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1, What is Qigong?
Qigong is an ancient Chinese practice for cultivating the body energy, for the benefits of physical body, mind and spirituality. Literally speaking, Qi means Energy, Gong means Practice or Effort. Many ancient Chinese practice such as Dao Yin(Move and Leand the body energy), Tu Na(Breathing technique), Lian Dan(Elixir or Inner Alchemy practice), Cun Xiang(Visualisation practice), Chan Ding(Meditation and Sitting practice) can be considered as part of Qigong , since Qigong is a modern term used to describe these ancient arts. Practitioner get benefits through adjusting the body structure, breathing, mind, diet and sleeping(include sexual activity) to improve, vigorate and balance the body energy level for self-cultivation, healing purpose and understanding the relation between human being and the whole universe.
2, The Brief Qigong History.
Qi is one of the most important fundamental philosophical terms used in Chinese culture and history. Qigong has been one of the important methods for Chinese people to understand the human body, the world and the whole universe. So that Chinese Qigong history has been developed parallel to the development of Chinese civilization.
Normally there are three stages of Qigong development.
(1), From remote antiquity time to Qin Dynasty(about 200 BC), it was called the Naive Primitive Qigong stage. at this period of time, Qigong had experienced different progression from being created to being well-developed. People took Qigong as a method of self-cultivation and daily practice for self-improvement, to keep body and mind healthy, explore potential abilities of human body. They found out that body would get into different stages of practices through keep the mind and body with tranquil state of approaching. they called the changes as Dao(the way), Jing (Essence or spirit), De, Zhong and others. to these people who got special abilities after practicing as Zhen Ren (Real Person) , Zhi Ren (lofty Man). They contributes the result of these benefits as "keep and concentrate the pure energy". At this time, Qigong had been part of the physical practice, medical practice and spiritual practice.
(2), From Han Dynasty(about 200 BC) to the end of Qing Dynasty(1636 AD-1912 AD)
This is the long period of Qigong development. During this stage, the benefits of practicing Qigong had been proven more thus Qigong had been promoted more as well. From this time, different styles of Qigong practices had been emerged, everyone of them developed their own practice according to different theoretical and practical system. The understanding and realizing of the human body and the nature had been deepened dramatically.
During this period, the five main Qigong categories had been emphasised, they are Daoism Qigong , Buddhism Qigong , Confucius Qigong , Medical Qigong and Martial Qigong . No matter which style, their purpose of practice share the same characteristics even though they focus on different aspects. Especially Daoism Qigong , since Daoism is the native Chinese philosophy, ancient Chinese had developed Daoism Qigong when practicing Daoism belief. Chinese medicine, a part of Daoism art, had applied Qi Going as a healing method from that time, eventually it became Medical Qigong late on, for instance, many classic Chinese medicine books back to that time put Qigong practice as an important part of the healing method, this greatly helped the popularity of Medical Qigong . Confucius school does not have special technique of Qigong practice, but their principle and idea of philosophical approach had became a type of Qigong practice... So we can say that these five categories of Qigong got well-developed at this stage.
(3), The modern time of Qigong stage. This stage began from 1900s. During this stage, Qigong have experienced a special time. It was the time that the modern scientific knowledge from the west went to China, the time that people's belief had changed dramatically, the time that many new theory and practice came out under the name of old practice, it was also that political environment had strong influence to Qigong practice as well.
From this time, many masters began researching the Qigong practice based on the modern scientific knowledge, or taking modern scientific and medical techniques as a test method, in order to find the answer of what the mechanism of this ancient secret. Especially after 1976, or the finishing of the ten years Cultural Revolution, many different styles of Qigong had emerged up as the great way for healthy life, disease prevention and treatment. Many masters have done a lot of research about the Qigong practice from medical and social aspects. Many hospitals have had Qigong as a special department for patients. In Chinese medicine universities, students must learn Qigong as as important course, many centers of Qigong had been built up for teaching and healing purposes, a few professional journals had been published from then on. Thousands of academic papers related to Qigong research have been published. All of these show that Qigong have strong impact to people's health and well-being. Chinese government even published some official document to sponsor some styles which have more benefits based on statistics research, such as Zhineng Qigong , Guolin Qigong (or Anti-Cancer Qigong ), Wile Goose Qigong , Six healing Sounds and some other styles.
In China, there are tens millions people practice Qigong every day although the government's Qigong policy has been changed from 10 years ago.
3, Introducing two important styles of Qigong,
There are hundreds of Qigong styles in China, we will introduce two of them.
(1), Zhineng Qigong ,
More details will come soon.
(2), Anti-Cancer Qigong ,
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4, What the benefit of doing Qigong?
More details will come soon.
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5, Master Yang's Qigong lineage.
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Energy Art 