Qigong (Chi Kung) Benefits

Twelve Benefits of Qigong:

"1. Well-being and improved health. Qigong emphasizes the whole body, whole system health. While it is true that qigong will often cure specific ills, this is not the primary reason for practice. It is not only a matter of adding years to your life, but life to your years.

2. Clear and tranquil mind. When the mind is at peace, the whole universe seems at peace. World peace begins with you; it is your responsibility to find a peaceful heart and mind. Then you can heal and transform others just through your presence. If you have a tranquil mind, you will make better decisions and have the skill to know when act and when to be still.

3. Deeper, more restorative sleep. Qigong will help you find the deep relaxation and mental quiet necessary for sleep.

4. Increased energy, including sexual vitality and fertility. Qigong people have more energy; it can reverse energy and restore youthfulness.

5. Comfortable warmth. Qigong is great for cold hands and feet. Circulation improves, and the body generates more internal warmth when it is cold.

6. Clear skin. The skin, like the intestines, is an organ of elimination. According to Chinese medicine, as your qigong improves, your body eliminates toxins, and the skin becomes clear.

7. Happy attitude. There is an old Tibetan saying, “You can tell a Yogi by his or her laugh.” Correct and moderate qigong practice usually creates an optimistic and joyous disposition.

8. More efficient metabolism. Digestion improves, and hair and nails grow more quickly.

9. Greater physiological control. This means that aspects of the body that were imbalanced or out of control begin to normalize, for example, breathing rate, heart rate, blood pressure, hormone levels, and states of chronic inflammation or depletion.

10. Bright eyes. The qigong master’s eyes are said to glow in the dark, like a cat’s. The eyes also appear bright because the spirit and soul are luminous and the heart is open.

11. Intuition and creativity. Intuition and creativity generate each other and come from the same source, an awakened brain and being, an ability to think with the gut, to feel with the mind.

12. Spiritual effects. Advancement in qigong is often accompanied by a variety of spiritual experiences. For example, synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, become more common. When the qi is abundant, clear, and flowing, the senses perceive and are permeated by a sweetness. "

Adapted by Care 2 Health and Wellness

Adapted from:

The Way of Qigong: The Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing. By Kenneth S. Cohen. Foreword by Larry Dossey. New York Ballantine Books, 1997. Index, notes, appendices, 427 pages. ISBN: 0345421094. One of my favorite books: comprehensive,
informative, practical, and scientific.

The Way of Qigong. By Ken Cohen. 5 audiocassettes, 6 hours. Boulder, Colorado, Sounds True, 1993. ISBN: 1564552578.

Qigong (Chi Kung): Bibliography, Links, Resources, Quotations, Notes. By Mike Garofalo.

Refining Oneself to the End of Your Days

"T'ai Chi Ch'uan bases itself exclusively on gentleness, softness, naturalness and bringing you back to your original nature. Daily training makes the muscles and bones become softer and more pliable, and it especially causes the breath to become natural. These are the results of disciplining and refining the ching, ch'i, and shen to the end of your days. How then can you consider dispensing with your kung or wish to suffer bitterly."
- Chen Yen-lin, 1932, Cultivating the Ch'i,
Translated by Stuart Alve Olson, p. 30.

I find that emphasizing the quality of "Sung" while practicing Taijiquan or Qigong is very useful. For me, "Sung" includes meanings such as relaxed, loose, pliable, yielding, responsive, open, soft, flexible.

Taijiquan and Play

T'ai Chi Ch'uan is for me, among other things, a way of playing. Playing to lift my spirits, playing to meet a challenge, playing for delight, playing to show off, playing for exercise, playing for no reason at all.

"We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing."
- Charles Schaefer

"The true object of all human life is play.
Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."
- G. K. Chesterton

"It is a happy talent to know how to play."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rooting in Taijiquan

Rooting in Taijiquan
By Sifu Yeung Yun Choi

"Therefore, rooting in Taijiquan should embrace the concepts of absorption, transmission and neutralisation of the incoming force with possible counter attack.

Relaxing the muscles of the body will produce a sinking effect, which will make full use of the body weight to absorb the incoming force. Being relaxed will also minimise resistance upon impact and allow the incoming force to shift the body mass. Thus, the resulting force will be the incoming force less the body weight and will be further reduced by shifting the body mass away from the original position. In a way, this is borrowing the opponent's force to move one's own body mass and deflection will come very easy to deal with what is remaining of the incoming force.

Extension or stretching of the tendons will facilitate connection of the joints, which will assist transmission of the incoming force to the arm, shoulder, mid-section, hip, thigh, calf, foot and to the ground. When a person is in a proper Taiji posture; he or she will experience this transmission. The incoming force will travel from the hand down to the foot smoothly. A good way to test whether one is in a proper posture or not is to apply a force on that person. Tension will build up to stiffen the part that is not extended nor relaxed otherwise it will be grounded. This is how one can "listen to forces" or "interprets forces".

Once transmission is facilitated then neutralisation is easy, by moving various joints or shifting the whole body with the legs depending on the magnitude of the force. The mechanics of the legs allows the rotation of the hip, opening and closing of the thighs, bending of the knees, and flexing of the ankles for neutralisation. Therefore, the movements of the legs can be a little subtle to accommodate the weight of the body, the incoming force and to initiate motion."



Principles And Practices In Taijiquan
By Peter Lim Tian Tek


"Stability By Sinking (Wen, Chen)

Stability is a result of coordinated body structure in relation to the downward pull of gravity resulting in a net force against the earth from both body weight and downward projection of mass through a singular point identified as the root. Lowering the centre of gravity is essential to stability, we should lower it to the centre of the sphere of influence of our physical body.

Agility (Ling)

Agility is a result of non-double weighting and non-dead rooting. By only maintaining one point of substantial contact with the ground you gain the ability to move quickly, much like a ball which moves easily across the ground because it only has one point of contact with it.

The key is the word "centre". We should avoid "dead rooting". The idea is to lower your centre of gravity to your proper centre which is at the Tan Tien, there it should have a net downward force but is "hung" from the torso in the correct location. This would give you a centred but light feeling. If you are trying to get your centre to the oot of your feet, that is not centredness. Ask yourself where the centre of your body should be and there is where the mass of the centre should be. Some information on the external and internal methodologies adopted to train this. The external way of training is to force the centre down as far as it can go and then slowly the reaction force from the ground would build up the musculature to support the downward force back up to where it should be centred. The internal method would be to centre the centre of gravity first, get a proper structure to support it and when that is done then slowly lower the stance through time to foster proper development without sacrificing efficient structure and alignment."

Rooting and Sinking

Rooting in Tai Chi Chuan
By David West.

"Rooting is the process of making a good connection to the ground in stances and during transitions. ... When we refer to rooting we are talking about rooting the legs (and thus the entire body) of the completed postures as well as the legs during the transitions as well. When we are trying to achieve rooting in Taijiquan, we should visualize below the surface of the floor or ground... much like the roots of a tree. The "Bubbling Well" an acupoint called Yong Quan (KI-1) located on the bottom of the foot should be used as the point from which this imaginary root extends into the ground from which to draw strength. Rooting in Taijiquan will transfer from foot to foot, but never stays equally rooted on the right and the left. The weight should remain on the outer edges of the feet and remain a slight gripping feel with the toes, the ball of the foot, and the heel. Although the Yong Quan never touches the floor, you should still focus on this area as the root of each movement. Techniques to build this skill vary from person to person. I recommend using different visualizations and thoughts to see what works best for each person."

"Rooting: The Secret of Getting Power from the Earth"
By Gaofei Yan and James Cravens

"People lose root because they use the wrong part of the body to focus their strength. For example, when the shoulder moves first in an action to strike, it is incorrect. One should use the lower body to drive the force. No matter how hard one attempts to be soft, they will never truly relax and have power until the lower body drives the force.
Even when one uses the lower body to drive the force, the root can be lost because the shoulder, as well as any other joint or part of the body may interrupt the transference of power. When there is tightness or loss of coordination between the various joints and parts of the body, root will be lost. The hip, leg, etc. must act as one! Many times things inside the body fight against each other. For example, if the inguinal crease (part where the legs connect to the torso) at the hips is tight, the flow of energy will be broken in the body, breaking the root. When one practices in this way, the tightness or lack of body unity can give one the tendency to get injured. Sometimes one locks a joint. The hips and shoulders are typical joints that students will lock which breaks the root."

Searching for Chimeras

Mike,

"I have been meditating for a while. Trying to find truth and myself. I recently came to the point where no matter where I look I don't see myself and I can't find myself. I feel extremely empty and its kind of scary. Like being on the edge of a cliff and feeling like I could fall off or in at any moment. How does one learn to cope with this?"

- Ben

Ben,

I don't much favor this "searching" or "trying to find" yourself, or as they say in traditional Vedanta based yoga, "Searching for the True Self." I once wrote a poem on this topic:

"Who am I?"

Such a strange question,
uttered endlessly, by
weekend seekers of the Lost Psyche.
Feigning amnesia,
they blather on about their "True Self,"
their Grand Soul lost somewhere outside their petty lives,
hidden away and blocked by fleeting fleshy passions,
stolen away by the finite soma and mundane mind.


Their Real Self: pure, eternal, blissful, free, true, wonderful;
right around the
supernatural corner,
waiting for them like a blind date.

You know who you are!

You are a unique body - interdependent with the watery world;
a boxcar of moving memories - a rich history;
known from the fruits of your work;
meshed with some family, holding somebody dear;
Somebody - unique as the fingerprint of your DNA;
named, spoken for, listening, and ...
Your search for "yourself",
your anxious questioning,
makes no sense.

A stale mantra,
a face before you were born koan:
"Who am I?", sterile, silly,
Pointless.
Yet, following an
irrelevant spiritual advisor's advice,
You try to figure it out, for hours and weeks,
befuddled, awed by your confusion, thinking
It's your puny powers of meditation or belief or determination
that keep you from
discovering
The Holy Grail of the Genuine Self.

You know who you are!

You might want to change who you are,
or forget who you were,
or tell others about who you are,
or learn why you get tricked into asking yourself this foolish question ...
but those are quite
different issues.

- Mike Garofalo, "Who am I," he asked himself,June 11, 2006
Above the Fog

I don't think meditation is a good way for finding truth. Philosophy is better.

So, what is sitting or standing meditation good for? In my opinion: calming the mind, resting, doing nothing, just sitting, lowering your heartbeat and blood pressure, sitting up straight, cultivating an Inner Smile, enjoying your garden ...

If the meditation techniques you have been practicing for awhile are just producing stress, anxiety, fear, angst, bewilderment, dread ... then stop that style of meditating. I suggest, instead, for you to get up at dawn, face the sun and say a Navaho prayer, and then go for a long walk.

Some meditation techniques are intended so make you realize that you are or have no eternal self, no substantive Ego, no everlasting soul, no True Self. Did not the Guatama Siddhartha Buddha or David Hume think this way? There is just Everything That Is and you are part of the What Is Now, a complex series of interrelationships, a bundle of sensations, a contingency with consciousness, impermanent at best, empty at the core, a snapshot out of the Great Video of Becoming.

There is a sense of "being true to oneself," authentic living, and remaining true and steadfast to your chosen values and chosen character. Many people live by the rules, customs, beliefs and fashions established by others. They have few core values, practices and habits freely chosen by themselves. I still think this is different from "finding the true self" spoken about by mystics and spiritual adventurers.

Embrace the fullness of the world, its beauty, its complexity, its power ... forget about searching for something or finding something. Everything is right before you.

As for the Cliff, yes, it is there. Michael Jackson and thousands of others fell off the Cliff this past week. In a snap of your fingers - you could be dead. To cope with this: courage, forget about the fact, move on, follow the path of peace, work diligently, do good, hike up to a cliff, taste the wild berries, and kiss your sweetheart today.

Mike

Slide Away Like a Snake

There are two ponds on my property. Quite often I will come upon a snake enjoying a rest in the shade at the edge of the pond. The snakes seldom move far from the edge of the pond for fear of the 20 or so guinea hens that patrol the fields and our dog. As soon as the garter snake becomes aware of my presence it quickly slithers and slides back into the pond. Retreat is the first defense.

The folklore of Taijiquan includes a story about Taoist Master Chang San-feng dreaming about a fight between a snake and a crane. What do you do when you can't retreat?







"Snake is one of the archetypal Five Animals of Chinese martial arts; the other four being Crane, Tiger, Leopard, and Dragon. These five animals originally represented the five classical Chinese elements before developing into their own styles. Snake is usually Earth, Tiger is Fire, Crane is Metal, Dragon is Water, and Leopard is Wood. Since they were derived from the Five Elements, they are kept in this pattern. At this point many styles delve into more advanced animal training or actual element training. The Taoist temples of the Wudang Mountains were known to have produced many snake stylists.

Snake style is based on whipping power which travels up the spine to the fingers. The ability to sinuously move, essentially by compressing one's stomach/abdominal muscles, is very important. Footing is quite grounded. The stance work is fluid in order to maximize the whipping potential of any movement. This necessitates building a strong spine to contain the power and strong fingers to convey the strike. Since breath is important to any movement of the spine and ribs, snake style is considered one of the main styles which eventually led to internal training. Snake style is also known as an approach to weapons training, the Chinese straight sword and spear in particular. There are even specialty varieties of sword blades and spear points that curve back and forth down the length of the blade in imitation of the snake's body known as snake sword and snake spear."

Snake Style Kung Fu
History of the Martial Arts Blog

Five Animal Frolics