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One of the great, great benefits comes from Qigong's concentration on abdominal breathing. It teaches you to come back to focusing on breathing down in the stomach, rather than focusing on upper chest breathing.
Abdominal breathing brings more oxygen into your system than upper chest breathing. The abdominal breathing style also helps activate the lymph system. Your lymph system is responsible for keeping you clean inside. Affecting your lymph system is not something that most Western exercise stresses very much. (Rebounding does and I've learned quite a great deal from the Rebounders about the importance of the lymph system.)
Qigong has bouncing movements, which also help activate the lymph system. It has stroking, a lot of stroking. This is very peculiar to Qigong and I don't see it in Yoga or many other disciplines—this kind of caressive stroking just off the body. Bioelectric Self Massage is a term I like to use for this aspect of Qigong. So, bouncing, stroking, and abdominally focused breathing—where the lungs are employed to their maximum potential—all start to activate the lymph system, which as we get older tends to get sluggish.
When the lymph system's sluggish, excessive blood proteins and fluids gather around the cells. The cells are supposed to be in what's known as a "dry" state. When the lymph system is functioning well, the excess fluids and debris are flushed away. Then more oxygen, blood, nutrients, energy or qi can actually reach and feed the cells—and keep you in a healthier state.
You are more vulnerable to many diseases if your lymph system is stagnant. So that's one of the benefits. When the lymph system is functioning well you also generate a relaxation response very easily.
And, part of the problem that we face in our culture is being constantly dis-eased, constantly feeling a little uncomfortable in our bodies, uneasy, wanting to be elsewhere than where we are, not really happy in our bodies.
The lymph system, again, when it's fully activated and you have this relaxation response firing, allows you to feel comfortable with your own body. Start re-living in your body and feel at peace in it.
Qigong affects the nervous system. One of the greatest benefits that I see in Qigong is that the nervous system shifts more into the parasympathetic than the sympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system is the part of our nervous system that is involved with "fight or flight." And, our culture has become addicted to that part of the nervous system. It's the "get up and go" attacking part of our system. It's triggered by a phone ringing. It's triggered by a car cutting in front of you. It's triggered by loud noises. It's designed to protect you. It's designed to activate. It sends a cascade of hormones and chemicals through the body to prepare you to deal with the threat.
Unfortunately, our bodies haven't caught up with our telephone systems, our fax machines, and all the other so called creature comforts that we've surrounded ourselves with that have actually induced stress into our lives. Over time this creates a chronic tensing in the body. Nothing wrong if that tension is used functionally for a survival situation, but what happens in our normal lives is that we tense up and then not all of that tension is relaxed away. We start to gather tension in our bodies and we suffer from what's known eventually as Sensory Motor Amnesia. The signals get sent to a part of the body to move, but they simply don't make it through to that part of the system.
BioSomatics came up with that term and Qigong is essentially a biosomatic system which through very gentle, conscious, slow movement helps enliven areas that have started to fall asleep.
When you practice Qigong, you are taken out of this desire to constantly put yourself into a surge of excitement and are moved into the parasympathetic system that's associated with pleasure and harmony. It's that feeling that you get sitting on the beach in Hawaii looking at a beautiful sunset, listening to your favorite music, gazing into your lovers eyes, that "Ah" feeling.
The "Ah" feeling is our birthright, but we make it hard for ourselves to live there, thanks to our culture of stress-addiction. So I found that for myself, Qigong works very well. The more you practice it, the more you go into that state. And it's not a passive, kind of sluggish, lying back on the couch kind of state. It's very alive, very buoyant, pleasureful. I compare it to slipping into a warm bath. That kind of feeling, a gentle kind of pleasure, as opposed to the rather harsh or seesaw like affect that is associated with those adrenal rushes.
So, Qigong practice can help just smooth your life out. Instead of being up and down a lot, become more like a gently undulating wave.
From a Chinese Medical perspective, a lot of disease comes from emotional imbalances in your system. And, there is also an element of disease that comes from external pathogens. Well, Qigong is wonderful for starting to balance your emotions. When you start balancing yourself energetically, you automatically begin having an impact on your emotional states.
Emotions—of which there are hundreds—are specific communication patterns we use to navigate the world. Every emotion has its place and use.
However, when certain emotions begin to act like bullies or dictators—fear and anger are great examples—the delicate equilibrium of information processing becomes disturbed.
Another way to think of it: imagine an orchestra where the drums refuse to follow the conductor's lead—and begin to play on their own without regard for the other musicians.
Qigong helps your Inner-Conductor regain control of your emotional orchestra through "energetic re-flow".
Most Western exercise, if it focuses on the internal organs at all, tends to focus on the heart, cardiovascular exercises, and the lungs, and that's about it. In Qigong you'll find that you'll be focusing on the health of your kidneys, liver, and other internal organ systems as being crucial for your overall internal health.
It's not something you're necessarily going to pick up on right away—that your liver is in better shape or that your kidneys are in better shape—but over the years, if you take Qigong up as a discipline, it's something that you're really going to appreciate.
In Qigong, your overall health and vitality have to be addressed from every aspect of your being.
Our interior beings are like children and most of the time we've abandoned those children. Most of our attention in our lives is externally focused. What I've appreciated about Qigong is that it teaches you to take care of yourself before you take care of anybody else. If you want to really help other people, you need to be emulating what you want to help them with; if you are a caregiver the same thing.
If you are a nurse or a doctor, a massage therapist, or working with people in any kind of a way, your body doesn't lie. It's giving out signals all of the time. If you are distressed, that's going to be communicated to the people that you are dealing with—and affecting the care process.
So, I've found that Qigong practice is excellent in a very practical way in really every aspect of your life: for your personal relationships, how you are with your family, how you are in business, how you are if you're leading people and if you're caring for people. In all of those ways, I've found that you can expect Qigong to help you model what's coming out of your mouth. So, there is congruence between what you say and what you actually are as a being.
If I wanted to sum up Qigong, I'd say that it's "the art of being." It's learning skills to develop yourself as an ongoing work of art.
You'll see the word "play" used a lot in Qigong practice and in Tai Chi. It's a kind of dance, in a way. It's an art form. There are skills that you learn in the process. At the same time, there are aspects of it that are very physical. You can expect to: get stronger from it; maintain your flexibility; circulation will improve; your general muscle tone will be affected; you can expect your digestion to improve or to maintain; many physical benefits; and then all the more subtle benefits that I have discussed.
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