If you can believe that there is an energy called 'Chi' flowing through the body that it can be felt and manipulated, then perhaps you can see why some chinese go one step further.
What is 'Qigong'?
Lama Dondrup Dorje explains about 'Qigong (Chi Energy)'
"when energy is rooted properly, Positive ions reach the ground and displace negative ions. The ground is Yin - negative ions, above is positive ions. Air has ions, everything has ions. A human is a blend, a fusion of the two. When your energy from the lower dan tien connects into the root into the ground, just as when we do the stading posture, it will displace the energy and come back up around you like a bubble."
qigong master projecting his Chi energy
Qigong (or ch'i kung) refers to a wide variety of traditional cultivation practices that involve methods of accumulating, circulating, and working with qi or energy within the body. Qigong is sometimes mistakenly said to always involve movement and/or regulated breathing; in fact, use of special methods of focusing on particular energy centers in and around the body are common in the higher level or evolved forms of Qigong. Qigong is practised for health maintenance purposes, as a therapeutic intervention, as a medical profession, a spiritual path and/or component of Chinese martial arts.
The qi in qigong means air in Chinese, and, by extension, life force, dynamic energy or even cosmic breath. Gong means work applied to a discipline or the resultant level of skill, so qigong is thus breath work or energy work. The term was coined in the twentieth-century and its currency, David Ownby suggests, speaks of a cultural desire to separate cultivation from superstition, to secularize and preserve valuable aspects of traditional Chinese practices.
Real visible Chi ball demonstration
moving objects using Chi without touching them
Chi breathing Techniques
Breaking power of Chi
Attitudes toward the scientific basis for qigong vary markedly. Most Western medical practitioners and many practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, as well as the Chinese government, view qigong as a set of breathing and movement exercises, with possible benefits to health through stress reduction and exercise. Others see qigong in more metaphysical terms, claiming that cosmic qi can be drawn into the body and circulated through channels called meridians. There is no physically verifiable anatomical or histological basis for the existence of acupuncture points or meridians.
Lama Dondrup Dorje Demonstrates Chi energy
Fighting with no physical touch - the Chi power
Breaking stones using Chi energy
Combat Chi masters with no pain
Uses
Today millions of people in China and around the world regularly practice qigong as a health maintenance exercise. Qigong and related disciplines are still associated with the martial arts and meditation routines practiced by Taoist and Buddhist monks, professional martial artists, and their students. Once more closely guarded, in the modern era such practices have become widely available to the general public both in China and around the world.
Medical qigong treatment has been officially recognized as a standard medical technique in Chinese hospitals since 1989. It has been included in the curriculum of major universities in China. After years of debate, the Chinese government decided to officially manage qigong through government regulation in 1996 and has also listed qigong as part of their National Health Plan.
Qigong can help practitioners to learn diaphragmatic breathing, an important component of the relaxation response, which is important in combating stress. In contrast, Taoist qigong employs the inverse breath of inhaling to the back of the thoracic cavity rather than diaphragmatic breathing. Improper use of diaphragmatic breathing can lead to reproductive pathologies for women.
Yan Xin, a doctor of both Western and Chinese medicine as well as founder of the relatively popular Yan Xin Qigong school, suggests that in order for qigong to be accepted by the modern world it must pass the test of scientific study. Without such studies, Yan maintains, qigong will be dismissed as "superstition". In the mid-1980s he and others began systematic study of qigong in some research institutions in China and the United States, more than 20 papers have been published.
While uncertainty persists regarding the spiritual aspects of qigong, Qigong may also be seen as a socially conducive warm-up to the day. Many practitioners choose the early morning to practice qigong and find it an easy way to stretch and warm up the metabolism.
Healing power of Chi
Beliefs
Qigong, and its intimate relation to the Chinese martial arts and traditional Chinese medicine, are often associated with spirituality. This link is much stronger than with other techniques in traditional Chinese medicine. Qigong was historically practiced in Taoist and Buddhist monasteries as an aid to concentration as well as martial arts training, and the health benefits of martial qigong practice have recently been confirmed in western medical studies. In addition, the traditional teaching methods of most qigong schools (at least in Asia) descend from the strict teacher-disciple relationship conventions inherited in Chinese culture from Confucianism.
In some styles of qigong, it is taught that humanity and nature are inseparable, and any belief otherwise is held to be an artificial discrimination based on a limited, two-dimensional view of human life. According to this philosophy, access to higher energy states and the subsequent health benefits said to be provided by these higher states is possible through the principle of cultivating virtue. Cultivating virtue could be described as a process by which one comes to realize that one was never separated from the primal, undifferentiated state of being free of artificial discrimination that is the true nature of the universe. Progress toward this goal can be made with the aid of deep relaxation (meditation), and deep relaxation is facilitated by the practice of qigong.
Taking 'discourse' in its contemporary sense as referring to forms of representation that generate specific cultural and historical fields of meaning, we can describe one such discourse as rational and scientific and the other as psychosomatic and metaphysical. Each strives to establish its own order of power and knowledge, its own 'truth' about the 'reality' of qigong, although they differ drastically in their explanation of many of its phenomena.
The psychosomatic discourse emphasizes the inexplicable power of qigong and relishes its occult workings, whereas the rational discourse strives to demystify many of its phenomena and to situate it strictly in the knowledge of modern science."
The Chinese government has generally tried to encourage qigong as a science and discourage religious or supernatural elements. Chinese and Western science are not fully equivalent; for example, traditional Chinese medicine is only considered scientific by the former.
In America, where many may believe that qigong is a socially neutral, subjective, New Age-style concept incapable of scientific proof, much of China's scientific establishment believes in the existence of Qi. Controlled experiments by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the late 1970s and early 1980s concluded that qi, when emitted by a qigong expert, "actually constitutes measurable infrared electromagnetic waves and causes chemical changes in static water through mental concentration". Other emission studies have reported measurable influence on the ultraviolet absorption of nucleic acids, liposome phase behaviour and radioactive decay rates.
The Hindu culture refers to qi as Prana, the Japanese culture uses the character ki, and the Hawaiian culture calls it mana.
Theories about the cultivation of elixir (dan), "placement of the mysterious pass" (xuanguan shewei), among others, are also found in ancient Chinese texts such as The Book of Elixir (Dan Jing), the Daoist Canon (Tao Zang) and Guide to Nature and Longevity (Xingming Guizhi).
Criticisms
Much of the criticism of qigong involves its claimed method of operation. Both traditional Chinese and Western medicine practitioners have little argument with the notion that qigong can improve and in many cases maintain health by encouraging movement, increasing range of motion, and improving joint flexibility and resilience, and have mental benefits through the calm exercise. When it is asserted that qigong derives its benefits from qi acting as a kind of "biological plasma" that cannot be detected by current scientific instruments, many react skeptically and declare qi as a pseudoscientific and vitalism concept, though others consider it as a philosophy rather than a physical force.
Association of qigong with practices involving spirit possession have added to establishment criticism. Some experts in China have warned against practices involving the claimed evocation of demons, and practices involving the worship of gods during qigong practice.
Many proponents of qigong claim they can directly detect and manipulate qi, Robert Bruce being a western example. Others, including some traditional Chinese practitioners, believe that qi can be viewed as a metaphor for certain biological processes, and the effectiveness of qigong can also be explained in terms of concepts more familiar to Western medicine such as stress management or neurology.
Health Qigong
In 2001 the Chinese Government showed great interest in regulating the Qigong movement. The State Sport General Administration of China founded the Chinese Health Qigong Association, as a mass-organization to popularize, spread and research Health Qigong in cooperation with the Peking Sport University. In 2003 the organization presented the newly developed four Health Qigong Exercises on the base of excellent traditional Qigong, including
1. Yì Jīn Jīng (tendon-changing classic),
2. Wu Qin Xi (frolics of five animals),
3. Liu Zi Jue (the art of expiration in producing six different sounds),
4. Ba Duan Jin (eight excellent movements),
to fit the people's needs of promoting their health and body, and to develop traditional Chinese national culture further. The Chinese Health Qigong Association is a member of the All-China Sports Federation.
During the process of developing the exercises, strictly scientific research methods have been followed. Primary experiments took place under supervision of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Modern Medicine, Psychology, Athletic Science and other related subjects. The Four Health Qigong Exercises can be seen as the essences from the related Qigong in various schools, inherited and developed traditional Chinese national culture.
Fundamentals of practising Chi Kung
Eight peace brocades
Extracted Chi exercises
I am very please to hear your comments.
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