Have you ever heard someone talking about qi or internal energy, and wondered what that energy feels like? In this article I will give you some simple exercises to feel this living energy for yourself, as well as discussing some broad concepts of what this energy is. You can also scroll down to find a video which you can follow to help guide you through the exercises.
To begin with, if you have only just heard of qi and want to get a better idea of what it is, you might like to read the article ‘What is Qi?’ first. Otherwise feel free to dive into the following exercises to start experiencing the feeling of qi for yourself.
Rise and Fall
Our energy flows most easily, and we are most able to become aware of it, when we are relaxed. This first simple exercise will help you to relax your body and clear your mind in preparation for activating and feeling your energy.
Instructions:
- Stand with your feet shoulder width apart
- Relax your body, you might even like to give yourself a little shake first
- Soften your legs so your knees bend gently, keep your back straight, and let your arms hang relaxed at your sides
- Inhale and raise your relaxed arms in front of your body to shoulder height, extend your legs gently
- Exhale and lower your relaxed arms back to your sides, softening your legs and bending your knees gently
- As you continue with the exercise, you may be able to gradually breathe and move more slowly
- Repeat as many times as you wish until you are feeling calm and relaxed
You can think of this movement as like a wave gradually rising within your body as you inhale, and then washing back down and away as you exhale. Just doing this movement will start to get your internal energy or qi moving more freely and you may start to sense this straight away. If not – don’t worry, we are going to activate our energy more strongly in the next exercise.
Activating the Energy
This next exercise will activate your energy strongly and bring it specifically to your hands where you can feel it more easily.
Instructions:
- Rub your hands together briskly until they become warm or even hot
- Pause and hold your hand just slightly apart from each other and see if you can feel the heat radiating off them
- You can also hold your hands just slightly away from your face and see if you can feel the heat from your hands on your face
- Next clap your hands together hard enough that they start to tingle. It works best if you do this by clapping at random intervals
- Hold your hands slightly apart from each other and see if you can feel a soft squishy feeling between your hands, kind of like the poles of two magnets coming close to each other*
- Move your hands gently closer squeezing against this energy, and then further apart letting this sensation push your hands away from each other
- Keep breathing! Sometimes when we focus too much we tend to hold our breath, and this will eventually reduce your energy flow
- Move your hands out and in playing with this sensation of energy between your hands and seeing how far they can move apart while you continue to feel this sensation
Rubbing and clapping your hands activates the energy strongly in the hands and also naturally brings our awareness to them, allowing us to feel our energy more strongly than we normally would.
*Note – some people may feel their hands pulling together magnetically rather than pushing apart. This is okay, you can still work with this. With practice you can learn to consciously direct your energy as to whether it pulls or pushes.
Forming a Ball
In this final exercise we will combine a few aspects of our energy and awareness together to feel our energy more clearly, and maybe with a little more nuance.
- Pause with your hands at a comfortable distance from each other, where you can still feel the squishy magnetic sensation between them
- Slowly rotate your hands as if you are rubbing them around the surface of a ball
- As you inhale imagine you are drawing energy from all around you into your body. As your exhale send some of that energy out between your hands, filling and strengthening the ball
- When you want to finish, place your palms on your lower abdomen so that the extra energy that has flowed out to your hands can return to your body easily
You may feel a variety of sensations as you play with the ball of energy between your hands. You may continue to feel the soft squishy magnetic sensations, but you may also feel warmth combined with this. You may also feel vibration or swirling or tingling, some people may even have a visual perception of a haze or light between their hands.
There are many many aspects of qi, or living energy. Some of the most common ones are warmth and electricity or magnetism, but as we activate one aspect of our living energy other parts of it tend to naturally get activated and flow more strongly as well, so there are many different things you may feel or perceive as you start to work with your qi, which are all quite natural and quite normal.
Debunking Qi
Some people will look at an exercise like this and try to ‘debunk’ it. They might say – well that heat in your hands came from friction which increased the blood flow to your hands, and then the cells became more active and continued to generate more heat. Or, the tingling in your hands and the magnetic sensations between them are just a result of the nerve stimulation. And… that is correct – but missing the point entirely!
There is a common misconception that qi is some mystical indescribable thing. This leads people to either dismiss the notion of qi out of hand as mystical nonsense, or to miss the evidence of qi which is right in front of them because it is too ‘ordinary’ and not the mystical thing they were looking for. Qi is ordinary energy – the energy that makes us alive, in the exercises above we are simply activating this normal natural energy within our bodies in a way that brings it to our surface and makes it easier to become consciously aware of it. The only thing that makes it mystical is the way that many parts come together to make up that living energy, some of which we may not fully understand, but many of its parts can be readily identified and understood individually in the way they contribute to the whole.
Understanding as much as we can about each part of our living energy while recognizing that it is just one part of the whole is useful to us and can help us become more effective at working with our qi, and little by little understanding more of the mysteries of life. On the other hand being too reductive and thinking that once we have come to understand one thing, then that is all there is to know, becomes a barrier to our ongoing learning.
Mysteries are only mysterious because we don’t understand them, each part we understand better sheds more light and understanding on the whole – but as we discover and understand more, that just opens the way to become aware of new mysteries to investigate!
What if I didn’t feel anything?
In my experience, most people will be able to feel their energy quite easily by doing the simple exercises above, but there will be some people who don’t – at least to begin with.
As mentioned above, the energy we are activating and tuning into with these exercises is just normal energy from the normal functions of our bodies – blood flow, cellular respiration, nerve activity and so on, which we then bring our conscious awareness to. Therefore, the state of our physical body and our mind has a big influence on how this energy flows and how easy it is for us to become aware of it. If someone has excess tension or other conditions in their body, this can affect how easily the blood flows, and energy flows through the nerves, etc. Also, if someone’s mind is preoccupied with other thoughts, it can make it hard to tune into the sensations which may be quite subtle to begin with. Or as mentioned above, if someone is looking for something mystical, it can cause them to overlook the quite natural and normal sensations of qi that they do experience.
If someone has the interest to continue with qigong practice, these sorts of issues tend to resolve over time. Different aspects of qigong practice will generally help some who is too tense to become more relaxed and also resolve other issues so that the blood can flow more freely and the nerves and other tissues of the body can function more effectively allowing all the parts of your living energy to flow more easily, meaning there is a stronger flow to connect to over time. Qigong practices also tend to clear and focus the mind, developing greater sensitivity and awareness, making it easier to tune into things that may seem very subtle to begin with. And little by little this opens up a great richness of awareness of your living energy and how it effects every aspect of your life.
This process is the ‘gong’ part of qigong. Qi (氣) means energy, and gong (功)means work or skill. The implication is that we develop awareness and skill with our energy by working with it over time. So if you don’t feel anything straight away, certainly with time and practice you will be able to. It is a skill that each of us can develop.
Video of the Practices
Next Steps
If you would like to continue with your exploration of your living energy, you might find it interesting to check out the following articles:
The free Introduction to Qigong Theory and Practice Course takes you through the fundamental history and principles of qigong in a step by step way, including simple experiential exercises to help you understand the role that each of the three main tools used in qigong, the mind, body, and breath, play in connecting to and working with our energy.
You might also like to just dive into some regular qigong classes where you can experience a range of different qigong practices for yourself, or even one of our more in depth courses which you can find here.
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Great explanation of qi!