What is Qigong?
Qigong is the Chinese name for the systematic study of how to work with your body and the energies that animate it to harness them for specific goals – typically health.
Later this study can grow to include the energies of others and living things in the environment – if the system contains them.
Qigong is generally translated as energy work/ability, and that is one core aspect.
The full scope of Qigong involves working with Energy, and Consciousness (mind/intent) and Information (structure/form). Without the later two it is not possible to fully work with energy.
Beginner’s Qigong typically involves slow coordinated movements of the body, breath and vital energy. It seeks to establish harmony between physical and psychological (mental-emotional) energy aspects to induce ‘health’, making it holistic in the true sense. Later finer aspects of energy, Information and consciousness are engaged to build finer skills, on various levels, for various applications and to achieve various specific goals.
It is precisely because one needs to engage and move energy that I begin your training by helping you to feel it – for real*. No imagination required. This does not need to take years and typically takes under an hour to a few days at most.
Thousands of qigong systems exist, some widespread, some as family systems. They differ in their scope, depth, purpose, forms, etc. The term ‘Qigong’ is an umbrella term of recent origin.
Before modern times highly specific systems for working with Energy, Information and Consciousness existed. They developed to function for health maintenance, self-healing, healing others, spiritual development, physical development, even fighting-skill development. These had (and still have) names like Waigong, Neigong, Tuina, etc. Different systems structured their methods and functions differently.
Qigong tends to be performed as sets of movements (forms) designed to achieve specific goals. Systems have various forms and many share forms but perform them differently.
One of your qigong goals needs to be the development of your own form or way of performing standard movements – precisely because you and your needs and goal are unique.
Qigong standardization by the Government of China has had positive and negative impacts on qigong in general. While it popularized qigong for health benefits through a drive to medicalize it, this moves it away from its higher possibilities in the realm of psycho-spiritual development and benefits.
This lead to the paradoxical claims by many who create new systems that qigong is beneficial because it is based on millennia-old methods and on modern medical science…
Qigong is not a religion or a cult. It is a method of developing and applying skills of using Energy, Information and Consciousness to a spectrum of goals. In broad to tend and heal the body, manage and calm emotions, make the mind more clear and balanced and to increase spiritual abilities.
All qigong systems are not equal or even trying to be the same, nor pursuing the same goals.
My Trainings
I teach the Elastic Force system, which teaches skills that make Qigong work and training involves drills as opposed to forms. Naturally it would make sense to apply these skills to any qigong forms you may know. I focus on developing your skills with energy through information and consciousness. This involves physical techniques and meditative practices. The goal is to empower you to feel and manage energy, understand how and why they work and how to develop on your own. This way you can apply these skills to various goals. Training includes Eastern and Western terminology and methods because both develop the same skills and this approach makes things easier to understand for non-Chinese practitioners. It also facilitates ease of application of these skills to other disciplines.
- ENQUIRE – No harm in asking
*Clairsentience – the ability to use the sense of touch (feeling, not emotions) in a ‘psychic’ manner is the easiest psychic sense to develop and an indispensable skill in any ‘energy work’ – of which Qigong is but one.