Most westerners that seek out the healing potential of qigong do so because they are in, or approaching, a crisis situation with regards to their health.

Fair enough, as if I were ill, I would certainly look for a modality of healing so that I could make my way back to being healthy and happy, because as the saying goes, “you have nothing, if you don’t have your health.”

This “fix the problem” mentality I would argue is the prevalent modus operandie of the majority of the Western world save the small percentage of people that realize this way of thinking is like running through a mine-field in a drunken stupor.

On the other hand the ancient Chinese used to believe that the doctor with the fewest patients was the best doctor because he had taught his “clients” how to properly care for themselves.

This is where qigong comes in. Qigong, among other things, is a healing art and millions around the world practice one or many of the available qigong sets in order to either heal a specific type of disease or better yet, to ward off potential disease.

The question is, how does qigong work? How does moving your arms around with co-ordinated breath or standing like a post or making healings sounds have an effect on ones health? That’s literally the billion-dollar question.

Part One - Qigong and the Breath

Contrary to popular belief, there is only one way to get physically sick. I can hear you all now saying “That’s ridiculous, there are hundreds if not thousands of diseases!”
Yes there are thousands of physical diseases but there is only one way for any disease to strike the body and that is at the cellular level. Regardless of which physical disease you name, every single one of them is due to malfunctioning cells. That’s the ticket right there. If the cell is healthy there can be no disease.

Now, here’s another simplistic yet true statement. There are only two ways for the cell to get into trouble. One is too much of a good thing and the other is not enough of what it needs. That’s it! Example - Water is essential to humans and we will quickly die without water but we can also drown in it… get my point?

On the cellular level the most important component for the heath of the cell is oxygen. Dr. Otto Warburg MD PhD stated in 1966 at a conference for Nobel laureates that oxygen depravation is the prime cause of cancer. In fact through meticulous experimentation Dr. Warburg found that the “prime cause of cancer is sustaining a 35% inhibition of cellular respiration.”  So deprive a cell of 35% of it’s required oxygen intake and voila it will become cancerous.

Now here’s the second piece of the puzzle. Just getting the oxygen to the cell is not enough to ensure cellular health. From the cellular perspective our job is to not only supply it with the oxygen that it needs, but we also have to give it the other tangibles it requires to make proper use of that oxygen. These other tangibles are in the form of EFA’s (essential fatty acids). Without the proper type and balance of EFA’s the cell will have an extremely hard time making efficient use of the available oxygen, kind of like gathering plenty of firewood, but not having a match. The EFA’s are imperative to cellular absorption of the oxygen!
(Note - EFA’s are called essential because the body requires them to maintain good health and they cannot be produced by the body and therefore must be ingested.)

The situation today with the skyrocketing influx of cancers is not simplistic by any means but a large component of the problem is the food processing commonly used today to extend the shelf life of food products which strips away the natural EFA’s from our diets.

Now back to qigong.

“The Sages of old, would breathe through their heels”

This eloquent metaphor means a few things but one of them relates to the depth of breath that qigong practitioners train themselves to take. Your lung capacity stabilizes between 20 and 30 years of age and then starts to decrease after that but one can offset this fact by correctly performed qigong which greatly enhances ones lung capacity, which in turn increases the oxygenation of the blood feeding the cells. This will be true regardless of your age. One set of Shibashi qigong takes me about 20-25 minutes to perform. That’s 25 minutes of slow deep breathing coupled with positive mindful intent on maintaining my health.

“There is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted. Then there is another way; a breath of love that takes you all the way to infinity” Rumi

Qigong practice coupled with proper EFA supplementation is part one of the plan to be proactive in your approach to health maintenance.


Part 2 to follow

(Note – a pdf file detailing the cancer prevention properties of proper EFA supplementation is available to anyone that requests it by email)