comrades

[Warren]

Anyone,what exactly is Qigong?
Thanks!

[Stéphane Beaudin]

Qigong is a chinese method of Qi cultivation through meditation and exercises, and one of the three main branches of traditional chinese medecine, with accupuncture and herbology. Most of it is very efficient, unfortunately, much of it is very time consuming. I personally recommend Qigong empowerment available here, with a very good sampling of many exercises and tendancies in the field.

[kojack777]

Comrade Warren

Literally translated into chinese Qi is your inner energy and gong is hard work.
Basically, it means hard work for your inner energy.

Comrade Kojack

[Stéphane Beaudin]

If I may interject, Qi is loosely translated in the west as energy, but is actually a much more complex and interesting concept that I translate as "potential". More or less, Qi is the contact surface between yin and yang, the place where the ebb and flow of the Tao happens, and since there is yin in every quantity of yang and yang in any quantity of yin, there is Qi everywhere, but it's character changes from circumpstances. The Yi King, the book of changes, gives essentially the nature of the Qi in a 64 increment cycle of yin and yang, and is extremenly interesting in this regard. The central premise of Feng Shui (60% superstition at least, but since the remaining 40% works, and is not extractable from the rest, who cares?) is that the nature of Qi in a given space will either nourrish of harm it's occupants, houses where rats, roaches and mushrooms thrive wither humans away. So while "energy" is reasonable shorthand to translate Qi, it should be easy to see there is much more to it than that. A very interesting subject.