Chi Gung

What is Chi Gung?

(Qigong / ch’i kung) is an internal Chinese meditative practice which uses slow graceful movements (and sometimes breathing techniques) to promote the circulation of qi (chi) within the human body, and enhance a practitioner’s overall health. Although Chi Gung is often confused with martial arts or tai chi, Chi Gung is usually much slower and focuses on the “qi” aspect to a much greater degree. With more than 10,000 styles of Chi Gung and 200 million people practicing there are a variety of methods.

There are three main reasons why people do Chi Gung: 1) To gain strength, improve health or reverse a disease 2) To gain skill working with qi 3) To become more connected with the “Tao” (God, True Source or Great Spirit) for a more meaningful connection with nature and the universe

What are the benefits of practising Chi Gung?

There are many wonderful benefits derived from practising, and they may be generalized into the following five categories:

1. Curing illness and promoting health
2. Enhancing vitality and developing internal force
3. Promoting youthfulness and longevity
4. Expanding the mind and the intellect
5. Spiritual cultivation

What kinds of illness can practising Chi Gung overcome?

According to Chinese medical thought, practising Chi Kung can cure as well as prevent all kinds of illness, including diseases like asthma, diabetes, hypertension and cancer which are generally considered “incurable” by conventional medicine.

How does practising Chi Gung cure so-called incurable diseases?

One must, first of all, realise that the conventional medical paradigm is only one of many ways to look at health and illness, and it is not necessarily the only correct way. According to the Chinese medical paradigm, there is no such a thing as an incurable disease, although a patient may be incurable if his disease, even a simple one, has done damage beyond a certain threshold. No disease is incurable because it is our natural birth-right to overcome all types of diseases — if our psychological and physiological systems are working the way they should work. Illness occurs only if one or more of these natural systems fail in their functions.

When all our systems are functioning naturally, the Chinese figuratively describe this condition as harmonious chi flow, i.e. the energy flow that supplies the right information to every part of our body (and mind), that provides the right defence or immunity when needed, that repairs all our wear and tear, that channels away toxic waste and negative emotions, and that performs other countless things to keep as alive and healthy, is functioning the way it should.

If this harmonious chi flow is disrupted, illness occurs. The forte of Chi Gung is to restore and enhance this harmonious chi flow, thus overcoming illness, irrespective of the labels one may use to define its symptoms, and promoting health, which the Chinese have always considered to be more important than curing diseases. It is significant to note that the claim of Chi Gung to overcome illness and promote health is not based just on the above philosophical explanation, but on thousands and thousands of practical cases.

How is Chi Gung related to Zen or meditation?

There are three aspects in all types of Chi Gung, namely form, energy and mind. If you practise only the form, without the energy and the mind dimensions, then you are merely performing physical exercise, strictly speaking not Chi Gung, for there is no training of energy. For an effective control of energy, you have to enter what is called in modern terms “a Chi Gung state of mind”. In the past, this was called “entering Zen” or “entering silence”. When you are in Zen or a meditative state of mind, you can, among other things, tap energy from the cosmos and direct the energy to flow to wherever you want in your body. It is this mind aspect of Chi Gung, even more than its energy aspect, that enables Chi Gung masters to perform what lay people would call miracles.

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