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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 April 11, 2005 6:36 AM