The Life Connection

Qigong, an integrated mind-body healing method, has been practiced with remarkable results in China for thousands of years. In more recent years, qigong has attracted popular attention in Western culture. The Chinese have long treasured qigong for its effectiveness both in healing and in preventing disease. More recently they have used it in conjunction with modern medicine to treat cancer, immune system disorders and other health conditions. This ancient technology is also based on the ancient wisdom tradition of working with the spiritual dimension. Through practice, qigong creates an energy condition (chi body) under which mind, body and spirit can function in the most optimal, harmonious and integrative way. The implication is beyond just physical healing — it enhances all of life.

Historically, qigong can be traced back to ancient shamanism, passed down through many traditions such as Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Traditional Chinese Medicine (e.g., acupuncture), martial arts and folk traditions. Its energetic teaching and practice remained secretive and somewhat mystical until after the Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976) when a few grand masters took qigong public. It gained popularity very quickly between 1980 and 2000 as the government promoted qigong’s health benefits at the time of the country’s recovery from the deep wound from the destruction of the Cultural Revolution. Qigong wards in Chinese medical hospitals became commonplace and hospitals devoted solely to qigong treatments as the primary therapy rose throughout the country. Then in 2000 the Chinese Government decided to trade health benefits for political control and many had to shut down or at least go underground or minimize their scales. Around that same time, the Western countries became aware of the many benefits of qigong.

Wisdom Healing Qigong and Medicine-less Healing Hospital

Although there are many kinds of qigong, Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong was introduced by Qigong Grandmaster Pang Ming. Dr. Pang is trained in Western Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine and synthesizes his profound medical knowledge of the old and new healing sciences with the ancient qigong practice. Dr. Pang developed this integrative system of self-healing and cultivation and in 1988, founded the world’s largest medicine-less hospital known as “Huaxia Zhineng Qigong Training and Recovery Center” (“the Center”). Students (people are not called patients) admitted to the Center are initially diagnosed by medical professionals and then assigned to qigong teachers. After 24 days of daily practice, they are given a battery of medical tests. Through enormous scientific research (tens of thousands of documented cases and 3,000 research papers, some published during the ’90s), and more than 20 years of experimenting with Qigong healing, Wisdom Healing Qigong has developed into a scientific system of working with energy to improve life. The success of the medicine-less hospital is reflected in its growth. The hospital grew from 500 patients in 1988 to 10,500 patients in 1999. The Center has treated more than 180 diseases and during a period of two decades treated more than 200,000 patients with a 95% effective rate.

Patients that come to the Center in China have tried almost all other options, conventional and alternative. Their disease is often classified as “incurable” and “chronic” and is based on the available technology and paradigm of the body as a cellular machine and the question is ‘can the body heal its disease?’ When we approach disease from a Qigong perspective, based on the paradigm of mind and body as one intelligent system of energy, the question is ‘what is the optimal condition for the mind and body to heal together?’ In the last decades, the new emerging science has revealed a much greater possibility than humans are machines. In the medical field, the implication of placebo and nocebo effect has pointed out the reality of mind over matter. In quantum physics, mind over matter is an accepted reality. In the Center, we demonstrate the effectiveness to patients who are depressed from the suffering of their diseases and the labels of ‘incurable’, ‘chronic’, and so on, by showing the documentation of the healing results. We show demonstrations where patients quickly lose weight or reduce their blood pressure or eliminate tumors. We show patients’ before-and-after conditions: the concrete results of practice. We don’t show this to promote ourselves, but only to raise a new patient’s confidence. In their mind, they have exhausted all other options and resources. When they see there’s hope, they practice qigong with determination. They experience the mind-body interaction as subtle energy and validation that 96% of the universe is invisible and formless energy while only 4% is physical reality, as we know it in science.

To deepen students’ true understanding of the qigong paradigm, we conducted all kinds of experiments. Students emitted chi to heal cracked eggs, bend spoons and raise large fields of crops. In one of these projects, the practitioner used the mind to transform chi. A highly light sensitive CCD device was embedded into a black box and connected to a computer that read the measurement in photometry. A trained qigong practitioner transformed the chi in the black box to measurable light (by the computer). Another example was to emit chi with a different intention (information) to cancer cells in a test tube. The cancer cells either grew or died according to the intention of strengthening or killing. On the other hand, experiments discovered that it is far more effective to intend the health of the whole body than just killing the cancer cells in the body.

Qigong, a very profound system of knowledge, belongs to the highest ranks of Chinese culture and indeed, world culture. While India, Greece and Egypt did not use terminology similar to qigong, all developed knowledge that belonged to the category of qigong. Chinese talk about chi as the source of the universe that causes the growth of all things. This is a much different creation theory than conventional science. Astrophysicists talk about the Big Bang—an enormous explosion that created the universe. But Chinese talk about the primordial state of the universe in terms of chi: Energy that creates and transforms. It is similar to the state before explosion. The ancients didn’t talk about why this is so, but rather, how one can harmonize with this reality and conserve one’s chi.

Humans have internal chi and can access the external chi. To cultivate chi, one needs to replenish all the chi that has been lost by simply living especially stressful living. Most methods rely on cultivating chi in the body to make up the loss. However, Wisdom Healing Qigong uses another method that doesn’t rely on the chi of the body but rather, goes directly to the chi of nature. Cultivating one’s own chi through accessing nature’s great store of chi produces quicker results. But cultivating chi is not the most fundamental; cultivating one’s spirit is. Mastery of chi is really achieved through mastery of consciousness. We use consciousness in a careful, craftsman-like way to shape our life and attain our goals. If we use modern terminology to name this process, we call it qigong. The ancients used the word chi and this mystifies people. But in modern terms, qigong is just the refinement of consciousness to enhance the state of chi in the body. This leads to vibrant health, a harmonious body and mind, and an awakened spiritual life.

Qigong goes beyond belief, which has the profound influence of healing, to proactive transformation in a process of intention, trust, choice, action and experience to embodiment. Energetically it works on the physical, cellular, emotional and mental energy conditions as one unit. In China, we observed through two decades of research and practical experience, that students’ recoveries are mainly due to the following conditions: Student’s diligent and sustainable practice; Teacher or healers guidance and treatments as an individual or in a group; Group synergy – the chi field. Each can contribute to students’ healing in different ways in different stages. But when all conditions are available, students have the ideal condition. Qigong’s promise is the marriage of the mind and body or more accurately, consciousness and energy. The result is the creative potential of the mind with access to the strong force of energy, including healing and transformation.

Some traditional meditation practices, while having great benefits, also have drawbacks. Some rely on a sitting practice. To sit correctly, you must enter stillness. If you cannot do this or do so poorly, there will be a negative affect on the chi. If you cannot enter into deep still states, you will not reap the rewards that come from stillness, like improved brain functioning, increased alpha waves, and decreased beta waves. In some cases, a meditator may develop a conditional habit to leave the body to feel spaciousness, thus separating the relationship of mind and body even more. In our practice, we don’t over-emphasize stillness; we promote the natural processes in the body, creating greater flow, opening and balance. We promote that the mind rests in the nature of energy, its stillness, movement, aliveness, creativity and expansiveness; and encompassing energy both within the body and around the body. Many meditators, experienced or not, have reported enhancement of their meditation through qigong practice.

Qigong practice helps you perceive the energy that all life is made of. In many ways qigong is Quantum Physics technology put into use. Every form, every body, every cell—even your thoughts and feelings—are made up of energy. In Wisdom Healing Qigong the specific focus is on directing this energy toward healing. In this form, you learn to practice in a state of concentrated awareness, using your mind to direct energy flow. In an awake, yet completely relaxed state, we amplify the energy, which promotes well-balanced functioning of the physical body. As a result, health benefits come naturally. Additionally, when we are consciously practicing Wisdom Healing Qigong, the most important aspect is activated—the connection of mind and body. As we allow our minds to participate with the process of life within our bodies we start to perceive the underlying energy of the body. Whenever we are encountering physical problems such as illness, disease, low energy, depression and so forth, we can look into the energetic cause. The beauty of working with energy is that we can consciously change our energy patterns. The more subtle layers of energy we work with the easier we can change the problem. In a deep sense the energy is already the medicine and Wisdom Healing Qigong teaches us how to make the medicine through the mind’s induction and the heart’s intention, directing the medicine to the right place through movement, visualization, sound and breathing.

Amazing stories of this holistic healing system have brought many people from all over the world to visit the center and learn Wisdom Healing Qigong. Today there are more than ten million practitioners worldwide and the number is growing everyday. Besides China, Zhineng Qigong training and practice groups are now established in England, Russia, Canada, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Italy, Norway, France, Sweden, United States, Germany and Holland.

Master Mingtong Gu has received the highest training in the Master Training Institute at the Zhineng Qigong Center of China under the mentorship of Grand Master Pang Ming. Carrying on the original Qigong form Dr. Pang’s hospital is founded on, Master Gu offers the practice as Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong here in the West. He is the founder of the Wisdom Healing Foundation in the United States and is working toward the creation of a Qigong healing retreat center. In weekend workshops, Master Gu teaches profound and effective techniques including healing others. In the intensive 10-day retreat amazing healings that occur include overcoming chemical sensitivity, recovery from fatigue and immune disorder, release of cancer tumors and other challenging conditions. Master Gu’s dynamic teachings have successfully reached beginning students, advanced spiritual students and health professionals alike.

Master Gu will conduct many events, with a special guest, singer and teacher Lucinda Drayton from England: healing event at Conscious Life Expo in LA, Feb. 13; weekend at UCLA, Feb. 27-28 and UCSD, March 13-14. For Lucinda’s tour in USA, visit www.facebook.com/LucindaDrayton. To see Master Gu’s schedule, visit www.chicenter.com or call 800-959-2892.