What is the Essence of Qigong and How to Understand It?

Firstly, let’s talk about what Qigong is.

Qigong, also known in ancient times as Tuo Na or Qi Gong, essentially refers to exercises related to breathing. It wasn’t until after 1950 that it was uniformly called Qigong.

Exercise is extremely important for life, and the importance of exercise needs no further elaboration.

Qigong is a Type of Exercise

So, what types of exercises are there? Ancient people classified exercise into three categories:

We should know that modern medicine classifies seeing as vision, hearing as auditory perception, smelling as olfaction, and touching as tactile perception, whereas ancient people considered them as movements.

This difference is due to different classification standards and does not imply right or wrong.

The ancients did not specifically elaborate on how many kinds of movements there were under each category because they continually discovered more types of movements within each category.

Modern kinesiology has also not been able to summarize the total number of human movements fully.

However, the ancients identified the two most important movements in the human body: breathing and heartbeat.

In other words, the ancients believed that breathing and heartbeat were more important than any other movements, including running, push-ups, etc. Good breathing and heartbeat are more beneficial to health and longevity than any other type of exercise.

The heartbeat

We know that humans are formed from the combination of a fertilized egg.

On the 18th to 19th day after the formation of the fertilized egg, the heart appears, and around the 22nd day, the heart begins to beat. From that moment until a person dies, the heart never stops beating.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the heart is the most laborious organ in the human body.

• The characteristic of the heartbeat is that it is relatively objective and cannot be directly controlled by the brain. In other words, our brain cannot directly command the heart to beat faster or slower; the heart always beats according to its rhythm.
• Although the heartbeat cannot be directly exercised, it can be influenced through muscles, ligaments, and breathing. For example, when we run, the heartbeat speeds up; when a person is calm, the heartbeat slows down.

The main way to exercise the heartbeat is to reduce the burden on the heart.

For instance, through dynamic exercises, we can assist the heart in contraction or expansion, making it expend less effort during these actions, thereby reducing the heart’s burden.BreathingThere are two types of breathing:

• Umbilical breathing. This refers to the breathing that occurs before a person is born, inside the mother’s womb. This type of breathing primarily involves the mother transferring oxygen and nutrients to the baby through the umbilical cord. Lung breathing. This refers to the breathing that occurs after a person is born, using the lungs.
• Characteristics of Lung Breathing: Lung breathing is unique in that it incorporates characteristics of all three types of movements. This means that lung breathing has an element of objectivity.

For example, when we sleep, breathing happens naturally without brain control. However, when a person is awake, the brain can control breathing to some extent, such as the length, depth, and holding of breath.

Additionally, breathing can also sense the quality of external air, making lung movement the most complex form of human movement. In modern society, when we talk about exercising, we often only refer to muscle training and overlook the importance of breathing and heartbeat exercises.

Dynamic exercises combine limb movements with breathing to influence the heartbeat, thereby achieving the purpose of exercising the heartbeat.

Some theories in Qigong differ from modern science, such as those concerning the dantian, meridians, acupoints, and skin texture. Since modern science cannot observe these organs with instruments, it considers them nonexistent. However, this is due to differences in experimental methods; in reality, these organs do exist.

Key Factors of Qigong

For detailed descriptions of the dantian, meridians, acupoints, and skin texture, please refer to my articles “The Position and Function of the Dantian” and “The Process of Discovering Meridians and Acupoints.” Here, I will briefly describe them.

Dantian

The dantian is considered the first organ to die when a person dies.

We know that in natural death, not all organs die simultaneously; there is an order. The first area to die is a region an inch and a third below the navel, and from there, death spreads to other parts of the body until the entire body finally dies.

Of course, if a person dies from illness or external injury, the order of organ death differs, but that is another topic.MeridiansMeridians can be explained as follows: if the skin of a living person is peeled off while ensuring the person remains alive, and the air is forced into the mouth and nose (similar to inflating a basketball), the body will inflate.

• At a certain point, it will develop cracks, which the ancients referred to as meridians.
• The ancients called the cracks formed by inflating air through the mouth and nose the Twelve Main Meridians.
• Cracks formed by inflating air through a cut in the navel were called the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and those formed by inflating air through the anus were called the Twelve Muscle Channels.
• So, meridians refer to the weakest parts of the body. Using the basketball example, the cracks in a bursting basketball represent the weakest areas, and similarly, meridians are the weakest parts of the human body.
• In Qigong, the breathing methods include lung breathing to train the Twelve Main Meridians, dantian breathing to train the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and anus lifting to train the Twelve Muscle Channels

Acupoints

Acupoints, in contrast to meridians, can be explained as follows: if the skin of a living person is peeled off while ensuring the person remains alive, and the air is extracted from the person’s mouth and nose, the body will curl up like a lobster.

• This process will cause numerous small indentations to appear on the body, which the ancients called acupoints.
• Using the basketball example again, when some air is extracted from an inflated basketball, an indentation will appear, and this area is likely the weakest part of the basketball. Similarly, acupoints are the weakest parts of the human body.
• Because experiments on meridians and acupoints involved live subjects and were extremely cruel, and since modern society has laws and ethical standards that prohibit such experiments, research on meridians, acupoints, and the dantian has almost come to a halt.
• If the laws were to change one day, allowing the use of heinous criminals or those convicted of severe crimes such as treason for such live experiments, then research on meridians, acupoints, and the dantian could make further progress with modern technology.
• When we look at meridian diagrams, we find that most meridians and acupoints overlap. This means that these meridians and acupoints are the weakest parts of the human body.
• The most important meridians for human health and longevity are the Ren and Du meridians, and the acupoints on these meridians are also the most important. This is why the ancients emphasized practicing the Ren and Du meridians.
• In ancient Qigong literature, most sources state that Qigong can promote health and longevity and treat certain diseases. There is no mention of extraordinary abilities such as emitting internal energy externally, clairvoyance, or superhuman hearing.
• There are also no claims of developing supernatural powers through Qigong. In short, Qigong in ancient times was simply a method of physical exercise, no different from modern activities like running or doing push-ups

Summary

The most important movements for the human body are breathing and heartbeat. The method to exercise these functions is Qigong, similar to how running is used to exercise the legs and push-ups are used to exercise the arms. Qigong is simply a form of physical exercise. However, this method of exercise is more beneficial for health and longevity than any other form of exercise.