At the very core of qigong is the idea that we each have living energy flowing within us, and that we can become aware of this energy and develop skill with it (qi 氣 translates simply as energy, and gong 功 translates as work or skill). This skill can then allow us to direct this energy in useful ways. One of the most common ways this skill with energy is applied is to health and healing, but there are also other areas of application such as the martial arts, or physical and mental performance, or other more subtle interactions with our environment.
This whole idea of working with energy can seem exotic and even fantastical to many people when they first encounter the concept. They find it difficult to ‘believe’ that we have living energy within us, and that it is possible for us to work with it. They see the idea of working with energy as some kind of mystical or superstitious belief. But is it really extraordinary for us to work with energy?
Where does the idea that it is strange to work with energy come from?
I think a lot of the unfamiliarity and exoticness of the concept of living energy comes from an unnuanced materialist view of the world. A view that limits understanding to only what has physical substance, and a kind of suspicion or disbelief about anything that is not immediately visible or measurable. But in the modern age, surely we are ready to move beyond this?
For most people there is no controversy around the idea that there are many aspects of energy all around us that are generally not seen, and may be difficult to measure without significant effort. Most of us accept that there is electricity that flows through wires, that we may not see, but still has an effect. Most of us accept that there are frequencies of light that fall outside of the visible spectrum, but just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean they are not there and causing effects. Most of us are willing to accept that there are magnetic fields which form – and while we can’t see them directly, the fields effect on other things around them is quite clear. We even accept that energy can carry large amounts of information, transmitted invisibly through thin air as radio waves and other frequencies. Most of us make use of all of these types of energy on a regular basis, in our cellphones, computers, and other electronic devices and appliances.
Many people readily accept all these types of often unseen energy within machines without a second thought, but don’t seem to then make the connection to how these same types of energy function within us 🤔.
Energy is the stuff of life!
With a little bit of rational thought though, they may realize that of course these types of energy are present within us. All of our cells produce heat and even light at a variety of frequencies as they perform their normal functions, produce energy within us, and communicate with each other. All of our nerves carry electrical currents as a way to transmit information within our bodies. Each of our cells have electrical activity that is essential to their functioning – and so on.
Each of us consciously directs this flow of energy as a regular part of all our normal activities. For you to move a finger an electrical current travels from your brain down through nerves in your arm to the muscle cells in your forearm and hand, they then receive the information in that electrical signal and use chemical reactions to contract or release the muscle fibers to move the finger, generating heat and light in the process.
The unnuanced materialist focuses on just the physical movement of the finger – ignoring all the unseen movement of energy that was required to cause that movement. The more rational thinker with a broader perspective may recognize all of the aspects of energy within our bodies behind the final physical movement of the finger, but still think of the function of all these aspects of our energy as something outside our conscious awareness or control – and that all we can do is focus on moving the finger. Qigong takes us a step further and recognizes that we can become not only aware of the physical movement within our body, but also the living energy that flows to support this movement, and all of the functions within us. With this conscious awareness we are able to then strengthen and finetune the qualities and flow of that energy to bring greater health and vitality, and to direct that energy in useful ways.
An analogy for these different perspectives
We can use driving a car as an analogy for these different perspectives. The unnuanced materialist might focus only on the physical movement of the car, how fast it is going, how the direction changes when you turn the steering wheel, and what happens when you step on the accelerator or break. It’s a very simplistic way to look at things, how the engine works might as well be magic to them, but yet they still may be able to drive the car and get where they want to go fairly successfully just by focusing on the external physical aspects of the car they observe.
The rational thinker with a broader perspective may have an intellectual understanding that there is an engine inside the car that burns fuel to create movement which turns the wheels, that there is also an alternator that produces electricity, a battery that stores the electricity, wiring that sends the electricity where it is needed for lights and sensors and so on. But to them it would be impossible to know what exactly is going on with all of these internal workings of the car until a warning light appears on the dashboard, or without hooking the vehicle up to a diagnostic machine to get a reading from it. Everything is fine until it’s not – and then you need to go to an expert to fix it.
Someone with a qigong perspective pays attention to the more subtle ways that energy moves through the car. They are like a skilled mechanic, or an experienced and attentive driver, who notices the small vibrations that move through the car from the running of the engine. They hear the small sounds the car makes, they feel the way the steering responds, how tight or loose it is, and whether it pulls one way or another. From this they are able to gain lots of useful information. They can recognize issues as they arise and address them before they become a major problem, they can finetune the running of their car so that it performs more efficiently, and they can adjust how they drive to better match the way the car responds to different conditions.
They could all be using the exact some car, but have quite a different experience of driving it!
Living vs mechanical energy
Of course this is a rather simplistic analogy, but hopefully one that is at least somewhat helpful in recognizing how these different ways of thinking shape our experience and how we may approach and work with different situations we encounter.
The functioning of our living bodies is much more sophisticated than a car! There is also quite a difference between living and purely mechanical energy. Referring back to our example earlier of moving a finger. A similar movement of the finger could have been achieved by applying electrodes to the correct places within the body and using an external electrical current to stimulate the contraction of the muscle fibers – no need for the brain and the nerves and all of the other parts we use when we direct this action consciously within our body. In fact, a similar movement could be accomplished by using electrodes on a body that is no longer living as well… but while the resulting movement of the finger is somewhat similar – it would also have some important differences.
Living energy is a combination of all the many types of energy required for life – heat, electricity, magnetism, movement and vibration, chemical energy, even light, are all aspects of living energy, and there may even be other components that we don’t fully understand yet that also combine together within the symphony that makes up life. In addition to this, living energy is directed by the intelligence of the thing that is alive. That means that there are aspects of awareness (whether conscious or unconscious) connected with its action. There is intention behind its action, and it tends to be responsive in the way that it functions.
When the movement of our finger is directed by living energy – naturally a balance of different types of energy will be mobilized to accomplish the task. This may include things like additional blood flow carrying oxygen and nutrients to the cells, warmth from increased cellular metabolism, and directed movement of intra and extra cellular fluid to drain away wastes through the lymphatic system to keep the cells healthy. In addition to this, when the finger starts to move the inherent awareness will mean that usually if there is an obstruction to the movement, the finger will stop its movement, or will change the path of its movement in some way to adjust for the obstruction. The intention behind the movement will also shape many aspects of how exactly it is done as well, making it somewhat unpredictable.
On the other hand, if the movement were to be stimulated by a purely mechanical energy by attaching electrodes to the finger, it would lack many of these features of living energy. The contraction of the muscles and therefore the resulting movement would be quite predictable, and would occur in the same way regardless of whether there was an obstruction or anything else that would cause the movement to be varied by living energy. This could even cause the finger to be damaged by contracting too hard against an obstruction and so on, or at the very least to move in a meaningless way without some kind of intention directing it. In addition to this, if the movement was caused purely by electrical stimulation, if it occurred in a living body the surrounding cells would try to bring in the other aspects of energy required to maintain health after the stimulation and movement – they would bring in nutrients and pump away wastes and so on, but would be doing it after the fact, playing catch up rather than combining all the necessary aspects of energy together in a harmonious way from the outset. In a finger that is no longer alive the movement may still be accomplished in a very similar way – but there would be no maintenance on the cells, removal of wastes carried out by the body – as it is missing that intelligent aspect of living energy.
The challenges of measuring living energy
So there are very clear differences between what occurs when something is stimulated by living energy rather than purely mechanical energy. One significant thing that comes from this is that living energy is much more unpredictable – you can literally say it has a mind of its own… making it much harder to measure in all of its complexity as any two different living things may respond in somewhat different ways. Again, this is well understood scientifically, and by any rational thinker, and this is why the processes for investigating a purely physical/mechanical effect in physics is quite different from investigating effects in living things.
To test a theory in physics, you may do a single experiment, effectively using a sample of one. You then need the experimental procedure to be repeatable by others so that the results can be validated – but essentially a single example of an effect is enough to give a predictable understanding of it. On the other hand when working with living things, for example in a medical trial – it is essential to have large numbers of subjects, and also to randomize and control for different variables in order to come up with a meaningful result. And even then there will be great variability in the effects on different subjects within the trial, because each individual responds so differently – what is aimed for at best is ‘statistical significance’, an indication that on average there is a certain effect taking place.
Living energy is certainly more challenging to work with, at least in terms of coming up with uniform easily measured and definable results – but that is simply the nature of life! We cannot work effectively with living energy without acknowledging its many parts, and without accounting for the intelligence or mind that directs it. (Controlling for placebo effect is one of the major challenges in designing good medical trials. This is difficult enough for simple interventions like administering pharmaceuticals, but becomes much more challenging for other types of intervention, and is a big part of why many potentially beneficial interventions go unstudied.) Just because something is not easily measured doesn’t mean we can’t understand many aspects of how it works though…
Qigong – learning to work with living energy
In qigong we learn to tune into and understand our living energy through our own subjective experience of it. We explicitly recognize the role of our intelligence or mind in directing the action of our living energy, whether this occurs consciously or unconsciously. We pay close attention to the sensations of our body, observing the subtle nuances that lie beneath the superficial appearance of movement. We use our breath as a bridge between conscious and unconscious awareness, to start to direct the action of the many systems that contribute to our living energy as a whole.
While it is useful to understand and measure the parts that make up the whole when we can, the many parts of our living energy combine together in such complex and nuanced ways that we are not able to fully comprehend it just from its parts. Just because we cannot possibly measure each part individually, or calculate objectively how they all interact with each other, does not mean that we don’t still observe the collective result. We don’t ignore or pretend that the end result is unknowable simply because we are unable to measure all of the component parts.
Instead we develop an awareness of the whole. We recognize it as flowing, shifting, changing, and adapting, as all living things do. We use this awareness of the whole as a way to understand the effect of each of our actions collectively, and this in turn of course affects each of the component parts.
Does this seem extraordinary to you? Or is it just acknowledging the nature of life, and working with it in the most practical way possible? – through our own subjective experience. This seems far more practical and pragmatic to me than closing our minds to what is there for us to understand from our own perception, simply because it cannot be measured objectively.
Of course just because living energy is inherently unpredictable, doesn’t mean that there aren’t useful patterns within it that we can understand. Much like those medical trials, there are patterns that emerge of how our energy functions in response to different types of stimulus. This has led to the development of many useful principles and practices that quite reliably affect our energy in beneficial ways, and ‘maps’ of our energy, which while they may not be easily measured objectively, can be sensed subjectively, and the effects of working with our energy according to these ‘maps’ can be observed readily.
Little by little as we open our mind to this way of understanding our experience through our own perception, more and more detail develops within our awareness, and we are able to more reliably understand the way our living energy flows within us and begin to direct it in useful ways.
Like any journey, it starts one step at a time, simply starting to be aware of your energy is a great start, and from there the way you work with it can gradually become more sophisticated.
To support you in taking those first steps, you might like to check out the following articles:
- Simple Exercises to Feel Your Energy or Qi
- What is Qi?
- What is Qigong?
- Gong – a Pathway to Skill
You might also like to try the free Introduction to Qigong Theory and Practice course, that gives a broad understanding of how qigong works, and simple experiential exercises to understand the role that each of the three main tools (Mind, Body, and Breath) play in qigong practice. From there, there are many qigong practices that you might like to explore, you can find links to resources, classes and courses here.