How to Maintain Health in Qigong Practice

The main purpose of the qigong styles in this category is to first gain mental and spiritual calmness, peace, and balance. With this mental balance, you can then engage in moving exercises that maintain the smoothness and balance of the qi circulation. This category uses both still meditation and moving meditative exercises.

It is believed that many illnesses are caused by mental and emotional excesses. These emotions use up qi and cause stagnation in the channels and organ systems, which causes you to get sick. For example, depression can cause stomach ulcers and indigestion. Anger will cause the liver to malfunction. Sadness will cause compression and tightness in the lungs, and fear can disturb the normal functioning of the kidneys and bladder. Chinese qigong practitioners therefore realized that if you want to avoid illness, the first step is to balance and relax your thoughts. This is called "regulating the mind" (tiao xin). When your mind is calm and you are emotionally neutral, your qi will automatically regulate itself and correct imbalances.

In the still meditation used for maintaining health, a major part of the training is getting rid of thoughts so that the mind is clear and calm. When you become peaceful and calm, the flow of thoughts and emotions slows down, and you feel mentally and emotionally neutral.

This kind of meditation can be thought of as practicing emotional self-control. When you are in this "no thought" state, you become very relaxed and can even relax deep down into your internal organs. When your body is this relaxed, your qi will naturally flow smoothly and strongly, clearing obstructions in the channels and maintaining your health. This kind of still meditation was very common in ancient Chinese scholarly society.

Chinese physicians discovered that certain movements or exercises increased the qi circulation around the internal organs. Some of these movements are similar to movements that are characteristic of certain animals. It is clear that in order for an animal to survive in the wild, it must have an instinct for how to protect its body. Part of this instinct is concerned with how to build up its qi and how to keep its qi from being lost.

We humans have lost many of these instincts over the years that we have been separating ourselves from nature. One typical set of these qigong exercises, which is still practiced today, is called Five Animal Sports (Wu Qin Xi) another is the Eight Pieces of Brocade. Click to learn how Chinese medicine treats Pericarditis.

Over the thousands of years of observing nature and themselves, some qigong practitioners went even deeper. They realized the body’s qi circulation changes with the seasons, and it is a good idea to help the body out in these periodic adjustments. They also noticed that during each season, different organs had characteristic problems. For example, in the beginning of autumn your lungs have to adapt to the colder and drier air you are breathing. While this adjustment takes place, the lungs are susceptible to disturbance, so your lungs may feel uncomfortable and you may catch colds easily.

Your digestive system is also affected during seasonal changes. Your appetite may increase, or you may have diarrhea. When the temperature goes down, your kidneys and bladder will start to give you trouble. For example, because the kidneys are stressed, you may feel pain in your back. Focusing on these seasonal qi disorders, the meditators created a set of movements that can be used to speed up the body’s adjustment.