A First Hand Look At Qigong
Qigong is the Chinese term for a number of different exercises which allow a person to regulate the flow of Qi in his body. Qi is used to denote the breathing or a patter of breathing.
It is also loosely based on the concept of Prana in the Indian culture. It is gaining a strong acceptance as health related movement especially because of the promotion give by the government of People’s Republic of China accepting it as a science.
Spirituality
A large number of people across the globe accept the exercises a way to maintain good health. Most of them maintain the relations of these exercises with Taoist and Buddhist monks. Some of the people relate them as martial arts and there may be a little truth in that. You may regard them as a cross between the martial arts developed in the ancient China and the routines of meditation developed in the ancient times in India.
Structure And Recognition
Of particular importance are the works of Dr. Yan Hin. Dr. Hin is qualified in both the western medicine and the traditional Chinese medicine. The doctor one stated that there is a possibility that these exercises might be rejected as a superstition. Hence he started to formalize and ’scientifically’ prove the capabilities of these exercises. The efforts of Dr. Yan Hin along with a number of other scholars have been published in the form of more than 20 research papers. These papers have been published in both United States and in China.
As of 2001, the PRC government started to take serious interest in the potential of the movement. A special association was founded to deliver its capabilities to the large Chinese population. By 2003, the association had formalized the set of exercises that are to be considered as effective. These include:
- Yi Jin Jing
- Wu Qin Xi
- Liu Zi Jue
- Ba Duan Jin
Each of the set of exercises is capable of delivering excellent results when performed in the appropriate manner. With the formalization of these exercises, it is now possible to draw a defining circle as to what are considered as the exercise of the movement and what not.
There are a number of hospitals which recognize the medical capabilities of these exercises. It is taught in a number of Chinese universities as a part of medical and health education curriculum. The exercises are also a part of National Health Plan of PRC for more than decade now. They were first included in the NHP in 1996 when the communist government decided to further strengthen its hold over the exercises.
Criticism
Qigong is not free of criticism, the most important of which is its dismissal as a superstition. Most of the Western practitioners reject Qigong outright as nothing more than a ‘useless set of dance like exercises with particularly amusing expression on the face.’ The fact that it has not been possible as yet to actually define what Qi is, has also given rise to many skeptical opinions.
