Qigong training schedule?

[dmattwads]

I have been doing qigong for about a year now, but its been a little of this and a little of that, but I don't really feel this is an effective way to go about it. This raises the question though of which sort of training schedule should I set up to really get going with qigong? I know many of the various styles and forms ect... but am not really sure which ones I should focus on? I guess part of the answer would be to know what goal I have for what I want to get out of it? I think that since my physical health is pretty good for the most part, but since my emotional well being is by far a bigger challenge for me, I suppose my qigong training would be best for me to focus on aspects of qigong that are most effective on the emotions, but which styles of qigong are the best for that? Additionally I take Karate and wonder which style of qigong would help with that as well? yet if taking on both of those at the same time is too much I'd rather concentrate on my emotional well being first, unless there is a style that would improve both at the same time? Any advice from any of you who have been doing qigong for a while?

Thanks
Matthew

[joeblast]

If its your emotions that are bugging you and you are in generally good physical health, then perhaps a meditative approach would suit here. Try being meditative and step back from your emotions, still yourself with your awareness watching your awareness - calm the surface in order to see what's underneath! It almost sounds like you might be looking too hard - what you need resides within - we're each our own biggest challenge. Observe your emotions with a logical mind - what are your objective conclusions? You dont necessarily need to write it here, but just taking that look for yourself is a great first step in righting your mind. If you have trouble meditating, just focus (or, place your awareness) on the physical mechanisms of the breath and go with it for a while - practicing that will naturally help calm the mind and running of thoughts.

a good level of exercise is also good in keeping your mind well - if your endocrine system is all out of whack, you're not going to feel happy. keep the ship running tight!

what kinds of qigong have you been doing?

[Dvivid]

I would recommend Soft Qigong. This is moving qigong, with minimal muscular tension.

It will balance your physical strength, and teach you how relax more deeply, which naturally increases your energetic circulation.

Crane qigong can also be traced back in history as the root of karate practice.

http://www.ymaa.com/publishing/dvd/qigong_DVD/shaolin_white_crane_qigong_DVD

Repeating a few of these movements over and over will slowly develop your qi in the arms and torso, and give you something to feel you're making some progress with.

[dmattwads]

I really appreciate all the input thus far. As far as what styles of qigong I have tried, I've pretty much experimented with most of the styles that Dr. Yang has published in his books and DVDs as well as quite a few styles that Mantak Chia teaches as well. In doing so I was trying to see which styles were the most beneficial to me, but somewhere along the way it got a little confusing. I have done 8 brocades, 5 animal sports, wild goose, tai chi, small and grand circulation, inner smile, 6 healing sounds, healing love, fusion of the 5 elements, DaMo's 12 sets, as well as some yogic exercises, Matthew Cohen's fire and water qigong dvd, the DVD from Gaiam,.... so I think you get the idea that in all of this I got confused along the way.
I suppose this would lead to a follow up question to both posts so far; as there are several styles of both meditation and soft qigong, was there a style that you all had specifically in mind as far as meditation or soft qigong goes? Once again I really do appreciate the input, and it means a lot to me.

[joeblast]

Enough of a mixed bag that you should be able to see some commonalities - with respect to that its kinda of a matter of what resonates with you? i.e. I have a bad back and my sinews arent the strongest, so those facts help shape the decisions I make for practices that I undertake. Did you notice any aspects of one or another that struck you as particularly beneficial? A lot of these effects are going to be subtle, that's why changing practices around too often isnt necessarily a good thing.

Kinda the same deal with meditation, lots of different methods, lots of different results. I suggested simple awareness meditation because that tends to have a good effect on your ability to objectively assess oneself, which is a good starting point to assess your emotions - if you can be honest and objective with yourself in viewing the problem, then the solution or path towards becomes clearer

[dmattwads]

Yea I know what you mean about needing to pick a few out of Santa's qigong bag and focus on those rather than a little of this and a little of that. So far it seems that the best results I get for my emotions are the inner smile and 6 healing sounds that Mantak Chia teaches. I'm not sure if I'm not being patient enough with it, or something else might help more, because though it does help, I still don't feel all the way better or I have to do it rather frequently on days I'm feeling especially bad which can get distracting. On the other hand I was hoping there might be some type of moving qigong that would produce similar results because when I do get emotionally agitated its like a catch 22, I get agitated so I have a hard time sitting still and meditating, and since its hard to meditate I continue to feel agitated ...

[dmattwads]

actually in response to the other thing you said about objectively looking at ones self and being honest, with out going into too many details, I just recently realized that there are some things in there that I have been trying to avoid looking at but which I probably do need to face. I suppose until I do face them they will just keep brewing under the surface, and disturbing me in a subtle way.

[joeblast]

ah ok...yeah, if you're too agitated to sit still, the 6 healing sounds and inner smile are great to do. I do those are part of closedown procedures for some of my other practices.
heh, avoiding ones own problems no, I've neeeeeever done that before hahaa...

[dmattwads]

yea no kidding, I know what you mean about facing some of our inner demons....

As per the other suggestion that was posted suggesting "Soft Qigong" which I am assuming is the White Crane Qigong, I do have the book and DVD which I recently purchased as I hope it will enhance my Karate. So I today began working on the soft qigong part of it, in hopes that it will help with my emotions as well as improve my Karate somehow. It is quite relaxing to do, but as its only been one day so far I'm afraid I can not yet report on what effect it has on the emotions, but I will try to keep a steady practice and then let all who may be interested in the results.

[Dvivid]

At first it will feel relaxing, and after a while as you develop the torso and arms, you'll find it is VERY effective for energizing the entire body. Just repeat it a few times a week and you'll feel the difference.

Enjoy,
David

[dmattwads]

In another semi-related subject... my acupuncturist told me that my Kidney Yin was very low, and that this was partially responsible for my emotional complications as the Kidney (water) is responsible for keeping (fire) the Heart in check, and the heart has a lot to do with our emotions, especially when they get too be too much. He told me that there was no qigong technique to increase Kidney Yin, but I suppose like any good patient I am here for a second opinion. Does anyone know of a qigong method to tonify the Kidney Yin?

[DEADLI.]

In another semi-related subject... my acupuncturist told me that my Kidney Yin was very low, and that this was partially responsible for my emotional complications as the Kidney (water) is responsible for keeping (fire) the Heart in check, and the heart has a lot to do with our emotions, especially when they get too be too much. He told me that there was no qigong technique to increase Kidney Yin, but I suppose like any good patient I am here for a second opinion. Does anyone know of a qigong method to tonify the Kidney Yin?

Hi Matt,
I don't know of any Qigong that can help this condition, but i could suggest foods and acupoints that could bolster kidney yin.
First off kidney yin vacuity, as a deep disturbance of the kidney network, is associated with essence vacuity (jing vacuity), since essence is part of the kidney yin.
Kidney yin vacuity causes fluid deficiency. Effulgent yin vacuity fire (yin xu huo wang, or internally developed heat) can form in the body, which further depletes yin fluids (symptoms include agitation, redness of the cheeks, dry mouth, and sore throat). One important symptom of yin vacuity with vacuity heat is night sweating, also known in TCM as 'thief sweating' (yin shu dao han), which causes loss of yin-nourishing essence. Another common symptom is the five hearts (wu yi), or hot areas: hot soles of the feet, hot palms of the hands, heat and burning behind the sternum.
So if these are your symptoms then you must avoid all warming/spicey food, coffee and alcohol, all of which are strongly yang foods. Also avoid strong mental and physical over-exertion, lack of sleep, stress and excessive sexual activity.
Give preferance to cooling/yin foods such as pears, apples, oranges. Yin classified grains wheat, rice, barley, also refreshing vegetables carrots, cabbage etc..
Acupuncture points that Enrich kidney yin include KI-3(Tai xi), KI-6 (zhao hai), KI-7 (Fu lui)
Points that preserve and support yin CV-4 (guan yuan), SP-6 (san yin jiao)
By combining food, acupunctre/acupressure and qigong to treat dissorders you can resolve them much faster, the synergy of them all is much greater than the sum of the parts.

Hope this is of some use........

[dmattwads]

hey thanks for the tips, which are along the lines of what my acupuncturist said, he gave me some herbs to tonify Kidney yin. He pretty much said the same thing, that this was not a qigong issue, but required as he put it "substances" he also recommended that I consume a lot of cranberries. Funny you should mention the night sweating, cause just last night I woke up all sweaty. Weird thing is.... before I started taking herbs n stuff to tonify my Kidney Yin, I didn't have many of these symptoms you were mentioning, but now I am, and I can only suppose that perhaps my Kidney Yin was so low that there was not even enough to have symptoms, but now its at least up to the level of low rather than exhausted and perhaps now I am experiencing the symptoms of low kidney yin??

[DEADLI.]

In terms of Qigong practice i would advise medical qigong, such as eight pieces of brocade, or the stretching and warming up set on the white crane qigong dvd you just got, which is actually a very effective medical set. I would not advise any hard qigong as this will again make your body too yang. Use medical sets to loosen the muscles (in the the torso) around the internal organs, which will allow smooth and uninterupted energy flow, and hopefully given these conditions your body will be able to heal itself.

All the best.......

[dmattwads]

thanks for the advise... I also have the DVD for the 5 Animal Sports and Wild Goose Qigong, are these also considered medical qigong? do they help with this sort of thing? Part of the original topic of my post was to sort out all the different types of qigong, what they are useful for, and how to apply them to various situations.

[DEADLI.]

thanks for the advise... I also have the DVD for the 5 Animal Sports and Wild Goose Qigong, are these also considered medical qigong? do they help with this sort of thing? Part of the original topic of my post was to sort out all the different types of qigong, what they are useful for, and how to apply them to various situations.

These are both medical qigong sets, but it all comes down to how much time you have in the day to do qigong. The more you practice a set, the better/more powerful the results are when you do it. So i would suggest picking two or three sets to work on, rather than do every single set you know once, otherwise it will be a case of, 'jack of all trades, master on none.' If you could just master one, the benefits would be huge.

Understanding Qigong DVD 4 has a good medical qigong set called four seasons qigong (si ji gong), in it Master Yang gives specific exercises for each of the five yin organs. So you could do a couple of medical qigong sets Ba duan jin etc... then focus just on kidney exercises.
Five animals is a good set, but you don't have to do the whole set start to finish. You could just take specific kidney exercises you like and incorporate them into your own specific tailor made set.

The morning is a good time to practice, try to fit a session in when you get up, before you have breakfast.

All the best.......

[dmattwads]

yea mastering one or a few does seem to make more sense than dabbeling in many , which was one of my goals in this post, to narrow my practice down to what I really need , cause the Jack of all trades approach wasn't really doing it for me lol

[dmattwads]

speaking of emotions, I guess another closely related subject is morality. Does anyone use Qigong to enhance or increase their morality? If so which techniques do you use?

[Dvivid]

I don't think that there would really be a qigong to enhance your morality. thats all about mental choices and awareness...

Regrding nourishing the kidneys: the concept is, move the kidney area.

So, a long qigong set like wild goose or five animals will have some exercises that pertain to the kidney area, but they also focus on the whole body.

The spine waving exercise within the soft white crane qigong I mentioned will benefit the kidney area greatly.

And yes, the 8 brocades deals with the entire body in a balanced way, including the lower back, so you could also just choose that set and practice it regularly.

Just remember that the idea is to repeat each movement enough that the physical body gets warmed up and the cells become excited to a stage where real change can take place. The tissues need to be stretched so they become loose and flexible and you can stay physically and mentally RELAXED during your practice, which allows your circulation to be optimal.

hope this is clear,
David

[dmattwads]

I suppose what I mean when I say using Qigong to enhance morality is that since each organ has an emotional aspect to it, then for example a live qi problem could result in excessive anger and aggression which could make being a good moral person more difficult, or excessive heart energy which leads to over excitement could lead one to be sexually promiscuous ect... So going on that note, I was hoping there might be a way to make morality easier by balancing the emotions which sometimes tend to make morality difficult.