Are There Really Dangers in Doing Qigong?
A young man emailed me the other day and said he wanted to study chi kung (qigong) but was worried about something a chi kung teacher told him. Apparently this teacher said that unless the guy learned chi kung properly, it could harm him, especially in a sexual way.
This young guy asked my opinion, and how he could find a good chi kung teacher so he could begin training.
First of all, I told him to give that instructor a roundhouse kick to the head. Some teachers are nuts. They believe everything they read or hear about magical or metaphysical properties of chi.
Why do we perpetuate these myths? How can a breathing exercise--a mentally and physically calming exercise--create a danger to you?
The real answer is that it can't.
Like everyone, I've heard of people who felt some strange feelings and even got ill while doing chi kung. I suspect these cases involve people who either had some physical ailment going on, or they were bringing emotional baggage into the class that triggered ...
Using Chi Kung in Daily Life
The first time I realized that chi kung (also spelled "Qigong") was having an impact on my life was in 1988, working as the producer of the 6:00 newscast at KMTV.
On one particular day, a wall cloud was passing the station, preparing to drop a tornado. People were running around the newsroom, doing live broadcasts, rolling big studio cameras outside the door so they could show the wall cloud on the air as it passed by -- there was a lot of shouting and screaming.
It was a little after 5 p.m. and I was at my desk, putting the final touches on the rundown and script for the 6:00 news. Suddenly I heard someone laugh. I looked to my right and the sports anchor was sitting at his desk looking at me.
"Doctor Chill," he said. "Everyone's screaming and panicking and you just sit there getting the job done."
I realized that I had been centering myself as I worked. I had become the eye in the center of the storm. The chi kung I began studying under Sifu Phillip Starr at the Omaha YiLi Chuan ...
Author - Instructor
Ken Gullette
I have practiced martial arts since 1973 and began studying the internal arts in 1987. My goal is to cut years off your development time by coaching you in the real skills for high-quality Tai Chi, Xingyi, Bagua. To see more about my bio, click the "About Ken" link on the menu at the top of this page.
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