It’s crazy how our ancestors had already developed the spiritual and physical technology to live a healthy life. Meditation and yoga are very popular, but today I want to talk about Qigong.
For most of my life, I’ve practiced intense physical activities: American football, basketball, surfing, and lifting weights. I love the high intensity, but as time goes by, I’ve started noticing the need for the more subtle, to learn to feel and observe what’s not clearly visible or easy to feel. Meditation has helped me a lot, but I’ve found that including some sort of moving meditation is a great complement to observing the invisible.
Thanks to my friend Adrian, I’ve started developing the practice of Qigong, a moving meditation that allows me to observe my vital energy and balance it.
Qigong ,qi gong, chi kung, chi ‘ung, or chi gung ( 气功; traditional Chinese: 氣功; pinyin: qìgōng; Wade–Giles: ch‘i kung; lit. ‘life-energy cultivation’) is a system of coordinated body-posture and movement, breathing, and meditation used for the purposes of health, spirituality, and martial-arts training. With roots in Chinese medicine, philosophy, and martial arts, qigong is traditionally viewed by the Chinese and throughout Asia as a practice to cultivate and balance qi (pronounced approximately as “chi” or “chee”), translated as “life energy”.
Qigong practice typically involves moving meditation, coordinating slow-flowing movement, deep rhythmic breathing, and a calm meditative state of mind. People practice qigong throughout China and worldwide for recreation, exercise, relaxation, preventive medicine, self-healing, alternative medicine, meditation, self-cultivation, and training for martial arts.
Qigong. (2022, August 10). In Wikipedia.
I am a complete beginner, most of what I know I’ve heard from Adrian or read in the Wikipedia article above. What I can tell you is that this moving meditation does miracles with my mental state, I feel peace, and I feel balanced. I’ve also found that when I do this before performing something important I get in a flow state quite easily.
If I had to choose one benefit of this practice is developing the ability to feel and observe the subtle. Qigong is about working with the Qi, how often are you in contact with your vital energy? How does it feel? Can you tell your energy from the environment’s energy? From someone else’s energy? This practice is great for honing your intuition and connecting with your body and spirit.
Here’s the video of the practice I am doing, enjoy!
