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Find Your Vital Energy

An Introduction to Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine

If you come to my office during the Chinese New Year, which occurs in midwinter, you would notice a stunning red amaryllis plant in full bloom in a pot by the window. That in itself is not unusual, for many people force flowering bulbs to bloom out of season in order to enjoy their brilliant colors in the depths of winter. The difference here is that I have kept this particular bulb for more than twenty winters now, and I purposely use my powers of energy concentration to make it bloom for the beginning of the new year and sometimes for other special occasions as well.

That is one way of explaining the essence of qigong: it’s about connecting with the universal energy that is all around us, and using it to open channels and correct imbalances. Since I have studied and practiced qigong for so many years, beginning in childhood, I don’t expect you to be able to harness the power of your own internal energy to make flowers bloom on demand. But I am here to tell you that there are so many accessible ways for women to enhance their own physical and emotional health using the simple tools of qigong.

The secret to a long and healthy life begins with qigong. As previously noted, the word refers to the movement of vital energy, or qi, through the body to clear blockages that cause illness, pain, and discomfort. In external qigong practice, people can learn to move in ways that detoxify the body by releasing harmful substances such as gases, air, germs, and—in terms that may seem abstract to Western thinkers—illness. This displacement of the bad by the good can also be performed on a person as internal qigong, meaning that an experienced qigong practitioner such as myself gives the person a targeted acupressure bodywork treatment, acupuncture, or both, to help them detoxify and rebuild. The patient usually requires more than one treatment, and up to ten visits to clear many common conditions; in acute situations, I may treat someone every week for a year or more. Furthermore, a person can balance her own internal qi by consciously eating and drinking in a way that brings yin and yang into qi harmony. All these things constitute the healing science, art, and spirit of qigong.

Qigong has no side effects. When I perform an external qigong treatment on a patient, my goal is to increase his or her blood flow, sending oxygen to troubled areas of the body, and hasten the removal of waste products that can cause pain or sickness. These two meanings of the word “qigong”—the personal health practices you can implement in your own life, and the bodywork I practice in my office—are two sides of the same coin, promoting the same health effects with the same basic principles, just in different ways, one drawing on external energy and the other on internal energy.

First recorded in the second century BC, qigong is a practice based in Taoism and Buddhism. Both religious systems use exercise and meditation to reach a higher consciousness in which healing energy can thrive. Our Chinese ancestors have passed down lessons learned through life experience, spiritual philosophy, and culture, proving their healing theories on human beings, not on mice in a laboratory. There is a beautiful logic to this way of thinking. For 2,000 years it has provided explanations for everything on earth, including the human species, our behaviors, and the body’s responses to illness and trauma as well as to good health. In traditional Chinese medicine, the individual is seen as part of a bigger picture—a piece of the natural universe. Like the universe, we are all controlled by certain undeniable rules of nature. The body, like the rest of the natural world, can be understood, and even manipulated, once the basic concepts of the universe are understood.

Fascinating as they are, you don’t need to know all about the fundamentals and philosophies of this ancient Chinese healing system to put its power to work for you, but I will review them here briefly because they provide insight into how qigong works within your body, and to help you begin to understand your own condition, whether you have lower back pain, headaches, anxiety, a sore neck, carpal tunnel syndrome, or any other complaint that never quite goes away.

As I hope you will come to understand, the wisdom of qigong is simply a basic human intuition that most of us have lost touch with: learning to sense blockages and imbalances inside our own bodies and those of our children and others we live with. By tuning into the energies around and within us, we can learn to normalize ourselves and maximize the flow of our vital energy—our qi—for relaxation, general well-being, and, most significant, relief from pain and various kinds of physical and mental distress. This awareness and ability is as valuable for people with depression or illness as it is for athletes looking to improve their performance, or indeed anyone hoping to be the best, healthiest, most tuned-in version of themselves that they can possibly be.

Vital Energy: The Internal and the External

Qi is the powerful life energy that connects each of us to the earth below and the heavens above. In Chinese tradition we often describe qi using the term “processed air,” or essence. This does not mean “processed” in a negative sense, but rather refers to the way in which a healthy body is able to process toxins from the air. If there is a bad chemical in the air, a healthy body with strong qi can process the air and get rid of the toxins quickly. While you are performing my qigong exercises, your body becomes a machine that processes air, relieving toxins and increasing circulation. In balancing our qi, we are getting rid of the bad chemicals. Think of it this way: if three people get together for dinner and eat a dish that contains bad bacteria, one of them might get very sick right away, the other might get sick two hours later, and the third will not get sick at all because her qi is able to process the air and quickly eliminate the toxins.

Qi is circulation. It is made up of blood, which is yin, and air, which is yang. It is important to note that the two are not the same. According to Chinese medical tradition, disease, sickness, discomfort, and chronic pain occur because of a blockage in either the blood or the qi. Qi is a force that you can feel, and that can be utilized to heal. You, too, can learn to use this force for healing. When you are aware of it, you can take control of your health through diet, simple but purposeful exercises, and meditation. The sum total of those practices working in concert is qigong.

Qigong uses energy from the air to build physical vitality. There are many different forms of qigong practiced around the world, but they are all basically very similar. Think of a child who is born and given a name—she is still a human being at a fundamental level, though her name is specific to her alone. That’s how I explain why my type of qigong is slightly different. Through five generations, my family has created a unique form that accesses five unique pressure points that can quickly stop pain. These points are in addition to the standard pressure points used by all Eastern healers. My ancestors who worked as healers specialized in treating chronic diseases and traumatic injuries such as broken bones and torn ligaments. Their other specialty has always been female issues such as breast tumors, fertility, pregnancy, and disorders of the reproductive system.

As an external qigong healer, I use acupressure, acupuncture, and herbal remedies to adjust the flow of people’s essential energy, or qi. When clients come to my office, they first lie on their back on a massage table, and I run my hand through the air over their body. I don’t always need to touch people to diagnose them because I am able to summon the power of energy and use it to clear blockages of qi. Thanks to my training in medical qigong and energy healing, I can feel heat where someone is experiencing pain or discomfort even before I touch them. I can also tell what’s bothering them by vigorously palpating their lower abdomen and examining their organs that way. Then they turn onto their stomach and I work on acupressure points on their upper and lower back to move and restore energy. I finish by placing small cups on specific points on the back of the torso to remove toxins while the patient rests for 20 minutes.

Based on the same general pressure points and principles as acupuncture, the gentle exercises I recommend can be used in place of needles, which must be placed by a skilled acupuncture specialist. It’s important to differentiate between internal qigong—accessed through these self-guided movements—and external or applied qigong, the healing energy emitted by a practitioner such as myself. I have developed my healing ability through decades of study and practice, but you can learn to develop your own powers for healing by regularly practicing the simple exercise techniques on pages 102–139. If you’ve ever noticed a group of Asian people slowly and gracefully moving through tai chi routines in a public park, you’ll have an idea of what qigong exercises look like—each one is a moving meditation designed to stimulate a particular part of the body for optimum functioning and best health. Diet is the other major component and is one of the main reasons that I wanted to write this book: to communicate my essential advice about proper nutrition to the widest possible audience of women.

In America, qigong is gradually becoming more accepted by doctors and the medical community, as well as by the patients who have experienced its beneficial results. It has been embraced by those looking for an alternative to conventional medicine, based largely on diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical drugs. In China, qigong is backed by medical science and has always been used for health maintenance as well as healing. Americans are learning that it can be helpful to patients suffering from a wide variety of disorders, including chronic headache and migraine, allergies, asthma, inflammatory conditions, insomnia, hypertension, gastroenteritis, pneumonia, pulmonary emphysema, osteoporosis, rheumatic arthritis, accidental injuries, gynecological conditions, strokes and neurological disorders, chronic fatigue, and some non-metastasized cancers.

The techniques that make up the qigong practice help us learn to regulate body, breath, and mind. In China we’d say that qigong is exercise for your jing (essence), shen (spirit), and qi (the vital energy in all living things). Exercising these three parts of our being is the key to maintaining and restoring physical and mental vitality. Qigong provides tools to help you withstand the stresses of modern life and better resist the threats to good health that we all encounter. Working with a qigong healer, people can recover from injuries and illnesses, even the most serious of them, often with fewer of the procedures and prescriptions that are the main tools of Western medicine. Qigong principles are used in martial arts as well—for several years I treated and then gave qigong instruction to a famous American actor and martial artist—but my qigong is all about healing. Once you learn to access qi, to feel it by tuning into the natural world around you and understanding that you are part of the energy of the universe, you will begin to acquire the knowledge to adjust and balance your own vital energy.

Yin Meets Yang: Anatomy of Essential Opposites

In traditional Chinese medicine, a great emphasis is placed on the concept of balance. In fact, the entire universe may be viewed in terms of the balance between the two factors of yin (negative or passive elements) and yang (positive or active elements). The theory of yin and yang holds that all things have an opposite yet complementary aspect.

Women’s energy is yin energy. Men have yang energy. Yin is represented symbolically by water, quiet, substance, and night. Yang is represented by noise, fire, function, and daytime. Yin and yang may be opposites, but they are essential to and cannot exist without each other. That is the basic principle of balance according to qigong and traditional Chinese medicine: that every living thing is sustained by a harmonious interplay of two opposing energy forces. Nothing is totally yin or totally yang. Just as a state of complete yin is reached, yang starts to grow. They constantly exert an influence on each other in a sort of push-pull relationship. A traditional Chinese saying is, “Yin creates yang and yang activates yin.” In combination, they constitute qi, the essential energy of life that flows through the body via channels called meridians.

Yin and yang should never be thought of as opposites in the Western sense of good and bad. There is no judgment attached to this concept. To the contrary: They are dependent upon each other for their very existence. For example, there is no joy without sadness, no play without work, no hot without cold, no men without women—and vice versa. Thus, the balance between yin and yang represents a universal law of the material world. And in actuality, the words “yin” and “yang” describe intangible characteristics more than anything strictly material.

As I mentioned before, according to the qigong way of thinking, the individual is seen as part of a bigger picture, a piece of the universe. Like the universe, we are subject to certain undeniable laws of nature. Once we understand that our bodies, like the rest of nature, can be interpreted and manipulated within this framework, we can learn how to take control of our personal health and make a significant difference in our quality of life and longevity. And understanding yin and yang is essential to forming this understanding.

Yin governs one half of our essential organs and meridians, and yang the other half. Yin is strongest on your right side, and yang is strongest on your left. When these two forces are out of balance, the body’s essential qi is blocked, leading to pain and illness. Imbalances of yin and yang may be caused by stress, poor diet, unhealthy habits, emotional disturbances, inflammation, infection, hormones, and many other factors.

Yin is associated with contractions, cold, the moon, darkness, excess moisture, deficiencies, and chronic illness. Yin organs—the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and pericardium, the fibrous sac around the heart—are constantly active and involved in the production and storage of blood and other bodily fluids. Yin dominates the front of the body and the area below the waist.

Yang is heat, and its energy predominates in the back of the body and above the waist. Your small intestine, large intestine, gallbladder, stomach, and skin are among the yang organs. Yang is associated with the sun, hyperactivity, excess, and acute illness.