WHY THE WEST NEEDS QI GONG AND OTHER ENERGY AWARENESS TRAINING

Our global shamanic legacies of deep connectedness with the earth have been terribly damaged and repressed, wiped out in successive persecutions and cultural genocides, or absorbed into the matrix of a later well intentioned spirituality. Qi gong as an oriental energy cultivation practice, it is not too dissimilar (according to my intuitive and ancestral remembrance) to what the Ancient Druids practiced as a form of energy exchange or communication with all life.

Many cultures have had energy cultivation and exchange practices, understanding that our being is embedded within the web of life and nourished by the greater universal energy field from which all life springs. This field is given many names. All living beings generate an energy field and even inorganic matter such as electrical devices have a field around them. Even objects can develop an information field over time that stores information and can be read.  We exchange energy in the ‘Way of Relation’ with the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. People may scoff at this and laugh, yet how does it differ from approaches of modern medicine apart from method?. The early alchemists (pioneering chemists) worked with base elements to transform them. Are not medicines made of minerals, plants and other compounds? It is just the method of development, ingesting and the paradigm of practice or guiding cosmology that differs.

Traditional Qi gong forms and practices have come from many different schools and masters, handed down, students to teacher and now in modern schools.  But these original practices developed in the mists of time in ancient China (and other parts of the ancient world under a different guise). The Shamanic Daoist culture as I understand it historically, was largely the domain of mystics, hermits and martial artists, and yet a very normal part of the cultural fabric.

Qi gong is part of what they call the Intangible medicines, (music & qi gong), as opposed to the tangibles, (herbs and acupuncture).  ‘Qi’ meaning energy, life force, prana etc and ‘Gong’ practice. Both develop awareness of and involve the use of the meridian pathways and internal body systems as much as the energy field. Modern medical imaging has mapped the meridian pathways and they are said to reside within the fascia connective tissue networks of the body.  Intangible energy practices are said to pre-date the use of the tangibles and are very much embedded within the world view or paradigm of their age going back thousands of years in recorded history. An era of a vastly different way of life, but one embedded within the living world connected and honouring the essential relations between all things. Feng Shui works in both the tangible and intangible realms.

The relational matrix Daoism cultivates through active engagement and practice is part of the underpinning of Buddhism now. The Hindu have their own correlates with Tantra and Kundalini Yoga practises and their understanding of energy (nadis and chakras) and other environmental science practises such as Vastu Shastra. Energy medicine and cultivation practise is something we in the west need to aim to understand, maybe under a different lens, but we need to reconnect people to the living earth out of which the life force emanates. It takes living beings to generate life force. Quantum physics talks of the Universal Energy field and the human Energy Field.

Our age is too materialistic and relation has fallen by the wayside, it is all a question of what we take and consume not of what we give. But you see it is an exchange, if we take, take, take; what will be given back to us will not be what can sustain us, as we are fast exhausting the planetary holding capacity but it will be what will destroy us in the form of major imbalance and planetary systems flipping.

The Chinese had a 3-fold model: - Heaven Earth and Humanity in-between as the bridge. Qi gong offers great benefit to us through an essential role in the cultivation of life force, and understanding there by promoting the protection of life support systems (planetary). We need to understand our place in the greater scheme of things as just one species in the great web. Just as the Ancient Celts and Druids had the Upper world, middle world and the lower world. Humanity is a walker between the worlds a bridge between the realms. But now we are building bridges into unthinkable realms without understanding their ecological consequences to ourselves and all life. This essential knowledge and relation is cultivated by practicing qi gong and entering into relationship consciously actively with the rest of the field of life. Giving and exchanging Qi, life force, essence and consciousness.  

We need to develop awareness and generate understanding of intrinsic relation between all things, in order to modify our life styles to be a lesser impact. Part of this journey comes back to ethics and many are now finding on their spiritual journeys that they have to borrow from the understanding and cosmologies of other cultures to make up for the deep soul yearnings and the deficits of the west.
Developing an energy cultivation practice will enhance your sensitivities, your general health and well-being, your healing potential and enhance your ability to relate and be in harmony with the word around you. The west must come to know through many methods that we are more than just our body, we are the animating spark and that spark generates life force!
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That same life force, that same spark is present in all of creation, all other orders of living beings and the substrate upon which biological form is built ie. Planet earth. It is our duty to cultivate and protect life.

Please join me as I begin my teaching journey for an introductory course with modern Qi gong- a method drawing from the vast practices of traditional Qi gong but suited to today’s hectic life styles.
Facebook event link here https://www.facebook.com/events/202437734029283/