Overlooked but important points on Qigong

a little Christmas or boxing day reading if you want some...

If you want some Christmas reading

Overlooked implications of modern Qigong:

Just in case you guys want some Christmas or boxing day reading, here is a little article about Qigong and some things I think have been overlooked, but are worthy of attention.

1: What Qigong actually is V.S. What some people want it to be:

A: Qigong did not begin in 1956, it is much older:

In an official sense Qigong got its start in the 1950s, but do you really think it started there?

Liu Guizhen is one of the official founders of Qigong, but he did not create Qigong, neither did the committee put in control of developing it and popularizing it as a public health program.

Liu's Qigong system is called Nei Yang Gong, it was a family system he learned from his uncle which largely focused on Buddhist meditative exercises and later developed complex Dao Yin sets.

Many such systems existed in China for who knows how long.

For instance, Yang Meijun's Wild Goose Qigong system was passed down in her family and went on to influence both Zhao Jinxiang's Flying Crane Qigong and Pang Heming's Zhineng Qigong.

Even though the latter two systems are thoroughly modern, being developed after the 1980s, the Wild Goose Qigong system predates them both and it is impossible to say how old the system really is.

How many Qigong systems have such a history? There is no way Qigong started in the 1950s, only the name Qigong started then.

B: Scholars totally misunderstand the relationship between government and Qigong:

many western scholars criticize Qigong as a CCP project, which in the beginning it was, but eventually the Chinese government came to mistrust Qigong and intentionally attempt to sabotage it before outright banning it, then moving its administration to the department of sport.

Qigong was popular until the cultural revolution, but during that time it was declared as a demonic bourgeois practice and many Qigong masters were persecuted, including Liu Guizhen who was placed in prison until shortly before his death when he was released.

After the 1980s Qigong was liberated, as were Daoism and Buddhism, but you have to understand that this whole matter of creating academic literature about Qigong, attempting to categorize it neatly in the way promoted by Chinese Medicine universities, and trying to clearly separate out practices such as Tu Na, Dao Yin, Visualization into discreet categories meant to be practiced by themselves is a way of taking power away from Qigong practitioners by simplifying it into a series of stretching and breathing exercises.

The reason for this is because Qigong makes people inwardly strong and resolute and creates an area of focus in life where people do not need Socialism with Chinese Characteristics to answer all their questions. Freedom of thought is not acceptable in authoritarian regimes and Qigong was becoming a serious risk since many people could come together in one place, focus on their own well-being, and maybe have some secret conversations about how to make the nation a better place. If those conversations would have any negative implications for government it would certainly be a problem.

There are no end of snotty American professors who view Qigong as a government project, quackery, and of no value compared to the perfect religions of Daoism and Buddhism, but these people simply do not understand the nature of Qigong and why it was a popular movement which gave people autonomy during a time where speaking your mind could get you beaten by the police and thrown in prison, if not worse.

1c: Cult Qigong is not about well-being, it is about control:

those cults, some of whom are quite litigious, often claim that they are just about well-being, helping the world, and curing illness, but in reality they are about controlling their followers and vying for political supremacy with the CCP.

These people may have been persecuted unfairly, but they are not good people and they also gave the CCP the pretext to ratchet down control of Qigong and essentially nipped a rapidly developing practice in the bud before it could bloom into something capable of transforming the Chinese nation and the world.

If you ever meet people who are seriously into those cults you will quickly find out they are much more brainwashed and insane than your average person on the street in any Chinese city. Most Chinese people basically understand they are being lied to by their government, at least to some extent, but those followers of crazy cult leaders are typically completely gone.

2: Qigong is so much more than stretching and posture holding:

Qigong is not exclusively based on Daoist ideas, it is actually a pastiche of Buddhism, Chinese and Biomedicine, and even some modern western ideas such as relaxation therapy, occultism, and much more.

I mentioned earlier that much modern Qigong comes from family systems, but in the second and third generation it was profoundly modified by masters to make it broader and deeper.

I have been spending an hour every morning recently reading Pang Ming's first book on Zhineng Qigong and taking exhaustive notes as well as following up on specific references and have come to recognize that modern Qigong theory is much deeper than the vast majority of so called traditional systems such as Yi Jin Jing, various assorted Dao Yin methods and the like.

How could it be possible that modern Qigong would be a watered down version of older systems? That isn't how history works!

Many ideas such as the Qi field are completely unique to Qigong and do not exist in Daoism or other styles from older generations. They are innovations which come from Western ideas such as the aura and are seamlessly integrated into already existing Chinese systems.

Qigong is way more advanced than the majority of garden variety Nei Gong and Dao Yin (notwithstanding the few excellent old systems, some of which are the origin of modern Qigong practices and some of which such as Min Yide's Thirteen Rules are just exceptional Daoist methods with no parallel in the Qigong world).

The reason people associate Qigong with the martial eight silk brocades, animal frolics and Yi Jin Jing promoted by the department of sport is because Qigong was intentionally cut down to size by the CCP in order to take the strength away from practitioners. Some people like Pang have been placed under house arrest and “allowed to retire” while others had to go underground.

Those fake stretching practices are not Qigong in any way shape or form, at best they are martial Nei Gong taught to non martial artists as a means of stretching.

There is no comparison between the officially recognized Qigong forms and the real thing, they are totally separate topics with one being a profound and transformative way to master your own internal energy and the other being a series of funny looking stretches.

With that in mind...

3: Qi is so much more than oxygen in blood:

Qigong practice uses many types of Qi, but the most important thing to recognize is that it isn't a little trifling matter of oxygen in the blood causing the nerve endings near the surface of the skin to wake up. If that were the case how would things like Qi transmission and the movement of energy in deep meridians be possible? Yes, the Qi of Qigong is not the Qi of Neidan, but it also isn't just an improvement of circulation due to deeper breathing and a relaxed body.

Yes, Qi in blood is also very important in our practice, but it is only part of a much bigger picture.

4: Qigong is promising but disorganized:

Hu Haiya once said that Qigong is a problematic word because it can mean virtually anything. Even a cup of tea and a snack can be Qigong in some way.

The problem with Qigong is that there is no good definition for it that everyone can agree on.

This means that there can be many types of practice which are quite different from one another.

This can be a problem since it makes it hard for students to understand what type of teachings will actually provide what they are looking for.

It is also a strong point of Qigong since there is so much material and so many ideas.

Like the Daoists say, fortune and disaster arise mutually from one another.

5: So what for your conception of ethics, you don't have to become a priest to enjoy a healthy body and mind:

One of the big criticisms Daoism has for Qigong is that Qigong lacks an ethical foundation, it is all Ming with no Xing, and Qigong masters can become deceptive and powerful by knowingly brainwashing their students, letting them think their energetic abilities are from heaven, and otherwise duping students to obtain unfair power.

It seems like people who make such claims simultaneously believe that these things never happen in Daoism, but let me point out that Daoism is one of the most money hungry religions in the world with masters often charging upward of $3000 USD for a few days of classes in hand stamps and mantras you could study on YouTube. Of course there are many good Daoists who don't use their status to cheat people, but couldn't the same be said of Qigong practitioners?

Dao De has an element of personal choice and basically people either care about it or don't, it really isn't a matter of whether you are a Daoist, a martial artist or Qigong master, the choice to practice virtue is entirely with you and you can learn it even without following specific abstentions.

It is also possible to be a good person and engage in sexual acts with your partner, drink alcohol, or even smoke cannabis. Enjoying pleasurable activities will not ruin you on a spiritual level, this is a serious failing of Daoism and hasn't always been an absolute doctrine of the tradition as is evidenced by the existing of Yin Yang Dual Cultivation practices between spouses and the propensity of some Daoist hermits to make and drink their own alcohol.

The key point is that you need to avoid overindulging in the things you find pleasurable in order to avoid addiction, that's it.

Insofar as ethics and energetic practice Daoists don't automatically have anything that Qigong practitioners can't also have so it isn't good to have this pretentious attitude that just because you follow a certain religion you have the final say on what it means to be a decent person of what it means to achieve longevity and spiritual illumination.

Rounding it off:

I'm sure plenty of you members of the beautiful community are fans of Qigong and that I'm preaching to the choir for the most part, but it is really important to recognize that this is a very good practice with potent results that can truly transform people. The nature of the academic discussion about Qigong is bullshit spread by people who don't practice and don't have any real idea of what's going on behind the scenes. Authentic, traditional Qigong has the ability to help so many people and it is sad and unfortunate that western critics have essentially helped an authoritarian regime achieve its goal of taking power away from the community by launching pseudo-scholarly arguments against what is actually a very pure and good practice.

I've been practicing Qigong of various kinds for 22 years and Zhineng Qigong for 18.

I go through phases where sometimes I practice more martial arts and less Qigong, and sometimes I practice more Qigong and less martial arts. I always practice meditation since it is my main interest, but I've come to have a pretty clear understanding of what constitutes the various arts I study and can see emphatically that Qigong has a real place in daily practice and should be understood on its own terms rather than through the lens of Daoism, sport or some other unrelated area of life.

The reason why I've been mainly focused on making videos about ancient ancestors of Qigong over at my youtube channel is because I need to set down the framework, but the direction this is ultimately going is toward speaking about authentic traditional Qigong from the present day perspective.

I've worked hard for the last several years to put down a basic map to show how these styles originated and developed over the years and in 2025 I plan to start the next phase which is to discuss modern Qigong in detail. If you've been around IS for a long time you'll be able to follow along easily and see where all this is going. If you are new, I encourage you to read older posts when you have time since they will help orient you toward the central arguments that will ultimately form my thesis.

I'm excited for 2025 and hope you are too!!

Merry Christmas if this is a holiday you celebrate,

we'll talk again soon.