “The Biggest Loser” where many participants have had serious illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, liver issues, sleep apnea, etc. vanish as they pursued weight loss and a healthy life style. Although this is not Qigong, one can readily see that there is a form of real transformational magic that takes place by simply accepting your current condition (I am ______) without denial and making a committed decision to do something to change it. A strong will when combined with belief and simple visualizations of the desired outcome will itself perform miracles. As Napoleon Hill has said: “What the mind can conceive and believe, the body can achieve.”
The second category of medical Qigong is external “Wei Gong” where a Qigong master projects emitted Qi for the purpose of healing another person. This approach is also utilized, but is limited in application because the number of skilled Qigong masters capable of providing this form of treatment is also limited. Modern scientific studies in China recognize that medical Qigong masters can emit energy from their hands, which benefits the person’s health and healing. It is believed that the emitted Qi dissolves energetic blockages that have developed within the person’s meridian system and also provides them with a surplus of fresh energy for the natural self-healing process. People who are ill or are under other forms of physical or emotional stress have much lower levels of Qi, which can be elevated and/or restored by a healing Qigong treatment. Scientific experiments done in China have measured many types of frequencies such as: radio waves, sound, magnetic fields and infrared vibrations emanating from the hands or bodies of medical Qigong practitioners.
In my healing classes or medical Qigong, you can learn to transmit your Qi through mental intention, focusing on the body’s lower energy center, which is called the Dan Tien along with specific breathing. You learn how to direct your Qi to the various internal organs, acupuncture points, bone marrow, and energy meridians to significantly benefit healing, often with dramatic results. The healing treatment approach covers the entire body so that nothing is missed. Many times the symptoms are caused from parts of the body’s energy system that would seem totally unrelated to most western medicine principles. Medical Qigong often delivers miraculous and profound results for health and vitality. In Medical Qigong, the healer provides the energetic fuel for the body’s highly evolved process of natural self-healing.
In summary, Qigong is essentially the science of accumulating, refining, and circulating bioelectricity within the body for health and healing - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Qigong is also a system or path to spiritual enlightenment where one truly experiences the interconnectedness we all have to nature as well as each other. While there are literally thousands of Qigong systems, they all share the common goal of increasing one’s life force for the purpose of enhancing one’s life on all levels.
