Qi/ Ki/ Chi/ Prana/ Vitale Energie
BIO-Energetic Intervention
Extern Qi Healing/ Bio-resonance Healing (wai qi liao fa):
The legendary Taoist emperor Yü the Great, of the early Xia dynasty (2,000 – 1,600 B.C.), ecstatically danced the movements of a bear to harmonize heaven and earth and to stop the floods and pestilence in his kingdom. His shamanic dance, known as “The Pace of Yü” is still practiced by Taoists today.
The earliest Chinese doctors were Shaman. The Chinese character for doctor, Yi, depicts a feathered shaman doing an ecstatic dance and holding a quiver full of arrows. The arrows, presumably, represented spiritual power, or righteous qi, to drive off evil influences; later this concept was extended to the use of acupuncture needles. The shamans were women as well as men. They would go into ecstatic trance, and would often journey to the spirit world or channel divinities to diagnose the cause of the problem; they would then pray and dance to treat the disease.
The early Taoist shamans/ healers saw that through connecting to the natural powers through dance and movement they could restore outer harmony and inner balance with the forces of nature. It was not long before they transferred this same phenomena to the microcosm of their own bodies.
EXTERNAL QI HEALING (CHINESE THERAPEUTIC TOUCH)
During the reactionary period of China’s Cultural Revolution (1965-1975), talk about Qi was officially suppressed. The concepts related to Qi were considered archaic, throwbacks to the superstitions of feudal times. Even acupuncture, although officially sanctioned by the State as a vital part of China’s overall health care delivery system, was stripped of all its traditional theories; attempts were made to empiricize point functions and to describe maladies in modern Western medical terminology. Qigong exercises were also officially discouraged, with the exception of Tai Chi.
Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, a high Communist Party official became gravely ill. Neither Western medicine nor Traditional Chinese Medicine was of any avail. In desperation, he sought out a qigong healer north of Beijing, and was cured. The official then courageously encouraged and defended the development of qigong clinics. Today, hundreds of qigong clinics and hospitals operate across China without official sanction.
Qigong Anesthesia
On June 21, 1980 at Shanghai No. 8 People’s Hospital, a unique surgical operation took place which made world news. A qigong master, Lin Hou Sheng from the Chinese Medicine Research Institute stretched out his right hand and pointed his index and middle fingers at Yin Tang (an acupuncture point) between the eyebrows of the patient. Through his fingertips he emitted Wai Qi (external Qi) from a distance of about 3 centimeters on a 29 year old female patient. After three minutes, he nodded to the surgeon who then picked up his sharp scalpel and commenced a surgical operation on a thyroid tumor.
The patient received no additional anesthesia, remained conscious throughout, and did not show even the least sign of pain during the 140 minute operation. When a walnut sized tumor was removed and shown to the patient, a smile lit up her face.
This was the tenth thyroidectomy in little over a month performed with qigong anesthesia at the hospital. Lin, age 41 at the time, has used emitted Qi to treat successfully such varied conditions as stomach ulcers, hypertension, urinary incontinence, and protrusions of lumbar vertebra. Since the mid 1980′s, due in part to the attention generated by Lin, renewed interest in qigong and qigong healing has developed into a national fad in China.
More recently, Dr. Wan Sujian, a Chinese army doctor and Director of the Institute of Chinese Taoist Medical Qigong in Beijing, has gained worldwide renown for his success in treating thousands of paraplegic and quadriplegic patients with emitted Qi. Dr. Wan’s army hospital has also searched throughout China for children who exhibit special qigong healing abilities and has brought them to the hospital for further training as qigong therapists.
External Qi Healing (Wai Qi Zhi Liao) is not a primary health care choice for most people. It is usually resorted to when other conventional treatment methods have failed. The fact that External Qi Healing is successful when nothing else works points to its special value and importance as a limb of Oriental medical practice.
A Scientific Look at Qi Emission
The Shanghai Atomic Nucleus Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has identified Lin Hou Sheng’s “Wai Qi” as a low-frequency modulated infrared radiation. Other qigong research in China on emitted Wai Qi from other qigong healers has measured not only infrared radiation being emitted from their hands, but also low levels of electric energy, electro-magnetic, magnetic, and low frequency modulated infra-sonic sound (8-14 Hertz).
Robert O. Becker, M.D., a Syracuse, NY specialist in orthopedics and one of the world’s leading research authorities on bio-electricity, has verified that the body responds best not to high currents of electrical stimulus, but to extremely low levels; so low are the beneficial electrical levels (measured in millivolts and nanoamps) that it is only over the past 30 years that scientists have developed equipment sensitive enough to accurately measure these levels. Dr. Becker’s research has led to the use in Western hospitals of low level electrical stimulation to treat complicated fractures which are otherwise difficult to heal.
Dr. Becker also received one of the first NIH research grants to study acupuncture in the early 1970′s. His research determined that the acupuncture meridians are electrical conductors, with the surrounding skin displaying greater conductivity and lesser resistance than the skin in non-meridian locations. He also determined that the acupuncture points act as DC power generators, keeping the electrical flow from diminishing over distance like step-up booster amplifiers.
Qigong and Acupuncture: A Synergistic Pair
External Qi Healing can be effectively combined with acupuncture therapy in the clinical setting. Instead of stimulating the needles through manual manipulation or electro-stimuli, one can project Qi directly into the inserted needles using either tonifying or dispersing techniques. One Medical Qigong therapist I know, trained in qigong by her father since age 4, began studying acupuncture in her twenties. After a few months, she went to her teacher and said that she wanted to drop out of the program. When asked why, she said, “Well, I can only feel the Qi through half of the needle.” Her teacher exclaimed, “Well, that’s remarkable! Most acupuncturists don’t feel the Qi through the needle at all!” Nonetheless, she was discouraged, and left acupuncture school because she felt that she could use her hands-on sensitivity to Qi more effectively through qigong therapy alone.
Some Qigong acupucturists point their palm or fingers directly at the needles, without physical contact. Others sit in the room with the patient and generate a healing field which stimulates the inserted needles, causing them to vibrate in some cases.
Qigong Healers Fill Health Care Vacuum
The Chinese government is now relatively enthusiastic about qigong healing. Hosting the world’s largest population, there are still not enough doctors, Western or TCM, to meet China’s gargantuan health care demands. Training of External Qi Healers can take as little as one or two years, as compared to 5-10 years for TCM doctors and M.D.’s.
Western Parallels
From a Western perspective, all of this non-contact healing business may seem justifiably suspect at first glance, reminiscent of tent show faith healing or mesmerism. Yet many people are surprised to learn that non-contact healing has been researched in the West and accepted as reasonable care in hospitals! Dr. Dolores Krieger, a progressive thinking registered nurse, developed a non-contact healing modality which she named “Therapeutic Touch.” Using this method, the therapist’s hands do not actually touch the patient, but instead move around the patient’s body from a short distance. Research has indicated that patients experience deep states of relaxation and well-being as well as swifter recovery time, especially of wounds, when Therapeutic Touch is used as a support treatment modality. Nurses now receive CEU credits for Therapeutic Touch training, and its use is advocated in many hospitals.
Even non-contact healing at great distances has been scientifically proven to be effective. Larry Dossey, M.D. documents one double-blind experiment involving nearly 400 patients admitted to the coronary care unit of San Francisco General Hospital and treated for heart attack or suspected heart attack. They were evenly sub-divided into two groups. Both groups received state-of-the-art medical care; the only difference was that one group was prayed for as well by Protestant and Catholic prayer groups throughout the country who had only the patients first names and sketches. The patients in the experimental group had no idea they were being prayed for, yet when the study was concluded, they experienced significantly fewer complications and deaths than did the non-prayer control group.
SUMMARY
Prescribing qigong for physical therapy, stress management, or for healing through emitted Qi (Chinese therapeutic touch) should be understandable to both our patients and to our Western medical colleagues alike, since the efficacy of these modalities is recognized by mainstream medicine in America. Most patients are aware of the need for physical therapy and stress management, and will jump at the chance to receive some training in these modalities.
Medical Qigong therapy has been a part of Oriental medicine since its inception. It is often the treatment modality of choice for many illnesses. As an adjunct therapy to acupuncture and other Oriental medical methods, patients can improve their prognosis and feel empowered to be a part of their own healing when encouraged to practice qigong.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
There are now national and international qigong associations. Medical Qigong training programs are springing up in China and the United States. Although this is by and large a good thing, I have several serious concerns about the future of Medical Qigong. One of my concerns is that, unfortunately, China is becoming something of a “credentialing factory.” Many foreigners visiting China are given “Master Healer Certificates” after as little as 2 to 5 days of qigong training. If poorly trained amateurs begin to compile a significant proportion of the art’s representatives, Medical Qigong will soon fall into disrepute. There are many legitimate teachers and schools in China who are more concerned with the quality of their graduates than they are with the quantity.
Another concern is that with the inconsistent quality of existing credentials and with no credentials required to label oneself a “qigong healer”, there are many outright charlatans, both in China and abroad, bilking money out of a trusting public. This quackery is already a major concern in China, and I’m afraid that we may have only seen the “tip of the iceberg” over here.
So, with the lack of any clear cut standards or regulations, we must take it upon ourselves to check the credentials, training, and reputation of those claiming to be qigong healers. Certainly one to two years of study with a reputable qigong master or institute should generally be a minimal standard of competency.
I support the idea of a national board certification process which would set minimum standards of training for Medical Qigong Therapists and would scrutinize the credentials of applicants in the same way that the board tests acupuncturists and herbalists. In this way the public would have some criteria to weigh in choosing a competent and legitimate qigong healer.
Although I am in favor of credentialing and board certification, I am very resistant to the idea of state licensing. Certain aspects of External Qigong Healing are similar to faith healing and “laying on of hands”, practices that are exempt from regulation as part of our freedom of religion. In addition, some people seem to be born with “the gift of healing”; although they may have little or no formal training, they may have exceptional natural abilities as energetic healers. For these reasons, attempts to control non-contact energetic healing would lead us into dangerous legal and ethical ground.
J.D. Setyo, MD. is one of the very few Chinese doctors in the Netherlands, who practices this kind of ancient healing method. This kind of healing technique is also very suitable for baby’s and children. He combines these very old healing technics within the Traditional Chinese Medicine along with the acupuncture, moxibustion, herbal therapy, diet therapy and exercise therapy in his clinics for complementary medicine in Rotterdam & Maassluis.