Qi Gong
What is Qi Gong?
Have you ever taken a moment to think about how amazing it is that with every breath you take you are generating enough energy to power your entire living system? Qi qong is an ancient practice developed in China which makes use of this energy, harnessing, accumulating, and distributing it through and around the human system to achieve benefits of health, well-being, and spiritual evolution.
QI
Qi translates generally to “energy” and can refer to a multitude of different forms of expression of energy, but in this context, it more commonly refers to “life force energy” or “energy of breath.” Qi is the life-giving current which flows through all living beings and through nature and the whole universe. You can think of Qi like electricity, of course in its raw form it seems very consistent. You can turn it up or down, increase the volume or capacity, but it remains electricity in its essence. But, when you plug it in to an appliance such as a light or a charger, it expresses itself differently based on the configuration of that specific device. In the same way qi takes many different forms based on the application of expression, such as the different types of energy that we gain through ingesting food, breathing or through movement.
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Qong
Qong generally translates as “results”, or “skills achieved through practice”, or to represent it more accurately in this context, “the process of Cultivation through practice”. The word qong when used in the context of Qi Qong or in Qong Fu (commonly spelt Kung Fu), refers to the practice itself.
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Cultivation
Qi Qong as a whole would more literally translate as Cultivation of One’s self through Practice. Through a series of specific movements carried out in conjunction with the breath, a sense of peacefulness, stability, mental and physical well-being is gained.
It has been scientifically proven that qi qong can benefit people on several levels of their life, including increased immunity, stabilizing blood pressure, increasing organ health, physical and mental healing, and more. Whether it is the practice for that day, or the practice for your life, when cultivating one's health, well-being, and spiritual nature, It is important to recognize that it is a process that follows the laws of nature.
You can not force a flower to grow, just like you can not force results to happen from your practice. But with time and effort surely the practitioner will begin to experience wonderful results.
Meridians
Meridians are regarded as the “channels” or pathways in which qi tends to naturally flow within the human system. The meridian system runs throughout every aspect of the body, connecting the organs, the limbs, the brain, the nervous system, the endocrinal system, etc.
You can think of the meridians as a circuit that runs through the body starting in one place and traveling in a steady and unbroken chain throughout the entire body until it returns to the beginning again. When looked at from this perspective we can begin to conceptualize that the human system is truly a bioelectrical organism, powered by a circuit of subtle currents generated through harnessing qi, or energy, that we receive from external sources through means of accumulation.
How amazing is that!?
The Meridian System
The meridian system has been widely accepted in Western Medicine as being both accurate and accessible, and in many cases can be utilized effectively in treating a patient’s disease, yet there still has been no way to visually identify the meridians, nor has Western Medicine been able to grasp the fundamentals of how or why it works.
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There are several different “circuits” of meridians in the human body which qi follows, but the most referred to in relations to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the healing Arts, are the 12 Primary meridians, relating to the internal organs, and the Eight Extraordinary Vessels, relating to internal reservoirs of q which are very subtle in nature.
Along with these circuits, there are many points, sometimes referred to as acupuncture points, which act as a kind of gate through which qi flows through. When these points are blocked, the qi struggles to flow through and qi stagnates in the body, which can lead to disease both physically and mentally. When the points are open and clear, qi flows through smoothly and the human system remains in healthy function.
TCM and Chinese Healing Arts make use of the meridian system by guiding qi through the meridians by means of specific physical movements, breath, and external manipulation such as acupuncture needles. By doing so, it is said to be possible to improve one’s health, on many levels, such as increased cardiovascular health, improved immune system, relaxing the nervous system, and most interestingly, improving the health of the practitioners’ internal organs!
Accupunture Points
According to TCM there are said to be more than 2000 acupuncture points throughout the body, although according to the World Health Organization there have been 361 recognized acupuncture points. I would like to point out here that in ayurvedic philosophy it is said that there are 72,000 nadis, or points, throughout the body!
In order to understand this, we have to recognize that TCM was in large founded through the process of trial and error, so although the number recognized in TCM is much smaller than 72,000, this is also most likely due to the fact that these points would not all be useful to an everyday practitioner and so may hold no practical value to 99% of the population.
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We will expound more on the meridian system in our courses such as the Meridian Acupuncture course and understanding the Meridians.
