Book Review: The Complete System of Self-Healing Internal Exercises – By Dr. Stephen T. Chang, Tao Publishing, Bookman

I recently revisited this book and read it again for the purposes of writing this review – after first reading it quite a few years ago, and WOW… for a book published over 30 years ago, what a breath of fresh air it was! Straight to the point with clear simple explanation of theory and then description of a wide range of exercises for people to learn and practice.

The book is very dense with information. Packing in so many different exercises in such a small volume, you may wonder if the information is clear enough for a reader to gain any real value. I would say that yes, it is. The descriptions for each exercise are relatively short, but they give you enough information that most people will be able to go and practice the exercises they are interested in straight away. It doesn’t contain long descriptions and details of every nuance of how exercises work, but enough that you can do them. And an experienced qigong practitioner will also be able to recognize little pointers within the instructions that in a few words make links between much broader concepts and principles of practice. These are not elaborated on, but the pointers are there in such simplicity that practitioners of different levels can get what they need from them, whether it be simple instructions to do the exercises, or aha! moments as you tie together important aspects of Chinese philosophy and practice. I found my self smiling within again and again as I was reminded of some of the beautiful truths contained within qigong practice.

By now you can tell that my overall opinion of this book is very favourable, but I will still go through and identify specific things that I liked, things that I did not like, and just some interesting things to note about this book.

Things I liked in this book

I very much like that the book begins with some discussion and explanation of both basic history and underlying theories behind qigong exercises. For the most part I really enjoyed this discussion even though I may not agree with 100% of it.

I also like the simplicity of the ways the exercises are described and depicted. He has presented the exercises in the simplest way possible so that with just a paragraph or two and one or two line drawings the reader is able to understand how to do the exercises. Because of this the exercises cannot be presented in a too complex fashion, all embellishments are eliminated, and just the most simple essence of the exercises remains and is communicated.

I love how many exercises the author was able to include within this short book. From his perspective this adds up to a complete system of internal exercises within just one small volume. Quite remarkable.

I also very much enjoy the clear passion for these exercises that the author conveys in his writing. He combines his own enthusiasm for the exercises with storytelling about the experiences of his clients using the exercises to convey a sense of promise and excitement to the reader, to motivate them to try the exercises for themselves. I think he does this very well and many readers will actually put down the book and give the exercises a try, and surely that is the true mark of a good book – that it encourages the reader to actually put the information it contains into practice, rather than reading the book being purely and intellectual exercise.

Things I did not like in this book

In the authors enthusiasm to give explanations for how qigong works, he does tend to oversimplify, and overstake how closely some aspects of theory and practice relate to specific information from modern science. In particular he greatly overstates the relationship between qi and bioelectricity. In a way I read this as an almost charming little quirky artefact of the culture of the time when the book was written. There was enthusiasm for the emerging understanding of links between modern science and traditional practices, and a strong desire to make direct correlations between the two, and to ‘discover’ what qi is in ‘scientific’ terms. There clearly is a relationship between the concept of ‘qi’ and bioelectricity, but qi is not just bioelectricity. This seems to be a common mistake which occurs even today, to confuse the part with the whole. Considering the relationship between qi and bioelectricity is useful to a degree in understanding how qigong works and the implications of this, but it certainly does not capture all aspects of qi, and to restrict your thinking about qi to only this one element will mean that you are never able to fully grasp the full picture, and may even lead you in quite the wrong direction in your thinking and understanding at times. But with that broader understanding in mind, reading the simple equivalency he portrays in the book if anything reminds me of how our collective understanding changes and grows overtime, and that while our understanding of qi continues to improve, it is likely that in decades to come we will look back at some of the ways we use to describe qi now as outdated and not entirely accurate, as we continue on our path of progress and understanding.

The author also tends to present the exercises in the book as being the set of exercises, rather than a set of exercises from a particular tradition. Again, this is an artefact of the time the book was written. The history of secrecy around this type of practice meant that many people only really had exposure to the practices in their tradition and were often unaware of just how diverse the practice of qigong as a whole is, because all the different traditions were practiced in isolation from each other. This tended to lead to a rather blinkered view of the field, and when people started to share and write openly about the practices, the though they were revealing the truth about the practices, because there was so little other information commonly available about them. With the growing openness and availability of qigong information and training, this tendency to view the practices in this restricted way is disappearing rapidly, although you will still meet some old school students and practitioners who have yet to open their eyes to the diversity of practice present in the world around them.

Interesting points of note

The author does not refer to the exercises in the book specifically as qigong, he does make reference to chi-kung (the same word using a different, older form of anglicization) in the introduction, but he also uses other older terms, Nei Kung, Tao Yin, and Yang Sheng. Instead he refers to the practices simply as internal exercises. This is another blast from the past. The use of qigong as a collective term for all of these types of practices is a relatively recent innovation (although it usage pre-dates the books 1986 publication date significantly, so he is a bit outdated in his usage of the terms even at the time of writing), earlier in history their were a variety of terms used at different times for different practices. So it was interesting to see someone still using the terms in this way.

The author also does not emphasize breathing much in many of the exercises. There are some exercises that include specific breathing instructions, but many others do not have any instructions on how to breathe at all. This is an interesting point to be aware of, as the vast majority of modern qigong practices place a heavy emphasis on breath co-ordination. I think a lot of this is due to a little linguistic confusion. The word ‘qi’ in Chinese means energy, but it also commonly refers to breath. So for some people an idea has developed that all qigong must be to do with the breath, which is clearly not the case. For a variety of reasons, the breath is a powerful tool for working with the energy, but there are also many energy practices that do not require any particular breathing focus. Again the rather older, bordering on outdated views presented in this book actually yield some interesting insights and valuable reminders.

Conclusion

A fantastic book that I really can’t recommend highly enough. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced qigong practitioner, you will find much to enjoy and benefit from in this short volume. I enjoyed it so much, and it reminded me of so many important little details and insights, that I actually think I will read it again in the near future to help me to fully integrate and retain the many gems of knowledge this book contains.

If you would like to read this book, I know you can find it on Amazon.com here, or otherwise maybe you can try local libraries etc.