Chi Kung/ Qigong
Een korte introductie van de geschiedenis van de ontwikkeling van Chinese Qi Gong.
Het is bewezen dat Qi Gong een verloop heeft van 5000 jaren, oorspronkelijk uit het stenentijdperk (10.000 tot 4000 jaren geleden). Gedurende deze periode had de oude Chinese bevolking de gewoonte om de bewegingen van dieren te imiteren tijdens hun jacht naar voedsel. Uit de activiteiten van dans, klimmen, kijken naar verschillende richtingen met het hoofd gedraaid, springen en bewegende bovenste ledematen waren de eerste beginselen van Qi Gong ademhalingstherapie ontstaan.
Tijdens de Spring & Autumn Period en Warring States Period (van 770 voor Chr. tot 221 voor Chr.) was de ontwikkeling van Qi Gong veranderd qua vorm en inhoud en werd een bewust medische praktijk met zijn oorsprong van spontane gezondheids- behoudende klassieker in China)
Gedurende deze periode was Qi Gong niet alleen in medische theorie maar ook in de theorie van de taoïstische school, de confusius school, de legalisten en mohistische school. Deze scholen, ontstaan in de Spring & Autumn en Warring States periode, waren beschouwd als de belangrijkste gedachtescholen of hoofd religie in het oude China. Gemengd met sommige theorieën van de scholen gedurende deze periode is de ontwikkeling van Qi Gong groots bevorderd.
Tot de Han dynastie (206 voor Chr. tot 220 na Chr.) werd Qi Gong, graag gemogen door de mensen, op grote schaal toegepast, zijn gezondheids behoudende functies en behandeling van ziekte was bewezen. Tussen de artikelen in Han Tomb no.3 in Mawangdui, Changsha, provincie Hunan in China, was een gekleurde zijde tekening “Guiding-Inducing 导引 (Daoyin) Illustrations” voor Qi Gong oefeningen en een zijden boek met een hoofdstuk genaamd “On Abandoning Food and Living on Qi”.
Hua Tuo, een beroemde arts aan het eind van de Han dynastie, maakte de Five Mimic Animal van tijger, hert, beer, aap en vogels met het oog op schonen van de meridianen en activeren van de collateralen, reguleren van Qi en bloed, handhaving van geluid en zicht, “The Five-Mimic-Animal Boxing is sindsdien ingeburgerd.
Na de Three Kingdoms periode (220-265 na Chr.) en Jin dynastie (265-420) was Qi Gong meerdere malen gaan bloeien, veel Qi Gong praktische ervaringen opeengestapeld, diverse Qi Gong manoeuvres gemaakt, verschillende Qi Gong scholen gevormd en een groot aantal waarde papieren over Qi Gong geschreven. In de periode van The Three Kingdoms tot de Tang dynastie (220-907), waren boeken van Qi Gong health preserving een voor een gepubliceerd. “Treatise on Health Preserving” geschreven door Jikang, “Collection of Principles of Health Preserving door Zhang Zhan en Bao Puzi’s Inner Treaties, een boek dat verwijst naar de Taoist door Ge Hong, breidde de methodes en theorieën uit van Qi Gong in verschillende aspecten. The General Treatise on the Causes and Symptoms of Disease door Chao Yuanfang verzamelt 100 zonderlinge therapeutische Qi Gong methodes.
In de Ming dynastie (1368- 1644), Li Chan, een markante arts, schreef het boek Elementry Course for Medicine, waarin hij ontkent de idealistische preek over Qi Gong door de Boedistische school en de Taoïstische school, namelijk, hij ontkent dat door Qi Gong oefeningen een persoon supernatural of Buddha kan worden en voor eeuwig leeft, en hij benadrukte dat in health-preserving men moet gehoorzamen wat The Yellow Emperor zei:
“Keeping a sound mind so as to leave no way for disease to occur in the body, if doing so, he or she will have a possible longer life-span and live for about one hundred years”.
Onder invloed van deze uitspraak, brak Chinese Qi Gong uit van het feodaal bijgelovige geloof en werd een kunst oefening voor het versterken van het lichaam, ziektes uit te bannen en verlenging van leven welk door mensen makkelijk vast te grijpen is.
Li Shizhen, een grote arts en farmacoloog schreef een boek A study on the Eight Extra Meridians waarin hij schreef: “The inner scène and meridians can be perceived clean an clear only by those who can see inwards”. Dit citaat verrijkte de Qi Gong theorie.
In de dynastie sommige monogrammen van health preserving and Qi Gong excercises waren gepubliceerd. Tussen hen, Eight Principles for health Preserving is de meest rijkste materialen gerelateerd aan Qi Gong en vele methodes van Qi Gong training.
Sinds de oprichting van de volksrepubliek China Qi Gong was bestudeerd, naar voren gebracht en ontwikkeld in een all-round way. Mao Ze Dong had hierin een hele grote invloed en verdienste.
In 1955, de eerste Qi Gong ziekenhuis in de geschiedenis, werd gevestigd in Tangshan, provincie Hebei: “Tangshan City Qi Gong Convalescent Hospital”.
Early Qigong History
Like the Dineh or Navajo people of the southwestern United States, the ancient Chinese saw disease and natural disasters as signs that an individual or a tribe of people had fallen out of harmony with Nature. The cure for the Navajo was to reestablish a correct relationship with Nature, with society, and within the individual through ceremony, including sand paintings, chants, prayers and dances. To achieve a similar healing goal, 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 shamans. 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
Like the Native Americans, the early Taoist shaman/healers saw that through connecting to the natural powers through dance and movement they could restore outer harmony and balance with the forces of nature. It was not long before they transferred this same reasoning to the microcosm of their own bodies. Therefore, of the earliest know qigong healing forms, many were derived from the movements of animals. The Qi Gong Classic (Dao Yin Tu), discovered in the tomb of King Ma in 1973 and dating back to the second century B.C., illustrates in manuscripts written on silk over 45 qigong postures with descriptions of the movements as well as the names of the diseases which they treat; over half of these postures are animal movements.
One of the ministers of Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor and patriarch of Chinese medicine, was the shaman Zhu You, who advocated exorcistic prayer over the use of needles and herbs to treat illness. According to Kenneth Cohen, an American qigong master and author, “Some scholars believe that Zhu You practiced External Qi Healing at the same time that he prayed for patients. This is remarkably similar to the synergism of non-contact healing and prayer in Native American and other indigenous healing traditions. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic states that in ancient times most illnesses were treated according to the methods of Zhu You….Professional ‘prayer healers’ (zhu) were once widespread in China. They may have formed a specialized branch of shamanism.”
Another of the Yellow Emperor’s ministers was Qi Po, the doctor to whom Huang Di posed his various medical questions, and whose famous dialogue was recorded as the Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine). Qi Po embodied, for his time, a radical and modernistic theory of health and illness: that disease was not so much a matter of spirits, ancestors, karma, disharmony with the gods, with nature or with society, but was more a matter of External Factors (heat, cold, wind, damp, fire, and dryness), Internal Factors (the seven pathological emotions of excess anger, joy, worry, pensiveness, sadness, fear and shock), and Neither External nor Internal Factors (overwork, excess sex, improper diet). Over time, this medical philosophy, appealing to the intellectual Confucian scholars and literati within the imperial court, and represented in the views of Qi Po, won out over the intuitive shamanistic and spiritual views of Zhu You. Nonetheless, Zhu You’s approach never disappeared; instead it co-existed as a parallel medical approach to the “scholar’s medicine”, and has been widely practiced, primarily by priests and martial arts masters up to the present day.
Many well known Chinese doctors incorporated both philosophies of medicine into their practice. For example, Hua Tuo (110-207A.D.), the renowned Taoist physician, told his disciple Wu Pu, “The body should be exercised, but not to excess. Exercise improves digestion and keeps the meridians clear of obstructions. In this way, the body will remain free of illness. A door hinge does not rust if it is frequently used. Therefore the ancient sages practiced dao-yin….I have created a dao-yin method called the Wu Qin Xi (Five Animal Frolics). It can eliminate sickness and strengthen the root.” Hua Tuo devised this series of now famous qigong exercises for his patients based upon the movements of the crane, bear, monkey, deer and tiger. These animal “dances” or qigong exercises served to harmonize the flow of Qi within the inner universe of his patients. Each set of animal exercises relates to the principle of the Five Elements and works to strengthen, balance and harmonize the associated internal organs. Over the past two millennia, many other doctors, martial artists, monks and priests have contributed to the body of exercises now known as Medical Qigong. There are over one thousand different qigong systems known to be in use today.
Categories of Medical Qigong
Medical Qigong can be easily subdivided into three well recognized and widely accepted modalities used in current medical practice, both Eastern and Western:
1. Physical therapy for fitness, health maintenance, and the treatment of specific disorders;
2. Stress management exercises and relaxation techniques; and,
3. External Qi Healing (sometimes called Chinese Therapeutic Touch).
QIGONG FOR PHYSICAL THERAPY
The qigong systems used for physical therapy are the most widely known and recognized qigong exercises. The importance of prescribing these exercises cannot be underestimated in practice.
Couch Potato Diseases
First of all, many conditions which Oriental medical practitioners encounter daily in their clinics are the result of lack of exercise. This fact is well recognized in Western medicine. If the root cause of a patient’s complaint is lack of exercise, structural imbalance, or muscular weakness in a specific area, remedial treatments such as acupuncture, moxabustion or herbs alone will be inadequate for curing the problem . Diseases of stagnation such as heart attack (heart blood stagnation), cancer (blood stagnation) and stroke (internal wind combined with blood and phlegm stagnation) are the primary causes of death in America. Their prevention and treatment are brought about by moving therapies. Yes, herbs and acupuncture can move Qi, blood and phlegm, but at the root, these problems are often exacerbated by a sedentary lifestyle, and a responsible Oriental medical practitioner must also address this element by prescribing physical therapy and exercise as part of his or her overall treatment strategy.
Don’t Let Your Health Exercise Hospitalize You!
Secondly, for the patient who is “not sick”, qigong exercise can be recommended as a low impact aerobic exercise, similar to walking, for health maintenance and fitness. Many Westerners have enthusiastically taken up jogging, racquetball, skiing, tennis, and other exercises and sports for health, only to wind up in the emergency room or doctor’s office to treat their sports injuries! Does this make sense? Should a person’s exercise, which they took up for health, end up making their health worse? What’s wrong with this picture?
Consider the case of the author and famous long distance runner, Jim Fixx. His excessive running caused an imbalance which resulted in his premature death from a heart attack. His coroner’s report stated that his arteries were “as clean as a whistle”. That fact was probably of minimal comfort to his bereaved family! From a qigong perspective, the excessive perspiration and heat caused by his exercise, combined with the overwork of his heart, probably caused an extreme case of Heart Yin Deficiency with Empty Fire Blazing and Fluid Deficiency. His exercise was far too Yang, and he ended up needlessly consuming his Yin. This resulted in loss of life for an individual who was totally devoted to physical fitness, a tragic irony to say the least.
Qigong exercise, by contrast, is usually gentle, slow, and encourages deep breathing, stretching, and movements that are beneficial and healing to the joints, organs and bones. I believe that qigong is superior to most Western forms of exercise because it is less likely to cause injury, and because it is aimed not only at strengthening the muscles and the cardio-vascular system, but also specifically focuses on balancing the systems of the body, building, circulating and conserving Qi, strengthening the bones, tendons, joints, nervous system, internal organs, glands, and the reproductive system as well.
Yes, old dogs can learn new tricks
Recent Western clinical studies have verified the effectiveness of Tai Chi Chuan in reducing falls and improving balance in the elderly. I applaud this recognition. However, after having taught Tai Chi at senior citizen centers myself for many years, I feel that other Qigong exercises may be even more effective. For one thing, Tai Chi is a fairly complicated exercise. Tai Chi works well in China because senior citizens usually practice under the daily guidance of their instructor. In America it is often difficult for people to make class once or twice per week, let alone daily. Most seniors have a hard time remembering the Tai Chi form and practicing by themselves outside of class. Without repetition at least three or four times per week, exercise is of minimal benefit, and can even be detrimental to health. There are equivalent qigong exercises that have the same benefits, yet are simpler, more repetitive, and therefore are easier to remember and practice alone.
Qigong Physical Therapy for Specific Problems
There are also specific qigong exercises for almost every type of malady: musculo-skeletal problems, internal organ problems, and for many other specific diseases and conditions. For example, two 20th century Shanghai physical therapists, together with qigong and martial arts masters from the Shanghai Physical Culture Institute, developed a form of qigong called Liangong Shi Ba Fa (18 Refinement Methods) which combines Western physical therapy knowledge and traditional qigong forms into six exercise sets to treat, respectively: neck and shoulder problems, lower back problems, knee and hip problems, joint problems of the upper and lower limbs, tennis elbow, and internal organ disorders.
One of my patients, a female in her 40′s, had long suffered from chronic cervical and lumbar pain as after effects of an automobile accident. Since the soft tissue injuries she suffered caused the vertebrae in these areas to chronically subluxate, she had to have monthly chiropractic adjustments to be free from pain. Acupuncture was only effective for her in helping to reinforce the righteous Qi in holding the adjustments a little longer; by itself it did little, insofar as the pain was due to the displaced vertebra. She took up the practice of Liangong Shi Ba Fa at my urging, and later commented that a whole year had elapsed since she had needed any acupuncture or chiropractic adjustments for her condition. Her chiropractor even called her up and told her that he missed her!
Qigong and Internal Medicine
Qigong physical therapy has also proved extremely valuable in treating serious internal disorders. One of the most famous examples of this is that of Madame Guo Lin of Beijing, a woman who created her own variation of Hua Tuo’s “Five Animal Frolics” to treat her uterine cancer, which she developed at age 40. Also suffering from arthritis, tuberculosis, and heart problems, she began a daily regimen that soon drove her diseases into remission. Living well into her seventies, she shared her personal discoveries and taught her system to tens of thousands of people, assisting in the documented cancer cures of over 300 patients and the improvement of thousands of others. Her system became known as Guo Lin Qigong.
Another system, called Shu Xin Ping Xue Qigong, is specifically used for the treatment of heart diseases. It has been proven beneficial for angina, hypertension, and congestive heart failure.
There exist many other qigong forms for treatment of specific diseases such as obesity, ulcers, eye problems, epilepsy, Raynaud’s syndrome, asthma, emphysema, arthritis, diabetes, herpes, and many other chronic health problems.
I have found through personal clinical experience that when patients practice Qigong, they respond more dramatically to acupuncture and herbal therapies and recover more quickly.
QIGONG AND STRESS MANAGEMENT
Over the latter half of the 20th century, chronic stress and its debilitating effects have been cited as either primary or secondary causes in the onset or prognosis of over one hundred diseases.
Well, if it’s worked for 5,000 years, I suppose it’s worth a try….
In our role of introducing Oriental medicine to the West, we have an easily accessible doorway to building public acceptance and respect for our medicine by promoting our time-tested methodologies of qigong exercises for stress management. Oriental Medicine has, for its entire history, acknowledged the influences of stress, chronic negative emotions and their causative and contributory effects on health problems. An interesting fact is that many of the modalities of stress management used in Western medicine are drawn from Oriental medicine. These include such methods as breathing exercises, visualization, meditation, progressive relaxation, and physical exercise. These “new” medical treatments are actually thousands of years old!
Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises are used in every Western stress management program. The term “qigong” itself is sometimes translated as “breathing exercise.” Sometimes the word “Qi” is used to refer to the life energy circulating through the acupuncture meridians, the “inner breath of life”; in other contexts Qi refers to the breath or air breathed in normal respiration. Respiratory qigong therapy is often called ‘tu gu na xin’, or simply tu-na, meaning, “Expelling the old, drawing in the new”.
Of all our basic requirements to maintain life, nothing is more dear than our breath. We can survive without food for months, without sleep or water for days, but we can only live a few minutes without breathing. Breath is life.
Our breathing is a bridge between our conscious and sub-conscious mind. Breathing is regulated by our autonomic nervous system; it goes on whether we are conscious or unconscious, awake or asleep. Yet unlike most autonomic functions, breathing can also be easily regulated by our conscious intent. By controlling the pace and quality of our breathing, we can affect deep changes in our physiological functions.
Breath is also the link between our body and mind. Oriental medicine speaks of The San Bao (Three Treasures): Jing, Qi, and Shen. Qi is in the middle. From a stress management perspective, the ability of breath control to influence both physical and mental states is vitally important. Some methods of passive progressive relaxation training, such as Autogenic Training (AT), uses the mind to relax the body. AT uses mental suggestions, such as: “My body feels heavy and warm” (sensations associated with deep relaxation) to ease physical tension. Other methods, such as physical exercise or “Active Progressive Relaxation”, aim at easing mental tension through relaxing the body. More than 60 years ago, one of the pioneers of Western stress management, Dr. Edmund Jacobsen, M.D. developed the first series of active progressive relaxation exercises for treating chronic stress and tension. He was quoted as saying, “An anxious mind cannot exist in a relaxed body.”
As the link between mind and body, consciously controlling the breath can have a pronounced impact on both physical and mental tension. By gently guiding and allowing the breath to adopt the qualities of breathing exhibited during states of deep relaxation (breathing should become quiet, deep, smooth, even, soft, and fine), one can thus induce the accompanying physical and mental states of relaxation.
Breathing exercises have proven to be effective in reducing anxiety, depression, irritability, muscle tension and fatigue, and are also used in treatment and prevention of agoraphobia, hypertension, breath holding, hyperventilation, shallow breathing, and cold hands and feet.
Passive Progressive Relaxation
One passive progressive method (very similar to Autogenic Training) is called Fang Song Gong (Relaxation Practice). Fang Song Gong involves deep breathing combined with auto-suggestion messages such as, “I am quiet….I am relaxed.” It can be practiced either standing, sitting or lying down, and is easily taught in clinic.
Healing Imaginery and Visualization
Other qigong methods, such as Liu Qi Fa (The Six Healing Sounds), involve healing imagery and visualization of the organs, their Five Element colors and positive qualities. These have proved effective in treating many physical and emotional maladies, including cancer. At the very least, patients experience an increased sense of well-being and peacefulness. Furthermore, patients feel empowered; they are grateful that they can actively participate in the healing of their own problems, and don’t have to suffer the indignation of helplessness or submissively having to totally rely on the medical profession (Eastern or Western) to provide a “fix” for their problems.
Oefeningen
De volgorde van de oefeningen zijn:
1ste week Taijiquan
2de week Qigong
3de week Meditatie
4de week Taiji – Qigong combinatie
De dagen en tijden wanneer bovenstaande worden gegeven zijn:
do. 10.00 – 11.10 uur
vr. 20.00 – 21.10 uur
Gratis oefeningen voor mensen die minstens 2 keer/ maand voor behandeling komen.
Losse les is € 20,- (kinderen onder 12 jaar € 10,-)/ keer.
Graag horen wij van u als u voor het eerste keer deel wilt nemen, verhinderd bent of van dag wilt wisselen.