Built on the holistic concept of life, Qigong is a practical approach to improve and strengthen vital functions of the human body and turn natural instincts into conscious intelligence through regulating the mind, the body, and breathing.
The theoretical basis for Qigong – the holistic concept of life – encompasses the following points:
The universal nature is a whole entity, comprising countless material levels, which can tolerate and transform each other.
The human body is a whole entity. In the view of traditional Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine, this whole entity integrates body and mind and is dominated by the mind, centred on vital organs, and maintained by the Qi and energy contained in the meridian system. From the perspective of Zhineng Qigong, this whole entity is the Hunyuan entity that integrates body, Qi, and mind.
The integration of humans and nature. Specifically, humans and nature constitute a whole entity. Today scientists from Europe and America are also conducting research into this holistic theory.
Some benefits:
Improve Fitness
Qigong practice helps practitioners regulate their Yin and Yang, makes their Qi and blood circulation gentle and pleasant, dredges their meridian systems, cultivates their genuine Qi, and strengthens their vital energy. In other words, this practice makes weak people strong, rehabilitates patients, and rejuvenates the elderly.
Prolonging life
There are many Zhineng Qigong practitioners in the sixty to seventy age range. Before practising, most of them were pre-senile and weak. Taking it up rejuvenated them and they have become the backbone of Zhineng Qigong publicity. The Beijing Qigong Research Society once conducted an experiment on ‘fluid intelligence’ involving three hundred elderly people aged between sixty and seventy-two who practiced Qigong and three hundred people of the same age who didn’t practice it. Experimental results showed that the degeneration of the mental capacities of the former group was obviously proceeding at a slower pace than in the latter, while a few members of the first group showed no signs of degeneration at all.
Preventing and curing illness
Preventing and curing various diseases is one of the most remarkable effects of Qigong practice. It has a good curative effect not only upon common and frequently occurring illnesses, but also stubborn diseases. Many of the four million practitioners of Zhineng Qigong all over China were once afflicted with a great variety of diseases. In the Huaxia Zhineng Qigong Training Centre – also known as the first medicine less hospital – among the 130,000 Qigong learners enrolled there from November 1988 to July 1994, sick people accounted for at least 80 per cent. These people were afflicted with up to 180 types of diseases, including some diseases intractable to both Western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine. The average cure rate was 85 per cent during that period.
Why is Qigong practice efficacious, and even miraculously so, in curing such a great variety of diseases?
Traditional Chinese Medicine and Qigongology believe that diseases arise from Qi and blood deficiencies, disorders of Qi and blood circulation, and the consequent imbalance of various vital functions. The practice not only increases Qi and blood to sufficient levels, but also dredges them. As the saying goes, ‘A person will never fall sick if his/her Qi and blood are circulating smoothly’ and ‘If there is sufficient intracorporeal Qi, a person will never be invaded or troubled by pathogens’.
