Is Long White Cloud Qigong Medical Qigong?

Introduction – increasing use of the term ‘medical qigong’

Over the last 10 years or so, it seems to have become more and more popular for people to refer to different qigong practices as ‘medical qigong’. Medical qigong classes and courses are springing up all over the world. Sometimes students ask me about medical qigong, and some have observed that the practices they have learned through Long White Cloud Qigong are sometimes more ‘medical’ than what they may have learned through a ‘medical qigong’ school.

As the terminology ‘medical qigong’ becomes used with increasing frequency. I thought it was a good idea to open up a conversation around the use of this term, and answer the question of whether Long White Cloud Qigong is Medical Qigong, or not.

In this article I will lay out some of my views about using the term medical qigong, and I am also very interested to receive your feedback and thoughts on this topic as well. So please leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I would also appreciate it if you would share this with your friends and colleagues who may also have an interest in qigong. I would love to hear a wide range of views about this.

Main historic applications of qigong

Historically there have been three main areas that qigong has been applied to. Health and Medicine, Martial arts and High Performance, and Spirituality or Wisdom. The healer used understanding of qigong to prescribe exercises for patients to help them recover from sickness and injury, and  achieve full health and vitality. They also used their skill with energy to direct energy as a form of treatment to assist their patients in this process. The martial artist used qigong to develop speed, strength, resilience, and extraordinary physical ability to help them succeed in combat. At a very high level they were also able to use their skill with energy as a type of weapon itself, and their understanding of the functioning of energy within an opponent’s body to make their attacks more effective. The monk or the sage on a path of spirituality or wisdom used the subtle awareness developed through qigong to better understand themselves and their relationship with the universe. Qigong practices can develop sensitivity and mental acuity while maintaining the health and strength necessary to support deep enquiry.

Qigong means skill with life energy

This application of qigong skill to these different areas of endeavor has led some to consider these as separate pursuits – but in reality they are simply a different focus rather than a completely different type of practice. There is great crossover from one field of endeavor to each of the others, and to truly master one requires mastery of them all. At lower levels of practice this is not so obvious, but at the highest level this becomes very clear.

Let’s take for example the case of the warrior monk. To become skilled in combat the warrior needs to develop strength and resilience and so on. Qigong can help with this development, and at a low level these purely physical benefits may be all that is desired. But as the warrior progresses, they discover the need to understand the healing arts, both to take care of themselves and heal from the rigours and injuries of training and combat, and also to care for their colleagues on whom they depend for mutual protection. At a higher level, this greater understanding of how the body and energy functions makes them more effective in combat itself as well. And finally, at the highest levels, the warrior healer must come to understand themselves, their place in the world, and their relationship with others. This spirituality or wisdom enables them to be calm and focused when confronted with extreme adversity, and to better avoid conflict whenever possible.

I could go on and explain the necessity for the healer and the sage to also have a balanced understanding and skill in all these areas, but hopefully this one example will suffice for now. This is why some of the most famous qigong practices come from Shaolin and Wudang, where the practitioners were not famous for just one of these things, but rather for all three.

Qigong in its essence is skill with life energy. When you follow the threads of knowledge and understanding that come from this skill, if you follow them far enough, you inevitably come to a balanced knowledge of all aspects of life.

To take as another example the Twelve Rivers qigong practices. These practices are excellent for developing deep internal strength and resilience. You may notice that there is some similarity between this set of exercises and the widely known Ba Duan Jin (8 pieces of brocade) set of exercises. The Ba Duan Jin were developed by General Yue Fei in the 12^th century CE as a way to keep his soldiers healthy and strong. It seems to have been successful as he is reputed to have never lost a battle. Over time through different generations of practitioners many different sets referred to as Ba Duan jin evolved so that it is now impossible for us to know exactly what those original exercises consisted of, but some have suggested that the original set actually contained 12 exercises, and it was later that this was reduced to 8… perhaps there is a relationship.

Anyway, referring specifically to the Twelve Rivers, as you delve deeper into the practice of these exercises you discover their deep relationship to the internal organs and meridians, and that more than just developing strength and resilience, you can also use them to influence the health of the organs therapeutically to recover from illness. Personally, early in my Traditional Chinese Medicine practice I would regularly prescribe some of these individual exercises to help patients recover from whatever illness they may have, alongside whatever other treatment I might give them. So the medical benefit of these exercises is clear along with the martial or performance and resilience benefits. If we go deeper still, we find the connection between the movements, the organs, the meridians, and the postures and emotions of the body. We then start to understand ourselves and others better, we become more skilled at changing and releasing patterns within us so that we can interact with the world around us with more clarity. This is very useful as a starting place for developing wisdom and spiritual insight.

So one set of qigong exercises, with clear and direct benefits to all three areas of focus…

Levels of qigong understanding and practice

I cannot think of a qigong exercise that this is not true for. You may start to practice an exercise with a focus on developing in one area, but if you follow any of them deeper, you will quickly find yourself gaining insight and skill within each of the other areas. For this reason I have always just referred to qigong as ‘qigong’. The practices can develop a student’s skills in any of the three traditional fields of application – which one they focus on is largely a matter of personal choice, and to suggest that a practice is just for one focus or another would restrict the scope of what is possible to achieve and understand through it.

At an early stage of practice a student may see just one aspect of the benefits of an exercise, but that does not change the nature of the exercise itself. As understanding deepens the other benefits will also become apparent.

Long White Cloud Qigong’s roots

Long White Cloud Qigong has a unique syllabus that has been developed from my own years of qigong study, practice, and research. Part of why the practices we teach have what some may consider a quite ‘medical qigong’ focus, is that my initial qigong training was in the context of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The application of qigong exercises and skill with energy to the treatment of sickness and disease. For this reason, aspects of exercises such as their effect on organs, meridians, and energy fields, or their relationship to the practitioner’s psychology and physiology are well understood and well explained as part of the teaching.  But in addition to this, I also have decades of experience in Kung Fu and other martial arts, and the application of qigong to this. And development of a deeper connection to nature and understanding of the relationship between things has been an inevitable outcome of my ongoing research and exploration into these practices.

While these other aspects may not always be emphasized to the same degree as the health benefits of the qigong practices, they are still present within the teachings, and I would never think to restrict the teaching of these practices to one of these purposes above the others. As I start the process of re-structuring the Long White Cloud Qigong syllabus and course material, I think the deep relationship of the practices to all three of these areas will become more apparent to new students and advanced practitioner’s alike.

A definition of Medical Qigong

So is there a place for using the term ‘medical qigong’ specifically as a subset of other qigong practices? Possibly. All qigong practices have health benefits, and it is natural that these health benefits are the initial focus for all students of qigong, as all three areas of traditional application, as well as every other aspect of life depend on good health for their development. But is being good for health enough to define something as ‘medical’?

When you go for a walk which is good for your health, are you engaging in ‘medical’ walking?

When you eat a nutritious meal which is good for your health, are you engaging in ‘medical’ eating?

When you listen to some music which relaxes you and puts you in a good mood and is therefore good for your health, are you doing ‘medical’ music listening?

I think clearly being ‘good for your health’ is not sufficient to define something as ‘medical’ in the way that we commonly use the term, for something to be termed medical, we usually expect it to be addressing a specific health issue or remedying a specific illness. When we consider how qigong practice relates to this we might come up with a definition something along the lines of:

Medical qigong: Qigong practices focused on the remediation of specific sickness, injury or disease, or the improvement of specific health conditions. This may include therapeutic movement, static postures, breathing exercises, and meditations or mental disciplines. This may also include therapeutic application of emitted energy by a practitioner skilled in directing energy for the purposes stated above.

Using this definition would create a clear and workable distinction of what is and is not classified as medical qigong. You would still see many of the same exercises being used in both a general health and vitality context as well as in a ‘medical’ context’, the difference being the specific intent with which an exercise is being used. This is much the same as how we see other types of exercise being used. Someone recovering from an illness or injury may do many of the same exercises at a gym as someone who is exercising with the aim of more general health and fitness. The difference is the care with which the exercises have been selected for that specific purpose, as well as the level of supervision from a trained professional that may be included to make sure that the exercises are done correctly to achieve the desired benefits. A personal trainer and a physical therapist may sometimes use the exact same exercises with a client, but the intent, analysis, and supervision of the use of those exercises and their results will often be quite different. One we might consider medical, while the other we think of as simply being healthy.

Medical Qigong, or Qigong Healing?

So if we have an acceptable definition of ‘medical qigong’ and scope of what this describes, it still remains to be considered whether this is the best term to describe this aspect of practice.

I think in recent times part of the increased popularity of using the term ‘medical qigong’ has been as a way to make a qigong practice or certification seem more valuable. In my opinion sometimes the practices or courses using this terminology have not crossed the threshold into what can properly be termed ‘medical qigong’. I think part of the reason for this is that in our modern world ‘medicine’ has become expensive. If people accept classification of something as ‘medicine’, both consciously and unconsciously people are willing to pay more for it, because of the association with other things that are ‘medical’. This has led to the term being used inappropriately at times for what is really a more generally focused qigong practice or course. In a way I think this has led to the meaning of the term ‘medical qigong’ being diluted.

Another term that has been commonly used for this type of practice is ‘qigong healing’. In essence it is describing the same thing, but the connotations are a bit different. Healing has more of a folksy sound to it. It puts more of the emphasis on the process or the result that you seek, rather than the prestige of the classification. I think it often doesn’t carry the same implication of high cost, and recognizes to a greater extent the role of the recipient in the healing process.

In the past what we now call a doctor would have been called a healer. But if you think about those two terms now they probably bring up quite different associations and implications for you. One being ‘medical’, the other ‘healing’.

Which is right or wrong? Are they perhaps both still valid and useful terms to be used in different contexts? I think there is worthwhile discussion to be had around this.

Is Long White Cloud Qigong medical qigong?

And now back to the question we started this post with. Is Long White Cloud Qigong medical qigong?

All of the Long White Cloud Qigong practices have very clear health benefits, and very clear effects on the body’s energy systems and the psychology and physiology of the practitioner. These relationships and effects are taught within our courses, with the focus usually being more on Chinese medical theory, but often with some understanding from a western point of view as well. For the most part the practices are taught as a way to build up your own health and wellbeing through creating overall harmony and balance. Sometimes effects on specific health conditions are mentioned, but this is not usually the focus of the teaching or practice.  As such – while all of the practices have clear medical application, I would say that the way they are currently taught does not meet the criteria of the definition of medical qigong included earlier in this article.

However, as I begin the process of restructuring the Long White Cloud Qigong syllabus, part of that process will be to teach more healing application of the exercises, and also the use of qigong skill for direct therapeutic application. This has been part of the long term plan since the beginning of Long White Cloud Qigong, and it is a natural progression for students, as it is important to build up broad general experience and skill with energy first before seeking to apply that knowledge and skill in a therapeutic setting. This training will certainly meet the criteria of the definition of medical qigong used earlier in this article.

I still have a question for myself about what terms I should use to describe this though. While the term ‘medical qigong’ has become very popular in recent years, I am more used to using the term qigong healing. As discussed earlier, the connotations of the two terms are a little different, and I think there are several positive aspects to the implications of ‘qigong healing’ compared to ‘medical qigong’. But then perhaps I am just out of date in this aspect of my thinking. If ‘medical qigong’ is the term that people are searching for, then it would be silly for them to not find the valuable insights and practices contained in the Long White Cloud Qigong training due to using a possible outdated term.

At this point I am curious about your opinions.

What is your definition of ‘medical qigong’?

What are your thoughts and feelings about ‘medical qigong’ compared to ‘qigong healing’?

Should I use one term or the other when describing some of the new course material that is being developed? Or perhaps should I use the terms interchangeably?

I would love to hear your thoughts! Preferably in the comments below where others can also engage with them, or otherwise you can send me an email if you would prefer to just send them to me.

John Munro

Founder – Long White Cloud Qigong