Qigong" is a modern term that became popular less than a century ago.

It literally
translates as "skill in cultivating the subtle breath of Nature". Note that "chi kung"
(Wade Giles system) and "qigong" (pinyin system) are identical. They are two ways of
translating the same Chinese ideogram, or "picture writing". Both chi kung and
qigong are pronounced "chee gong".
What is Qigong? From the outside, qigong looks like a slow moving exercise. From
the inside one feels the Life Force is breathing you and causing your movements.
When one enters the qigong state of "flow", it feels like the breath of life is pulsing in
every cell of one's body and beating within the very heart of one's soul.
Long time qigong practitioners don't really think of qigong as limited to physical
exercise, although most started off with that assumption. To many, qigong becomes a
Way of Life. Some think of it as a kind of personal religion that honors the divine
principle of "harmony as energy flow". They feel this way because the Life Force
principle underlying qigong penetrates into every moment of daily life. The energy
that you get flowing during the exercise continues to flow all day long!
Every breath, every thought, every feeling, every action becomes part of one's qigong
practice of cultivating the flow of harmonious and balanced chi (qi). Inner and outer
life processes gradually merge together into one. The "formal" qigong exercises are
just concentrated moments of that process, where you devote 100% of your attention
to feeling it.
A short description: "Qigong is the mother of tai chi". Qigong movements look like
graceful tai chi movements that most people are familiar with. Most qigong exercises
are shorter, easier to learn, and give faster results.
The qigong forms I teach are mostly for medical and spiritual benefits. Most of my
qigong exercises come in sets of five movements. Over time, one learns different sets
to cultivate different types of subtle energy or create specific health benefits.
By comparison, a Tai chi chuan (taijiquan) long form often has up to 150 movements.
Tai chi movements are designed to have fighting applications, and thus are often more
complex to learn. Tai chi has secondary health benefits that over time are similar to
qigong. But I've found that modern people are very busy, and few will make the time
to learn and practice tai chi chuan deeply enough to get its benefits. Learning short
qigong forms is a much more practical and effective strategy.

A second short description: "Qigong is a Way to practice Chinese medicine on oneself

without acupuncture needles or herbs. Instead, one uses breathing, movement, and
intention."
In ancient China, qigong was called "yang sheng", or "Long Life Nourishing
Exercises". Sitting and lying forms of qigong were called "dao yin", and may appear
to resemble Indian yoga even though the internal dynamics are quite different.
The earliest Chinese drawings of qigong we have are on silk scrolls found in a tomb in
Mawangdui, China dated to 216 b.c. These scrolls illustrated medical applications of
humans doing animal movements, while making healing sounds that were listed
below each picture. They suggest shamanic origins of the exercises which I teach in
Qigong Fundamentals 1: the Five Animals Play the Six Healing Sounds. This form
integrates two of the oldest forms of qigong. They have survived for thousands of
years because they are simple and they work to build good health.
Qigong embraces a wide variety of gentle, often circular movements and sometimes
vigorous gymnastics designed to open specific energy pathways. Some exercises
strengthen specific vital organs or body parts such as bones, tendons and joints. It may
include special breathing or mental focus. Qigong is basically part energetic science
and part experimental art. Your body-mind is the laboratory for developing superefficiency of physical, mental-emotional and spiritual health.
You learn four types of qigong in the first two-day home study course, Qigong
Fundamentals 1 & 2. But this is no ordinary weekend workshop - it distills down 30
years of experience into a single, time-tested, take-home tool kit that WORKS.
The Inner Smile is a quiet or meditative qigong, but can be done anywhere, anytime,
during any daily activity. It gives you a practical process to come to peace with
yourself, your body, the people in your life, and with your personal destiny, both
worldly and spiritual. Inner Smile is the simplest and most heart-centered Way to
connect to the Life Force. It cultivates the heart-ground of unconditional selfacceptance as the basis for loving others, loving the whole of Nature, and most
important, loving the process of the Life Force itself. Without this core selfacceptance at the soul level, other types of cultivation are more difficult to stabilize.
The Six Healing Sounds (done in relaxed sitting pose) and the shamanic Five Animals
Play (moving qigong) are the fastest way to release all stress and start communicating
with your vital organ spirits. You learn to move stuck energy (chi). It can energize and

heal you of many chronic diseases. (To read more about the many chronic illnesses
healed by qigong, see the 3500 science studies on energy medicine).
The Micro-Cosmic Orbit is the most famous dynamic Tao meditation for activating
flow in the deep energy channels in your spine (yang energy) and chest (yin energy).
It's a safe, gentle method for opening a truly balanced flow of "kundalini", which is
poorly understood due to partial teachings in India. This spiraling orbit of energy
flowing around your body can be experienced as a grounded, continuous
communication between your spirit (shen) and your sexual essence (jing).
Many yogis get problems because they shoot the energy out their crown chakra. I
know, because I did kundalini yoga for years after mine opened up. I used a special
breathing method to open my kundalini, a method taught in Qigong Fundamentals 3 &
4.
In the Qigong Fundamentals 2 audio course I survey the different methods used in
India and China to open this core orbit pathway. I make it simple and SAFE with a
customized qigong exercise and a special lineage internal practice from Wudang
mountain in China. This method concentrates your energy into a spinning "pearl" or
"ball of chi". In later courses, I train how to use this concentrated ball of Life Force
for many things - such as dissolving physical illness, releasing blockages in your
blood/ancestral line, or to balance sexual energy.
The spiritually inclined, with deeper training in the higher alchemy formulas, can use
the pearl as a vessel for their soul to rebirth itself and travel in spiritual realms.
Everyone chooses their own path and gets to enjoy the freedoms - and responsibility of whatever they choose to do with the energy cultivated with qigong and neigong.
9 Major Benefits of Qigong (Chi Kung) Fundamentals 1 /5 Animals/6 Healing
Sounds
9 Major Benefits of Qigong (Chi Kung) Fundamentals 2/Orbit
I think sports and physical exercise is great, its one way to enjoy your body and
explore its potential. I've tried just about every sport. I am a top skier. I was a
professional white water rafting guide, with 40 trips down the Grand Canyon. I've
hiked in many of the world's most famous mountains. I swim a mile in the Caribbean
ocean every day during my winter retreat. I especially love outdoor sports - they put
me in direct contact with nature's energy field.

But none of these sports ultimately can compare to the benefits I've received from
daily practice of qigong. If I do a sport, I also practice qigong the same day. If I can I
also practice the qigong outdoors, to absorb more natural chi. Five reasons I find
qigong a superior form of exercise:
1. Qigong is a whole mind-body exercise.
The main difference is that qigong is not just a physical body exercise, it is a bodymind exercise. The mind could be defined as our ability to shape energy into thoughts,
feelings, sensations, or other perceptual patterns.
When you exercise the full spectrum of your body-mind using qigong, a completely
different experience happens. You begin to shape energy into flowing patterns of
harmony and balance and peace. You connect your body to the sky above and the
earth below, and your heart opens up a vast open creative space inside the body.
If you practice qigong in a group, you begin to experience the "group heart" of your
fellow practitioners. If you practice alone, it opens a peaceful space in your heart that
is easy and wonderful to share the rest of the day.
2. Qigong overcomes our resistance to physical exercise.
Qigong is so much fun, it becomes a "healthy addiction". People love being relaxed
while they exercise. Many folks tell me they cannot wait to practice it each day.
Unfortunately, most people treat physical exercise as something that you "do to your
body" or to your muscles or "to" your heart. They hate going to gym.
Why do so many people hate physical exercise, and drop it as the first excuse? Their
mind is separated from their body. Hence, there is an unconscious fear and sometimes
loathing of the body. The modern top-heavy mind sees the body like a difficult and
needy child, that cannot really be controlled.
Many modern people live in their head, and just visit the lower part of the body
occasionally to get it into shape. They exercise mostly so the head/face will look good
sitting on top of the body. Others can only experience their body through sex. Then
they quickly shift back into their head immediately afterwards. People engage in sexploitation of their own body without realizing it. It's much healthier to have a full time
relationship between your mind and your body.

Example: many joggers listen to music as they run in mindless circles around the
block. They are not focused on what their body is experiencing while running. They
ignore the joy of movement or the exhilaration of moving through space. Instead, they
listen to their favorite band because they find their body incredibly boring to hang out
with. Exercise is a chore. They resent having to work hard, to sweat to get the fat off
their flabby muscles. There is no deep mind-body communication happening during
their exercise.
With qigong it's different. You don't push the river, you find a gentle rhythm and you
repeat it with slow, relaxed, often circular movements. Different movements open
different energy channels in your body. The process invites to go deeper. You
gradually find the body moves by itself effortlessly, as if propelled by some invisible
energy field. You relax and enjoy a ride on an easy feeling of flow.
3.Qigong delivers better & quicker health benefits than ordinary exercise.
I could go on for an entire book all the health benefits that come about from this kind
of relaxed movement. About how ONLY gentle circular movements will stimulate
your lymphatic system, which is the backbone of the body-mind's immune system.
Jogging and aerobics actually shut down the lymphatic-immune system during
vigorous exercise!
Why would fast exercise cause your immune system to shut down? When you go
running, your body assumes that you need to conserve energy. It thinks (in the deep
instinctual brain) that you are running away from a bear chasing you down for a meal.
Your belly-instinct brain doesn't see your $200. nike running shoes, it thinks you are
in survival mode, so it kicks the adrenaline on and shuts the immune system. It
considers your immune system an optional at that survival moment.
So vigorous exercise is not optimal for your lymphatic and immune system. It may do
other things for you, and is certainly better than rotting in your chair! Does your heart
need the "fast" aerobic exercise? According to Chinese medicine, no. It posits that the
heart is already over-worked, and actually needs a vacation. Qigong gives the heart a
vacation by getting the chi meridians and blood vessels of the entire body to take over
the heart job of blood circulation.
That is why top athletes have low blood pressure - their circulatory efficiency is so
high that the heart doesn't need to overwork. Chinese sports athletes already know that

qigong training will give them a secret edge over their competitors, but they don't
advertise it.
Does science back up the claim that qigong offers superior health benefits? Please
check our the research from the past director of the Stanford Research Institute on the
3500 science studies proving the health benefits of qigong. (link is on the homepage,
or go to Articles page).
4. Qigong gives you more energy than you expend practicing it.
You get more energy back from qigong than you put into it. When you do qigong, you
are exploring the natural of perpetual motion. Your body is really a "free energy
device". Physicists admit that humans expend more energy than they take in from
food, water, and air. But they cannot answer the mystery as to where the extra energy
comes from.
If you practice qigong regularly, it is like making a really safe, profitable investment.
You get all your invested principle back, plus huge interest. Most physical "bodyonly" exercise result in a net energy loss. People work hard, they sweat, afterwards
they feel pleasantly exhausted. The addiction here is different - it is the need to release
pent up or stuck energy in the body.
So even this type of physical workout is healthy for you, up to a point. But consider
this: body builders who develop huge muscles often die young of heart attacks. Why?
Because as they age, their heart has to feed blood to all that muscle, and it gets
exhausted early. The big muscles turn to fat, and reduce efficiency of circulation.
Qigong in my progressive training has you store the extra chi gained in your bones,
tendons, and vital organs - not in the muscles. These require far less maintenance and
are part of the qigong secret to producing longevity.
5. Qigong is easy, fun, & all ages can practice it anywhere.
You can learn qigong and begin to feel the chi flow within minutes. It's really a
universal exercise - it's super easy to learn, whether you are 8 or 80 years old. You can
practice anywhere, anytime - indoors or outside, even in a small apartment space.
With qigong exercise, less is more. Less effort gives better results - the more relaxed
and soft you are, the more the chi can flow through you. Forget the "no pain, no gain"

exercise theory. When you push the river, you get tired of it eventually. Ordinary kinds
of exercise can make your body strong, but they wear you out energetically.
With qigong exercises, you can forget the sweaty workout. Stop treating the body like
a dumb sheep that needs to be herded by a head that "knows" what is best for the
body. Qigong exercise is about appreciating your body-mind, respecting its
intelligence, and giving it love and energy while you are moving it. The body-mind
together keep you young and healthy. Qigong doesn't push or stress the body into a
hard sweat - it seeks to release stress from the body.