Chinese Health Exercise: Qigong. Part Three

Meditation:

The road to real health begins with the mind. Many people start out with good intentions; perhaps the incentive is a heart attack, or something more basic like seeing themselves as they really are. Usually they go on a crash diet and embark on a heavy exercise programme. If they don’t kill themselves by the time they have lost weight they are too sick to enjoy it. Usually the fad only lasts for a short while and the cravings come back with a vengeance C so the patient is sicker than before because of the shock the system has sustained.

The only tool we have to make us stick to our intentions is the mind. Unfortunately the mind is usually in the same condition as the rest of the system through bad eating habits, bad thinking habits (aggravated by bad eating habits) and bad exercise habits. We need something to heal the mind first so that the mind can heal the body.

The area test influence on the mind is the way we live. Tension created by just living in the twentieth century is the greatest cause of ill health, and not many doctors realise this. We may be given a pill to ease the tension, but this does nothing to attack the cause of the tension and so the disease grows.

Around our bodies we have channels called meridians through which energy flows, something like the vessels through which the blood flows. All eastern philosophies of health talk of such a flow The Indians talk of prana, the Japanese call it ki, the Chinese call it Qi, we call it electricity or life-force. The fact that it exists is not the question for most western scientists now know of such a force. What is not known is how to keep a plentiful supply and how to keep the channels open.

What is needed is some way to train the mind not to allow tension to affect us. Whether the tension is psychological or physical it has the same effect on the body’s energy. If the body’s energy flow is interrupted or slowed down our natural healing systems are unable to cope with normal external attacks.

Tension, more than anything else, affects the flow of Qi by closing the channels. Through the miracle of television cameras we can actually see the stomach contracting and unable to digest when the person is placed under stress or even thinks about being angry. The same things happen to the acupuncture meridians; they contract, allowing only a small amount of Qi to flow to all parts of body. This can be used to great advantage by a trained martial artist; it is possible to strike certain parts of the body when the most Qi is flowing through that area, to cause immediate great tension, thus closing the meridian. After some time, perhaps days, the meridian slowly closes completely and the recipient of the blow dies. This is sometimes called the delayed death touch or dim-mak. However, it is said that this practice takes around three lifetimes to learn so not many ever come to such a level.