MODERN QI GONG

BREATHING TIPS

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 MODERN QI GONG

These are general guidelines on how to breathe and how to thinking about your breathing
during Qi Gong:

You'll generally want to breathe in through the nose. This helps calm your nervous system
down.
● Take slow, deep, full breaths. Try to connect the movement to your breath.
● Breathe in and out through the nose when you want to cultivate or keep energy
contained.
● Breathe in through the nose and out the mouth when you want to release energy.

During some exercises, Lee will encourage you to exhale out through the mouth. This is done
specifically when you are releasing "old or stagnant energy". These are called 'purging"
exercises. Purging is a term for releasing. When you are "gathering" or what is called "tonifying"
the breath is in through the nose and out through the nose.

For example, in the “shaking exercise”, you're releasing tension and stress from your body.
You'd breathe in through your nose and exhale out through your mouth to release the energy
connected to tension and stress.

When you move into the flow portion of your practice, you begin to cultivate the kind of energy
and emotional state you want for the rest of your day. Then you'd breathe in and out through
your nose to contain that positive energy and not release it.

These aren't hard rules. They're more like guidelines. If you have a condition that makes it
difficult to breathe a certain way, do whatever is most comfortable for you. Same goes with
physical limitations.

You will hear Lee say, "No pain, no pain." Qi Gong isn't a practice where you have to get the
movement and the form exactly correct. If you cannot do a movement either modify it to fit your
body or visualize yourself doing it. Students have recovered from surgery just visualizing
themselves practicing Qi Gong in their hospital bed. Their doctors are stunned by how quickly
they heal.