Chinese Health Qigong

To understand what qigong is we need to know the aim of this activity.

The aim of qigong is nurture life, to be healthy, by supporting the flow of qi and blood smoothly through acupuncture meridians. Many methods being used to support the flow of qi in the acupuncture meridians such as, movements, breathing regulation, relaxation and sitting still, meditation, massage, focused mind in a specific acupuncture points etc.

4000 years ago Tang Yao area was heavily flooded, and a lot of peoples suffer for qi and blood stagnation, and they have joints problem. In order to alleviate it they moved and danced to activate the flow of qi and blood, this information documented in Shang shu, Shi ji and Mencius or Meng zi. Qigong has been practice and evolve thousands of years in China, and we may find that lots of Qigong styles today.

Chinese Health Qigong Association has compiled some of ancient qigong styles such as Wu Qin Xi (Five Animal Play), Yi Jin Jing (Muscle/ Tendon Changing Classic), Ba Duan Jin (Eight Pieces of Brocades) and Liu Zi Jue (Six Syllables Formula / Six Healing Sounds).http://jsqg.sport.org.cn/en/index.html

For example wu qin xi, this method was developed by Hua Tuo, a well known physician during warring states era. He stated that flowing water won’t get rotted and the hinge of moving door won’t get rusted. He observed the movement of tiger; deer, bear, monkey and bird, then he realize that imitating their movements may enhance the flow of qi in specific acupuncture meridians.

Important rules on practicing qigong

Qigong literally can be translated as the persistence work on qi. It means to acquire its benefit you need to consistently practice it. Below are couples of things you need to be aware when practice qigong:

1.      Practice on perfection of the movements, you need to make sure that you are doing a correct movement. Each movement and its relation to other movement had been designed to stimulate specific meridian flow. So if it done wrongly then you won’t achieved expected result, and even worse the flow of qi is deviated.

2.      Practice of giving a correct force amount and source for each movement.

3.      Practice of giving a correct focus on required area of the body or specific acupuncture point as requested.

4.      Then after you are sure you had memorized the correct movement you may apply correct breathing in each movement.

From what I have explain above you may realize that qigong consist of focus exercise, movement exercise and breathing exercise. These three part are vital especially for dynamic type of qigong (we will discuss a static type of qigong in the future post).

Benefit of practicing qigong

What will be the benefit of doing qigong? Lots of paper and research had been done on qigong, below are benefit of doing qigong from my Shifu experience my own experience, my colleague experience and my students experience:

1.      Increased  in brain memory capacity

2.      Free from back pain

3.      Increased health immunity

4.      Losing weight

5.      Brighten skin

6.      Good reflex

7.      Increased focus and concentration

8.      Calm and relax manner

9.      Spatial awareness

10.  Decreased rate of accident (due to increased spatial awareness and reflex)

11.  Good emotional stress control

12.  Increased sensory performance

13.  Muscles flexibilities

14.  Free from knee problem

15.  Look younger

Lots of benefits that I cannot write here, because too many, but if you may interested to learn qigong, you need have teacher, and remember persistence and consistent.