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April 25, 2005
"And How Is Your Liver Today?" -- Qigong Practice Can Strengthen Your Internal Organs
You don't hear people saying "I'm off to the gym today to give my liver a workout." At best, they may focus on their heart or lungs. But with qigong, we pay tremendous attention to "organ workouts."
We tend to forget about our kidneys or liver or spleen until we are faced with a sudden and unpleasant health challenge. We like to think that our organs are on automatic pilot and will continue to function optimally without our intervention.
Some people confuse being strong muscularly, with being healthy. While muscular strength is wonderful for accomplishing physical tasks — or simply to look good in the mirror and others’ eyes — true, longterm strength is built from the inside out, with powerful qi and a resilient internal system. “Strong health” begins with impeccably strong internal organs.
Qigong’s emphasis on the cultivation of energy naturally strengthens the meridian system which feeds and regulates our organs. While these energy-cultivation methods are often very subtle, there is one set of movements where the tie-in to the actual organs is quite obvious on a physical level.
This set of qigong movements, which you also see show up in internal martial arts like Tai Chi, involve a deliberate, targeted squeezing and “massaging” of a particular organ. Think of the act of wringing out a wet towel.
The clearest example I can give you comes from the first method in the Bear Frolic, which you will see demonstrated on my Power Qigong DVD or see described and illustrated in my Five Animal Frolics Qigong workbook.
Here is a description of Bear Turns:
Adopt a wide low leg stance, with your feet angled out at 45 degrees.
Distribute your weight equally across the whole of the foot. Place your arms, elbows bent, above your shoulders, as if holding a log. Keep the chest open by holding the arms out to the sides throughout the movement. Twist your upper torso slowly to the left without moving the hips, so you feel a squeeze in the kidney/adrenal region. Inhale as you return your torso to the front. Repeat the movement to the right side.
Check out more of John Du Cane’s Qigong resources here
Posted by james at 6:43 AM | Comments (1)
April 18, 2005
The Qi-Field Effect and the Power of Group Qigong Practice
While practicing qigong on your own is the bedrock of your qi development, there is a tremendous advantage to practicing regularly with a group of fellow qigong enthusiasts. The advantage of group qigong practice has a lot to do with the phenomenon of “sympathetic resonance.”
If you hit a piano key on one side of a room and there is another piano in the same room, that second piano will vibrate, or resonate in sympathy. Same with human beings. We broadcast all the time, we emanate. When a group gets together to practice qigong, the emanations from the other members in the group begin to have a synergistic impact on each individual.
These qi-emanations start to vibrate backwards and forwards and have a natural tendency to amp up the overall group energy. Qigong being a practice that takes us out of our heads and into our energetic bodies – and into the present moment more deeply – the spiritual and healing impact can be profound.
In other words a group “qi-field” forms that is far more powerful than the sum of the individuals’ qi. The creation of this often-profound qi-field, in my frequent experience, leads to a state of communion, peace and tranquility that feels beyond wonderful.
At the highest level the qi-field generates enough spiritual openness to allow for what the Christian tradition describes as the descent of Grace, or what the Sufis would describe as Baraka. I have seen people break into tears with the beauty of this experience, or certainly smile knowingly at each other and shake their heads. I prize and savor this state as much as anything in my life. All you can do is open yourself to the possibility of this magic and it may or may not happen – a flooding in of universal energy, divine intelligence, or whatever you care to call it.
A deeply felt, deeply realized experience, even if it is fleeting, of complete connection. The spiritual clichés about “oneness” become a direct experience.
This is one of the main reasons I like to teach qigong, week in, week out, rather than just practice on my own.
Check out John Du Cane’s Qigong resources here
Posted by james at 8:46 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
How Qigong Helped Me Survive Whiplash After Being Double-Rear-Ended
I remember my first major Tai Chi master telling me that extensive Tai Chi and Qigong practice could help you better survive whiplash. Despite my respect for my teacher I remember feeling somewhat skeptical of his claim.
Master Chu told me that Tai Chi and certain Qigong practice helps open up the joints and create a kind of extra springiness and cushion, an internal recoil mechanism as it were. When you experience whiplash from a car accident, that extra springiness would result in reduced injury, or no injury at all. Sort of like the common phenomenon of the drunk or small kid who displays surprising resilience after an accident that would mash up a normal human being.
Well, I finally had my chance to test-drive (test-crash, to be more accurate) this theory in person. Please, don’t bother to try it yourself…!
Just outside the Portland Oregon airport, me and my rental car were idling at a red light. Behind us, about fifteen feet, was a white Ford Explorer. Suddenly the darn thing came lurching forward and slammed into my rear. The light was still red. What the heck? The Ford Explorer backed up to its original position and … came slamming into me a second time!
I’m sure my head bounced around like a Bobble Head Doll…
Redneck roadrage gone crazy? Shotgun-toting, wild Oregonites who hate the back of my head? Instant-victim.com? What the hell? I thought I was in some spoof horror movie, gone wrong.
I slid out of my rental and sauntered over to my friendly butt-lover. Turns out to be a profusely apologetic old geezer, who’d recently had cancer and whose leg started twitching and whose foot slipped off the brake and… and… what the hey, let’s try that again, it felt so good.
Funnily enough — despite first wondering if I was about to die pitifully — I stayed calm and relaxed throughout the whole incident. Didn’t even get angry at the old dude.
While I stiffened up somewhat in the three-hour drive that followed and felt some very minor aches and pains, I remained remarkably unaffected physically by the double rear-end. Within a day, I had to remind myself I had been in the accident at all.
My hunch is that my Tai Chi master was right after all. My Qigong and Tai Chi practice had stood me in good stead — giving me an extra resilience and springiness in my joints, and a relaxed body overall that helped me avoid tensing into greater injury.
My Qigong Recharge program in particular has many wonderful joint opening techniques. Here is one very simple movement in the meantime you can do to open up your shoulder, elbow and wrist joints:
Inhale and very slowly raise your arms up from your sides to shoulder level. Stretch and lockout your arms while holding your breath for a few seconds. Exhale very slowly, bringing your arms down to the sides. As you bring your arms down, go into the wrist, elbow and shoulder joints mentally, in turn, and tell them to open. Repeat nine times.
Check out John Du Cane’s Qigong resources here
Posted by james at 6:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 4, 2005
Four Prerequisites for a Successful, Longterm Qigong Practice
I hate to tell you this, but as wonderful and rewarding as qigong is... it'll also be one of the toughest, most demanding things you ever take on. I was reminded recently when studying with another qigong teacher, that there are four hugely important pieces that need to be in place, if you wish to maintain a lifelong qigong practice.
So here are the four factors, in no particular order:
Money (sorry about that!)
The Right Teacher
Connection to a Practice Community
Good Environment
First: money — and why it’s on the list. Extracting and accessing high-level qigong teaching is not cheap. While I have never totted it up exactly, I am sure in my life I have spent in the high five figures, perhaps even more, studying qigong and internal martial arts.
While you may occasionally luck out and stumble on a high-level qigong teacher who is prepared to pass on his knowledge for a low fee, my personal experience has seen a high correlation between quality and price. Qigong knowledge has often been developed as the prized secret of a monastic or martial arts group. One of the best ways to maintain this sense of value — and to discourage the casual “bottom feeder” — is by charging highly for the knowledge.
Cultivate the willingness and ability to make good money by providing high value to others and charging well for your services. Abandon poverty consciousness and learn to see money as a vehicle to accomplish your goals. Then you’ll have all the money you need to go on that seven-day qigong retreat three thousand miles away, or attend weekly classes for many years with the right teacher. And you are way more likely as a result to progress in your practice and feel motivated to continue.
Which brings me to the importance of finding the right teacher. It is highly improbable that you will succeed in a longterm practice if your qigong experience is based simply on reading books and perhaps watching a few instructional videos, worthwhile as those are within the right context. Practicing alone out of books and videos you’re almost invariably going to be off in your posture, breathing, movement and use of attention. It’s not much different from attempting to learn music without a personal teacher.
A good teacher will model what they teach. They will emanate the energy and calm they speak of. They will be able to communicate the essence of the qigong practice with a rich array of examples, stories, metaphors, similes and other teaching devices. They will give you crucial feedback on the finer points of posture, breathing and movement that can substantially transform your results. Qigong is way more than just picking up mechanical movements. Qigong can be called the “art of being” and the qigong practitioner “a work of art in progress” or a “living work of art.”
Choose a teacher who you can trust on this level — a fellow life-artist intent on helping you develop your full potential as a human being.
Closely allied to the choice of teacher, is connecting to a group of fellow believers. The continued inspiration you receive from your co-travelers on the path will make a tremendous difference to your sticking with qigong over the long haul. In group qigong practice, the phenomenon of sympathetic resonance strongly impacts the overall energy experience. However well you do on your own, the orchestrated qi-emanations of the group will help power you through the dark days when you would otherwise feel stuck, unconnected or directionless.
And, while you can practice qigong almost anywhere, for longterm success actively seek out and maintain an environment that is going to be truly conducive to qigong. Create a place you can be, every day, which is tranquil and clean — with good air and good light. Let your external environment reflect the inner beauty you are cultivating.
Check out John Du Cane’s Qigong resources here.
Posted by james at 9:23 AM | Comments (0)