Qigong
Qigong, pronounced chee-kung, means energy work. You may
have heard of or seen T'ai Qi, the slow moving exercise popular in Chinatown
parks. Qigon
g
is a series of "exercises" that are derivatives of the T'ai Qi form. Done in a
standing posture, these sacred movements are used today to improve health and
enhance performance in modern life. Legend has it that ancient Taoist monks in the mountains of China
observed animals and the cycles of nature to devise these simple movements,
which are designed to promote the flow of blood and qi, the electromagnetic
energy that animates our physical form.
Whereas the ancient Chinese cultivated their qi primarily to "achieve immortality" and presumably to make things vanish in clouds of smoke when necessary, modern students mainly practice to achieve deeply peaceful states of mind, improved energy, balance and coordination, and to heal illness. Qigong is capable of all this and more, if it is taken seriously and learned from a truly qualified teacher.
I first got into studying qigong when I was 22, in a class at Precott
College
in Arizona, in 1992. I was lucky to have a "real" teacher, or some one who
understood the system
of Qigong as a matrix in their own body, cultivated over years. If you are interested in very non- taoist things like
lineage, please go to energyarts.com,
which is BK Frantiz's web site. He is the lineage
holder in the system I trained in. Scroll down on the left to Liu Hung Chieh,
who was my teacher's teacher. That guy had some serious Qi.