Are Western Body-Minds Demanding a New American Qigong?
by Michael Winn
When I meet a Chinese man, I immediately recognize he belongs to the same physical species: a face, four limbs, ten fingers. His skin is almost hairless, the legs shorter, body stature is different, but I know instantaneously he is homo sapien. Why then does it take me possibly years to deeply understand his way of thinking and perceiving, his deep motives and emotions, his cycles of joy and depression, health and illness?
I may observe he is more sensitive to collective social pressure and the loss of face. Perhaps he is curious yet indifferent at the depth of my western hunger for personal expression. Is this the mystery of race? We are all kin, yet we are all holding different ancestral memories that deeply affect our response to life.
These racial differences manifest into cultural patterns, and raise intriguing questions about the transfer of qigong technology that is currently happening between China and America. Does the incredible depth of Chinaıs understanding of qi arise from a unique genetic or perhaps the spiritual predisposition of their race? The West is rapidly waking up to the possibilities of human energy science based on qi. Yet there is a lot of confusion as to how to best shape or adapt these Chinese qi arts to western body-minds, to our lifestyles and institutions, particularly in medicine and healing.
I believe American sexual and emotional make-up will drive a fusion of western depth psychology with Chinese qi sciences to produce unique and powerful new qigong modalities. This fusion will help stem the epidemic of depression, stroke, cancer, and other killer illnesses. It may heal the mental and spiritual crisis that plagues the West, the feeling of alienation and personal fragmentation that is compensated by widespread addictions to drugs, food, negative emotions and sex. Chinese medicine says sickness arises when one's natural flow of qi is disrupted, and is healed by restoring qi flow and calming the mind (shen). This qi healing model completely dissolves the body-mind boundary. But if western and Chinese minds are not the same, is uncritical copying of Chinese qigong healing modalities the best approach?
Recent articles in Qi Journal have focused attention on two camps in danger of becoming polarized over the future shape of American qigong. One camp looks to the spirit of early Taoist philosophers, and holds that qi healing should not and really cannot be regulated by government or big institutions like schools. They say the very aliveness of qi healing depends on individual unfoldment and cannot be ³tested² by outside experts, only by the patient or student who resonates with the qi or the shen (spirit) of that healer. The other camp holds up the model of modern China, points to three or four year TCM qigong training programs with heavy academic load and testing of qi emission skills, and says we need the same in America. Who is right?
Diseases Follow Changing Qi Flow
I say both are right, and neither is right. Both are looking to the past, and ignore a future third possibility: that western body-minds are demanding and are evolving new forms of qigong healing. My experience is that Westerners have a different physical, emotional, sexual, mental and possibly even spiritual make-up from the Chinese, and accordingly manifest different patterns of qi flow. This will create different diseases requiring different qi treatment. If we stand on the shoulders of both the ancient and modern qigong masters, we can remain rooted in their principles yet see beyond them.
Many people think acupuncture meridians are somehow fixed things and that all qi healing uses the same channels. My herbology teacher in New York City, Jeffrey Yuen, made it his habit to read in Chinese the ancient medical texts from different periods in Chinese history. He pointed out that acupuncture points and even meridians have changed location over time just as the Chinese doctors and their patients have changed. For example, the chung mo or thrusting channel at the core of the body was changed to follow the kidney meridianıs inner path and thus make it more accessible to needles. He also noted that disease patterns in China changed along with social and historical changes, much as historians in the West have commented upon the fashionability of certain diseases that seem to literally catch on. Neurasthenia and polio was big 50 years ago, today itıs AIDS, breast cancer, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.
Will Qigong Fuse with Depth Psychology?
Naturally, these cycles of disease fashion will likely be different in China and America. As the current generation of American qigong teachers and healers mature, their direction may be quite different from the current Chinese qigong establishment, which I find to be mostly sexually conservative and not spiritually focused. American qigong healers are bombarded with techniques and ideas from depth psychology, yogic chakra theory, shamanism, a plethora of meditation traditions and dozens of other movement and healing modalities in addition to numerous useful scientific discoveries and ideas. They cannot and should not just shove these out of their mind in pursuit of a purist qigong healing modality.
This huge infusion of healing science was mostly not available to ancient or even modern Chinese developers of qigong. For example, I have found Feldenkrais movements, done lying on the ground with the spine free of gravity, will immensely speed my studentıs learning time of focused effortless movement in Tai Chi or qigong. The same is true of Alexander work. Even though true qigong practice already embodies the principles of Feldenkrais and Alexander methods, they may be more efficient at highlighting what is already latent within qigong. You could say they teach the mechanics of effortless movement without understanding the underlying qi flow. But I would still include them as part of an evolved qigong training program.
Conversely, the elements of chinese classical qi cultivation that are the most relevant to western depth pyschology and resolution of our deep sexual/spiritual identity crisis are suppressed by the modern chinese medical and qigong establishment. In 1983 I wrote Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy with Mantak Chia; he supplied the techniques, I put them into western context. Since then I have trained thousands of men and women to use Taoist neigong (internal cultivation) practices to heal sexual frustration, impotence and other dysfunctions, menstrual and orgasm difficulties, and mostly confusion over how sexual energy can be recycled to boost healing, creative ability, or meditation.
But this sexual neigong had to be rapidly evolved to adapt it to a totally different emotional and mental sexual identity. Unlike the Chinese, westerners are culturally bombarded with sexual advertising, oversexed role models in films, etc. It's a national obsession in America (look at Bill Clinton) so it gets played out very differently than in China. Since westerners give so much energy to sex, I found sexual kungfu a natural doorway that would lead people deeper into their physical, emotional, and spiritual health. To practice it deeply, they needed to learn healing sounds to clear their emotions and the microcosmic orbit to recycle the sexual energy to higher centers in the body-mind. Just by practicing this, they started to forget their physical sexual obsessions. They shifted it into cultivating the pleasure of having a developed energy and spirit body.
Why are these practices practically impossible to find today in China? On my travels throughout the Han (dominant ethic group) parts of China Iıve personally felt a general sense of suppressed libido that is not present in the more remote minority areas. Sexual repression is just a part of a larger pattern of political repression. It reminds me of Wilhelm Reich, a revolutionary western thinker who died in a U.S. prison in the 1950's for designing orgone devices, his version of qi linked to universal sexual vitality. If Reich were alive today, he would probably agree that suppression of methods like sexual neigong in China is about controlling the individual sense of liberty, to make sure that sexual power is surrendered to the greater social authority, whether it be the Emperor or Communist Party.
Thatıs why the TCM establishment isnıt teaching sexual kung-fu as standard curriculum. Undoubtedly, the practices got a bad reputation in China from people who abused it. Yet our sexual essence or jing is one of the traditional Three Treasures. Should we be Puritans and also drop it from the American qigong curriculum, and ignore the role of our culture's sexual chaos and sexual repression as a major causative factor in chronic illness? Even Freud would agree with me.
The Taoists, who were often the rebels and individualists breaking the Confucian rules, considered managing your sexual energy an essential step in the internal cultivation process. The true practitioners did not use sexual practices to be promiscuous or vampirize young virgins, but to protect one's health and tap the kidney power of one's jing. It is just a small part of the foundation for inner alchemy meditations that allowed one's spirit (shen) to penetrate deep to the core of the physical body's sexual essence (jing). Qi is just the relationship, a fluid pathway between the shen and jing, the mind-body continuum.
I also learned these inner alchemy methods from Mantak Chia, who got them from a Taoist hermit named White Cloud. He wandered from northern China into the hills outside Hong Kong to escape first Japanese and then communist persecution. But White Cloudıs Seven Alchemical Formulas, the crown jewels of Chinese spiritual civilization, polished over thousands of years and a main subject of the 1160 volume Taoist bible, are not being taught by the modern Chinese qigong or medical establishment. These traditional nei gong methods of cultivating one's inner medicine or elixir have also been suppressed for political reasons.
This is one reason I donıt want TCM standards of chinese medical qigong schools to be blindly copied in America. I believe TCM training is inadequate for American body-minds in the 21st century. TCM curriculum in China is NOT truly traditional. Some jokingly call TCM Truncated Chinese Medicine because it has in practice removed much of the spiritual aspects of shen (soul or spirit) therapy mentioned in the classics. Modern TCM may pay lip service to shen theory, but it is largely needle by number protocols that focus on restoring qi flow in the twelve secondary meridians of the heart, liver, etc.. The acupucture points have the old spiritual names, but no spiritual healing is mentioned in modern textbooks.
Classical Chinese Medicine used an alchemical model of Jing, Qi, and Shen transforming into each other. Its I Ching inspired 8 Extraordinary Channels/5 Jing Shen approach was largely sanitized out of medical textbooks by Maoists in the l950's and 60's who saw anything spiritual (qi into shen, or v.v.) as being feudal and backward. Soul (shen) therapy was unscientific and unacceptably superstitious in the eyes of communist leaders who wanted a modern, scientific China. Perhaps they also feared ridicule from western doctors in the propaganda war with the West..
I was very excited when I first learned the classical alchemical formulas like Fusion of the Five Elements, which is how to form the pearl (condensed shen, qi, and jing) that controls the 8 Extraordinary or Psychic Channels. Next was an amazingly sophisticated formula of internal sexual alchemy, the Lesser Enlightenment of Kan and Li (Water and Fire). It works with the yin and yang Jing Shen or body souls, the inner voices of your dark side and light side. You train these vital organ gods to freely copulate inside your body's core channel to rebirth your yuan shen (original or primordial mind).
These formulas are the Taoist equivalent of depth psychology, but they are seamlessly integrated with yin-yang, five element theory and the detailed body energy maps of chinese medicine. It gives one a practical way to interface with their unconscious and the autonomic nervous system. At the more mystical high end you learn to dissolve the boundary between yourself and nature, the sun, moon, and star beings. But like the sexual neigong, I found these practices needed to be re-languaged and adapted to western bodyminds.
I practiced these formulas, and they worked great for me. But I was initially confused when I could not find any reference to these formulas in TCM medical or qigong books, only in the ancient texts. Yet I learned over time that this Eight Extraordinary Meridian and 5 Jing Shen centered approach is really the faster, simpler, truly traditional way to heal the body-mind.. This is because the 5 Jing Shen (body souls) and the 8 deep channels feed all the vital organs and the 12 secondary meridians (heart, spleen, etc.) Increasing numbers of qigong healers and acupuncturists today are trying to recover this deliberately buried aspect of chinese medicine.
Several years ago, after a car accident I started getting symptoms of my motherıs rare inflammatory eye condition, birdshot choroiditis, that frequently leads to blindness. It got so bad that I could no longer read. I sat down and intensified my alchemical Kan and Li practice, and after a week of steaming my heart and eyes it felt like the lights had suddenly come on and I could see again. This convinced me that these formulas could work even on healing inherited diseases by changing core genetic patterns.
One chinese qigong teacher claims that a study had been done in China that showed Classical 8 Extra treatments were far more effective than the TCM protocols, but that the results were not released because officials did not want to disturb the now mammoth TCM institutions. I cannot verify that. What's more important for the qigong healing community is that these 8 extra channels may be more easily accessed by neigong self-practice and qi emission than by acupuncture. In my experience they are less draining for the healer than qi emission into the secondary channels. It seems the closer you work to the core, more juice is available.
I asked around about the attitude in China toward shen therapy, using the body souls that actually are the body's intelligence and inner will. I met with Dr. Yang Yuan Jing, perhaps the most scientifically studied high level qi emission master in all of China. Almost a third of the Chinese research studies on the ability of qi emission to kill bacteria or grow them in a petri dish, the infrasonic/ photonic quality of qi, etc., have been performed on his personal qi field. I experienced his qi during a session as very powerful, and he could clearly direct it.
I asked Dr. Yang, What is the attitude towards shen in China amongst top qigong masters? He hesitated, and looked furtively around, as if concerned that someone in China 6000 miles away was listening. Nobody talks about it, he finally said. The government does not like it. Of course, when you develop high level ability with qi, you begin to have many experiences. I have seen the spirits of dying people depart. But we cannot discuss this professionally. Some people with high level qi ability have difficulty living with this, and close down their shen.
So where does this leave us in America? We have plenty of skilled qigong teachers from the martial arts side, which tends to focus on fa jing training, or suddenly discharging dense energy into an opponent's vital organ or tissues with intent to disable. At a high level it could kill a person if the organ is so shocked it stops functioning. We have fewer medical qigong teacherss, who might focus on the jing level but apply qi more gradually to it with the opposite intent of building it up. The ability to step down qi into the jing level and repair tissues, dissolve tumors, etc. is one thing that often distinguishes Chinese healers today from other types of energy healing in America, like reiki or pranic healing. And we have even fewer qigong teachers working from the shen level. There are a few qi healing training programs available, but they vary widely in their approach.
This is why the National Qigong (Chi Kung) Association USA or simply the NQA, an umbrella organization of about two hundred American qigong instructors, healers, students, and organizational members, recently formed a Medical Qigong Committee to look into creating a consensus of what American medical qigong training standards might look like in the 21st century. I originally joined the NQA two years ago at its inception because I was excited by the idea of creating a national family of qigong lovers. I'd had a great learning and loving experience with the Healing Tao community, and wanted the same sharing with other American qigong players and their different styles. I wanted to help birth a new American qigong paradigm, free of any one teacher. I am currently president of the NQA, which affords me some insight into the dynamic of what is now happening in the national qigong community.
The NQA's 15 member Board of Directions asked Jerry Alan Johnson, who is working on what promises to be an excellent 800 page book on Medical Qigong Therapy for clinical settings, to chair a Medical Qigong Committee. Jerry, a martial artist turned healer, is very passionate about his viewpoint on the subject. He falls into the adopt the current TCM medical school standards camp, a position that is not universally shared on the board, myself included, for the reasons I've stated. Yet I am grateful to Jerry for holding his position, as it highlights important aspects of qigong training that many western qigong enthusiasts are unaware of and that should be included in a top notch training standard. However, Jerry's zeal to promote TCM qigong medical school standards (with qi emission exams) led to an error that needs correction.
Americans Donıt Want Qigong Exams
In a Fall 98 Qi Journal article Jerry referred three times to a National Board of Examiners that had adopted his school's Medical qigong TCM curriculum as the national standard. But no such Board of Examiners exists now, nor ever has. Jerry has asked me to make public his apology (sent also as a letter to the NQA board) for the error. He says it was accidentally taken from an old flyer of his in which he (perhaps wishfully?) believed the NQA Medical Qigong Committee would also become a Board of Examiners.
Jerry has begun approaching players in the U.S. medical qigong field to join the NQA's effort to find a consensus on training standards. This process is still ongoing, and the NQA still invites anyone interested including non-NQA members to participate in this roundtable discussion to arrive at standards acceptable to all. This effort by the NQA is also echoed by a larger global effort to set medical qigong standards. Sponsored by the World Academic Medical Qigong Society in Beijing, it involves 24 countries.
But the political reality is that right now the American qigong community does NOT want a Qigong National Board of Examiners. How do I know this? I introduced a resolution minutes after being elected NQA President in August Œ98 at the National Qigong Conference in Cleveland. The motion was to limit the name and scope of the Medical Qigong Committee to recommending standards of medical qigong training, and specifically to avoid any NQA involvement in qigong exams. The democratically elected 15 member NQA board a representative slice of American qigong practitioners and professionals from many different schools passed this resolution unaminously, including a vote from Jerry Alan Johnson.
There are many reasons why the American qigong community is not ready to embrace a Chinese style exam board. One is legal. In China, big medical TCM institutions are part of a top heavy governmental power structure that is nearly impossible to fight if you disagree wth it. In America, if you don't like the decision of a licensing board of examiners, you sue. That's why acupuncture schools donıt license, they only train. An outside agency had to be hired that is not involved with any school to administer an objective written test designed to survive lawsuits from disgruntled students. But a written test can't test your qi. This puts us back to the current patchwork of qi training programs that depend on each individual qigong teacher to test their students however they see fit.
Since 1982 the Healing Tao has tested and certified 600 instructors worldwide to teach at varying skill levels, a pyramid curve with lots of beginners at the base and fewer with higher certifications. This makes it the largest and oldest microcosm of the challenges facing a national certification for qi training. New students would come for certification, sometimes with years of tai chi in some other school. They might qualify after a year of practice and a minimum of 160 hours of extra teacher training to teach basic medical qigong like the Six Healing Sounds and the beginning level Microcosmic Orbit meditation.
But they would often fail to pass a peer review test for rooting in Iron Shirt Chi Kung postures or getting power to flow through a short "tai chi chi kung" form. Why did they fail? Example: someone hadnıt learned the nine energy levels of doing tai chi taught in our school, and they naturally had the habit of doing their form a different way. There were a lot of bruised egos that waited years to get certified, but the fact that it was within a circle of friends, some in the same boat, made it tolerable.
Cerifying students for qi emission caused bigger problems. One person was having a bad day, another could do fine except when they were tested. At least people knew the ground rules and what to expect within a defined system. Problems arose because some less qualified people slipped by based on personal politics, rather than skill. The Healing Tao system ultimately worked because there was one teacher, Mantak Chia, who everybody accepted as having the final word, for better or for worse.
I foresee these problems multiplying ten fold in a national testing system for qi emission. Examinees will come with expectations from totally different kinds of qigong training some focusing on moving the jing, some on qi training, others on awakening the shen. It may become feasible if national training standards have been adopted by all the various schools and a majority of private teachers. But there will never be a single authority figure making it easy.
Fundamentally, American qigong, especially medical qigong, is still in its baby shoes. It may well be some years until its unique shape emerges and a consensus arises (if it does) on what national training standards should be, and whether they need enforcing through a licensing system by peers. It took a mishmash of state acupuncture organizations and schools seven years to organize into a national body as the AAAOM. Thatıs why the NQA is starting now itıs a long road. Until the qigong community figures out how they are going to regulate themselves, there is one non-bureaucratic mechanism of self-regulation the marketplace. Lousy qigong teachers and charlatan healers wonıt last long financially in the West if people arenıt getting results.
The NQA also has a Qigong Standards Committee (separate from its Medical Qigong Committee) which is seeking an open national dialogue to set minimum standards of training for qigong teachers working in HMOıs, hospitals, or schools to teach basic forms of self-practiced qigong. We accept that bureaucrats need to be able to say theyıve hired someone with the appropriate training standard set by a national organization like the NQA.
The NQA may thus end up creating a two tiered system of minimum training standards (NOT licensing) that different existing qigong schools/teachers can agree on while still keeping their unique styles. One set would be for medical qigong specialists, the other for the generalist. The point of standards is not to create a new qigong status or power structure or economic scale of fees charged. It is to encourage everyone to learn the best qigong from what's globally available yet culturally and energetically most relevant to American body-minds.
A Tempest in a Teapot?
Debate over medical qigong standards is still a tempest in a teapot.. Jerry Johnson's school only has seven graduates out of hundreds entering the basic courses. Only one acupuncture school in America out of 49 nationally even has a medical qigong training program. Dr. Jampa Stewart, a Dean at the School in Austin Texas, has done an excellent job (in my biased opinion) in blending TCM and Healing Tao curriculum to create a model medical qigong program.
So we're still talking about standards for a tiny, statistically insignificant group of medical qigong therapists. However in ten years, I predict most of these schools will have a major division of qigong training. Why? Because both acupuncturists and their patients will demand it. As America matures in its acceptance of qi, everyone will realize that it is the qi of the acupuncturist, not the needles alone, that is most powerfully healing. .
Qigong Specialists vs. Generalists
I also wonder about the impact of general qigong instruction vs. specialists in medical qigong who are also trained in qi emission and diagnosis. Will having more specialists (with longer, more expensive trainings) working in western hospitals have a significant impact on recovery rates from illness? Or is it better to create an army of general qigong instructors (with shorter training, no diagnostic skills) teaching groups of patients in clinics and elsewhere, trying to reach the larger population before their chronic imbalances require hospitalization? In short, do we focus on graduating more PhD's in qigong healing, or will a lot of people with BA degrees do just fine or perhaps better?
To better answer this question, I asked Ken Sancier, Phd. scientist and President of the Qigong Institute: Are the statistics in China on qigong's success in healing chronic illness based on qi emission by medical qigong specialists or are they based on results from ordinary folks practicing qigong learned in a class at a clinic or in a park?
Ken searched his Computerized Qigong Database with 1300 citations for the phrase waiqi, the standard term for qi emission in Chinese research.
Term Firequency
medical 636
waiqi 57
waiqi + medical 22
emitted + qi 21
emitted + qi + medical 0Any of these terms may appear more than once in a given citation, Ken told me. The results provide just an indication of the (infrequent) use of waiqi or emitted qi in medical qigong studies. Evaluating self-practice of qigong is more difficult because different terms are used for specific forms of qigong.
Some splendid studies do exist on using qigong self-practice. Notable is the 20- and 30-year retrospective studies at the Shanghai Hypertension Institute where researchers found self-practice decreased the incidence of death, stroke and morbidity by stroke by about 50% compared with a control group. The researchers also reported improvements in hormone levels, bone density, cardiovascular, function, and blood circulation to the brain, Ken concluded.
Kenıs analysis suggests qi emission is NOT the key factor in qigong success studies. This should not be misinterpreted. There is room for both PhD's and BA's in the field, even if the PhD Œs private practice of qigong therapy does not impact as many people. There is room for people who want credentials and licensing that may give them respect and skills to interface with MD's in hospitals. Their skills may help more difficult cases, and their work be more satisfying to them personally.
There is equal room for all the teachers and patients who don't like being in sterile, often strange smelling clinics or hospitals and would rather experience qigong or receive a qi treatment in a setting that feels more private and friendly. The credential that matters most to this group is not academic, it is word of mouth reputation and trust.
I know this because Iıve practiced private qigong therapy in my home for the last ten years, working with everything from sexual dysfunction and emotional trauma to camcer and aids. For the first session, some people may feel more comfortable knowing that Iıve completed some formal training. Do they know the difference between a Chinese style medical school degree and, in my case, a Healing Tao training? I doubt it. They want something miraculous. If I can get them to experience the miracle of qigong at any level jing, qi, or shen (to them: body, energy, or soul), we are both satisfied.
After the first session, it is all results, results, results. Because westerners are still uncertain of qi healing, I tell clients to come back only if they feel results. Invariably, the best long term results come from clients feeling empowered that they are participating in the healing and being educated in how to practice qigong or through changing their diet, breathing, emotional and sexual habits how they can manage their qi imbalance. Even when I boost the qi in their 8 Extra Channels or contact their 5 jing shen, I make them assist my work with their breath or internal mind focus..
I seek to avoid the allopathic model where a patient walks in with the attitude of Fix me up, doc, then flops down on a table and falls into an unconscious state. Then my qi is just seen as a substitute drug, and they are dependent on me. That ultimately reduces me to drug status, and makes the work more mechanical, with less spiritual joy in our relationship, and thus more boring and long term less effective. I try to cultivate the new paradigm emerging in America of a co-creative healing process. I don't call them patients; they are clients or students. When they are experiencing spiritual joy you can call it a non-dependent love for or trust in their healer then it is easier for them to shift the core shape of their disease pattern and see their own power to self- heal. This is integrating shen gong or classical spirit therapy with modern qigong therapy.
Statistics on the billions spent in cash for alternative medical care in America suggest that many people are more concerned with the effectiveness of treatment or a class than they are with someone's institutional credentials. People are wising up, they've figured out that credentials donıt cure anyone. MD' s have credentials from big medical schools and a social status that used to approach godhood, but that hasn't improved their abysmal rate of healing chronic illness. M.D. credentials haven't helped the 100,000. to 600,000. people (mostly elderly) that studies show die each year from drug side effects, mostly prescribed to alleviate chronic illness. Many of these deaths, which total more each year than all the combined American soldiers killed in our civil and world wars, might be prevented with simple qigong.
Many people think America's healthcare system is a dinosaur, too big, too expensive, bloated with too much technology and drugs, and about to collapse of its own weight into extinction. China may be a good model for low cost self-care, with an estimated 100 million people practicing qigong. In America, those kind of numbers practicing qigong would significantly lower the multi-trillion dollar healthcare costs. There is a program in Szechuan province where each family had one person who was trained to be the resident qigong instructor. They in turn taught other family members to do the Six Healing Sounds and simple meditation practices.
Perhaps it will take a crisis in medicine for Americans to wake up to the gift of qigong that has already landed. It is up to us, the American qigong teachers and practitioners of today to polish that pearl and ready it for the American body-minds seeking a new way to heal themselves.