Why Qigong?

What are the benefits of Qigong? There are so many so we could not possibly list them all.

Before we start, can you think of any area of your life where you do not need energy? Work or play, business, relationships, children or gardening ... you name it - energy, vitality and well-being are so important these days for everything we do!

So, why Qigong?

It does help to be vital and healthy

Qigong excercise and training is directed at the life force. It is a complex of techniques allowing you to cultivate and store it for your own needs.

Roughly speaking, we are build of two kinds of things - matter and energy (although modern physics cannot really tell the difference any longer). Matter is our form, energy is our vitality. Whereas most excercise systems are aimed at the matter (e.g. to develop your muscles you go to the gym), the real benefit is gained through the movement created by an excercise - loosing off the tension, improving the circulation. However, the amount of energy you lose pushing weights is very high too.

Qigong practice works directly with the force that is behind the movement, increasing and cultivating it. There is no need for too much physical work anymore, so Qigong practice is much more gentle. It uses your energy resources sparingly and creates health softly yet effectively.

It is easily accessible

If you practice Qigong, you do not need any costly equipment or annual membership. All you need is your mind and your body. The practice is suitable for any place and time. You can do it during lunch break or in the evening. You can do it in the morning before you go to work. You can do it before the meeting in your office. Although it is good to practice Qigong regularly and have longer trainings, its basic version would not take a lot of your time. You can combine excercises into routine or take some away if there is a time limit. You can simply do what you feel and you will see the result of even those cut-out trainings. And you know what the best thing is? You do not even need a yoga mat :)

It protects you from stress

Qigong is a good stress protector and reliever. Once you feel stressed just step out of the room, find a quiet place and practice Qigong for a few minutes. You won't believe it how fast your irritation and anger will go away. Over some time of regular Qigong practice you may notice that usual ups and downs of life do not disturb you so much any more. It is like you have been strengthening your core - and whatever winds blow out there, your core is still intact.

It is non-invasive

Ok, that was about the excersise, but how about healing?

Unlike many other systems of medical intervention, the touch of Qigong healing is very light yet precise. The practitioner works with your energy in a way your body tells him to do, and does not add any more of his or her own thinking there. Once the energy is corrected, the matter of your body has no other choice but to follow - this is the way we work, the natural way.

It is holistic

If you come to a Qigong practitioner with a symptom, be sure that there will be a whole picture drawn for you where your symptom fits as a minor part of the whole. This picture does not only cover your physical body, but the whole world where you live. What's happening at work or in your relationship? How about your emotional state? What are the patterns of obsessive or negative thinking, carried through the generations in your family? Coming to relieve pain in your lower back you might be able to resolve, for example, your long-term anxiety, forgive yourself for not having visited your grandmother before she died, understand why your children are prone to having colds and so on and so forth. Qigong method is not only concerned with one tree - it sees the whole forest of your life behind it.

It is proven by centuries

Qigong is an ancient healing practice, proven by thousands of years of successful application. Many other traditional healing arts, such as Acupuncture or Tai Chi for example, have grown out of Qigong meditative observation of the body and mind, performed in the early days by Chinese sages during their quest for cultivation of consciousness.

It does not only cure: it prevents

Let us look closer, what is the difference between our modern Western medicine, counting just over 250 years of history, and any traditional one, such as Chinese Qigong.

Here is the continuum of health. From the supreme state of well-being which is not experienced so easily (in traditional cultures it is called "enlightenment") down to the separation of the mind from the body, also known as "death".

Modern medicine is preoccupied with the "sickness" and "disease" part of the continuum. You do not use the medicine until your symptoms are already quite severe? And when you do, it is quite invasive and often damaging to the rest of your system.

Traditional medicine does not have side effects. What it does have though is plenty of tools to pick a slightest imbalance and correct it before something serious could settle in. It can even teach you how to reach this mysterious state of "enlightenment" if you are so keen on it.