Qi Gong simply has become a byword for any kind of exercise hailing from mainland China. But this is really not an accurate summing up of this body of work.

There are several streams of traditional exercise in China, religious ( Qi Gong as support of a spiritual training, not unlike the asanas of indian Yoga ) medical, that is exercise taught by doctors, taught or sanctioned by hospitals, and martial, exercise used alongside martial arts practice. To be clear the principles may seem the same but the execution and the goals may differ.

I think that there is a dangerous and erroneous trend to spiritualise the Qi Gong concept and make a pseudo spiritual science out of what is really only a smart intelligent and mindful exercise concept.

Qi Gong exercise works from a set of concepts and principles which are too often taken as gospel, a naive acceptance of anything uttered from the mouth of a Qi Gong teacher is a consequence of blind acceptance.

Use your common sense when verifying what is said by organizations or teachers, including me. Remember this is just an opinion and not an absolute reality.

I usually do not like to comment on other teachers, however, I can generalise about trends of behaviour.

A Chinese teacher whom I shall not name in Australia told one of his students that if her husband did not take up Qi Gong practice he would die. Later, this same teacher in a workshop said that ugly people are that way because they are not nice people and it was their bad karma that made them so !! Bloody hell?   

I checked out this mans website and sure enough it lead with super human, pseudo-spiritual jargon, No mention of his teachers in China, no mission statement and appalling photographs of the structurally unsound postures masquerading as Qi Gong. Light on a exercise and heavy on deception and super human promises of mastery.  Make no mistake these people exist in China too. A friend and researcher assured me that everyone and their cousins are inventing Qi Gong systems, this is problem.

Genuine Qi Gong is a part of a teacher student relationship. These relationships can sometimes be traced back several hundreds of years, seldom farther back than that with any real certainty. Many schools claim that their systems go back 3000 or even 5000 years. This is common marketing practice in China, my system is older and  therefore more valuable than yours.

But sadly the public does not really care where the teaching comes from and they quite often only train in one system or school and do not ask questions. Political and  gross egotistical behaviour can be found in some schools of Qi Gong. You may be surprised to find out that your eminent teacher learned from book!.

So the watch word is be vigilant, if a teacher goes off task and wants to exorcise you rather than exercise you, then ask yourself is this really Qi Gong?

To be continued....

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