One of the things that we do within qigong practice is seek to tune into and actually feel and become aware of our living energy. After all ‘qi’ translates as energy, and ‘gong’ translates as work or skill, and it is definitely easier to work with your energy and develop skill with it if you have conscious awareness of it!
If you’ve never really tried to pay attention to your energy before, this concept and some of what you may experience when you direct your attention and awareness in this way can seem a bit weird or unusual to begin with. It can also take quite a bit of time and dedicated practice to really tune into your energy, and you may wonder if it is really worth all that effort. So, in this article we will look at nine benefits that come from being able to feel your energy!
1. Health and Healing
Our living energy or ‘qi’ is comprised of many parts. When we tune into the energy which flows through us, in subtle ways we are becoming aware of the electricity which flows through our nervous system, the flow of blood through our arteries and veins, the tension in our muscles and connective tissues, the function of our organs, and the heat produced in our cells. As we become more aware of this energy we are able to find where it is flowing freely, and where it may be blocked and stagnant. We are then more able to balance these flows within us, which has tangible effects on all the functions of our body mentioned above – regulating our nervous system, improving circulation, improving the function of our organs and the other tissues in our body and so on.
This awareness can help us in our efforts to guide our bodies resources to heal existing illnesses and to change and avoid patterns that could lead to more serious health problems down the track if left to continue.
2. Peak Performance
An extension of the first benefit on our list is that developing our awareness of our energy can lead not only to health as in an absence of sickness, but to finetuning our system to function at its highest level of performance.
Tuning into our energy can help us to develop sharper focus, greater strength, speed, endurance, and heightened sensitivity, as we finetune not only the function of each of our individual tissues, but also the way they work together collectively. Peak performance requires a fine balance between all of the parts of our body and mind, and tuning in to our energy is a way for us to focus on the effect of all these parts together, allowing us to effectively finetune that balance.
3. Harmonize Ourselves with Nature and Our Environment
As we become more aware of our own energy in finer detail, we naturally also start to notice the interaction we have with the energy of nature in the environment around us. There are many layers of benefit that come from this, such as being better able to arrange our living and working spaces to make us more productive and happy, or transitioning more comfortably through changes of season, or even really practical things like reducing the effect of jetlag when we travel.
4. More Harmonious Interactions with Other People
Of course we also become aware of more nuance in our interactions with other people as well. Observing not only the surface level of our interactions – like the words said, or posture and body language used, but also the energy that lies behind this, can help us to tailor our interactions to bring more harmony between ourselves and others. Avoiding unnecessary conflict, not allowing our energy to be drained excessively, and engaging in interaction in a way that leads to positive and healthy energy flow for everyone involved.
5. Richer and More Joyful Experience of Life
All of this leads to a richer and more joyful experience of life. As we develop our awareness of energy it is like having a new lens to observe and interact with the world through, which allows us to see and experience more fascinating detail. When we walk in a forest, we don’t just see the trunks, branches, and leaves of the trees – we also feel the energy that flows through them, and the patterns of interaction of the energy of all the plants and creatures within it. When we visit the mountains we not only see the grandeur of the wide open views and taste the freshness of the air, but we also feel the currents of energy that flow through the earth beneath us. We start to become aware of the bigger patterns of energy that ebb and flow through life, and the dance of different phases of activity and interaction.
6. Understand the Mysteries of the Universe
This richer, more detailed, experience of life helps us to understand the mysteries of the universe. Stated that way it sounds a bit grandiose – but anything that we don’t understand is by definition a mystery to us, and awareness of energy has an effect on our understanding of every facet of life and the world around us. We probably won’t understand all of the mysteries of the universe in an instant, but little by little as our awareness develops, so will our understanding, and little by little individual mysteries will unfold within our understanding.
7. Make Better Decisions
This greater more nuanced awareness and understanding of ourselves, the world around us, and our interaction with others, helps us to make better decisions in our lives. Some decisions in life can be challenging, with many factors in favour or against. And sometimes what may seem like a good decision on the surface may actually really not be beneficial for reasons that may not be clear from superficial analysis.
Tuning into our energy can help us to move beyond just our conscious ability to reason our way through this type of decision, and let our sense of our energy help us to appropriately weight all of the many factors known and unknown, and maybe even find other alternatives that we had not thought of. Reading the patterns of energy flow within and around us can help us to move out of and avoid patterns that may have been blocking our energy or causing conflict in our lives and find pathways and make decisions that will allow our energy to flow with the most freedom and vitality.
8. Fun
I think this is a pretty important benefit actually. Sometimes we can get very serious about life and all the many things we need to do, and challenges we may face (I know I certainly do). But what is the point of life if we can’t enjoy it? Tuning into energy is a lot of fun in my experience. I remember the first time I was shown some simple qigong exercises by my mother when I was about 10 years old. I thought it was fascinating! Feeling my own energy between my hands and within my body – it was a bit like being a Jedi!
Those initial experiences captured my imagination, and over the years as I have explored qigong practices more and more, I have had many more experiences of wonder as I have discovered new (to me) aspects of my energy, new insights into my interaction with the world around me, and new possibilities of how I can use my energy. Even after all these years, gaining a more sophisticated understanding of the many complexities of how our mind, body and energy work, my most satisfying and beneficial practice sessions are the ones where I truly connect to my energy and play with it with a sense of wonder, curiosity, and fun! When I do that I am more able to let go of my preconceived ideas and obstructions I have made for myself, and let the energy and the patterns of nature inherent within it guide and teach me.
9. Refine Your Qigong Practice
Qigong practices use our mind, our body, and our breath, and sometimes other tools as well, to work with our energy and develop skill with it. There are literally thousands of different qigong practices, each with their own specific benefits and modes of action. Many of these practices do not require you to be aware of your energy to get the benefits from them. Simply doing the movements, training the mind, or using the breathing techniques will give you many benefits by themselves. So if you don’t feel much energy in your practice yet – that is ok, and in fact it is important to not ‘chase’ after sensations of energy, as this can actually be detrimental to your progress, you will still get many benefits from just doing the practices as well as you can.
When you do start to become more aware of your energy, this can be very useful in refining your qigong practice though. As you start to feel your energy, you will be more able to feel the difference that small changes to your technique, the positioning of your body, the speed you practice at and so on, have on the quality and flow of your energy. Your awareness of your energy will become a feedback mechanism to help you to know how to refine your qigong practice to work with it even more effectively to make it stronger and healthier!
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed this article on the benefits of being able to feel your energy. We often tend to focus on some of the more obvious benefits mentioned at the start of this article, such as improving our health, or improving our mental and physical performance, but I thought it might be useful to also consider some of the broader benefits to our lives that come from developing our awareness of our energy. The further you get into your practice, the more it is these benefits that really come to the fore.
Many people may have developed some level of awareness of their energy quite naturally simply from their own experiences in life, or from a variety of different practices that activate our energy in different ways. One of the really good things about qigong and the Chinese philosophy on which it is based is that it provides us with a really useful framework that helps us to really understand what we experience with our energy, what it means, and how we can direct our energy in useful ways to bring health, vitality, balance, and harmony to our lives.
If you would like to learn more about qigong, we have some free introductory courses and other resources that are a great place to start. We also have some quite in-depth qigong instructor certification programs that focus on different types of qigong practice and help you to develop your own base of understanding from doing the practices and being able to discuss your experience of them, and the principles behind them with our experienced instructors and other course participants. These programs are great for people who want to gain sufficient understanding to be able to teach these practices with confidence, and of course are also great for people who just want to understand the practices really well for their own benefit. You can find details of these programs here.