Should You Let Yourself Cry It Out During Qigong?

The tears come during your practice, and something in you wants to go all the way with it. Not a few tears you wipe away and keep moving — all of it, out, until there is nothing left. It feels like the honest thing to do. It feels like the brave thing to do. So should you let yourself cry it out during qigong, or should you hold it back?

Neither of the answers most people reach for is quite right. Holding it back — clenching against it, forcing your face still — is not the point. The real question is not hold back or let go all the way. It is what you do with the feeling while your practice is still running.

Should you let yourself cry it out during qigong?

Start with what actually happens in your body when you cry all the way out. In the moment, the pressure drops. You feel lighter, looser, like something has been released. That part is real. Nobody is arguing with that.

But wait an hour, and notice how you feel then. Most people, if they are honest, are not calm at that point. They are empty. Flat. They want to lie down. That is not peace. That is what it feels like when qi — the body’s working energy — has left along with the feeling.

Why pouring it out spends something you just built

In the old Chinese medical texts there is a line for exactly this. Bei ze qi xiao — 悲则气消. Say the plain English first: grief scatters the qi away. When the feeling of grief takes over completely, the qi that had been gathering does not resolve — it disperses.

Look at what actually happened in the half hour of practice before the tears arrived. You were building something, gathering qi through steady, sustained movement and breath. If you then pour every bit of the feeling out on the floor, you take everything you just built and spend it in one go.

The money you just saved, thrown out the window

Picture a man who has just saved a little money for the first time in his life — and that same evening throws it out the window. Is he calmer the next morning? No. He is simply poor again. Nothing about his situation improved. He no longer has what he had.

That is close to what pouring it all out during a practice does to the qi you just gathered. Feeling the emotion is not the problem — feeling it is exactly right, that is the door opening. But feeling it and emptying yourself of it completely are two different things, and only one of them leaves you with anything afterward.

What letting it move through you actually looks like

Watch a small child cry. He cries hard, really hard, and four minutes later he is playing again — often with the very same person he was upset about. Nothing got stored. The feeling moved through him and was gone.

Now compare that to a grown man still carrying anger from twenty years ago. Bring the subject up and it arrives on his face in seconds, as fresh as if it happened yesterday. Same starting feeling. One person let it move. The other kept it. And both chasing a feeling for its meaning and pouring it out to the bottom are ways of keeping it, just pulling in opposite directions.

This is about the half hour, not your whole life

To be clear about what this article is talking about: this is about the half hour while your qigong practice is actively running. What you do with your emotional life outside that half hour — who you talk to, how you process a hard year, what you carry and how — is entirely yours to decide, and it is not the subject here.

One plain note, because it matters: if you find yourself crying for reasons that have nothing to do with your qigong practice, or if it happens every single time you sit down to practice, that pattern is worth bringing to a real teacher who can watch you practice in person. This article is not a substitute for appropriate support, and nothing here is medical advice.

Why the pull to go all the way feels so convincing

There is a reason “cry it all out” feels like the honest, brave option. Holding a feeling in also has a cost — you already know what a clenched jaw and a held breath feel like, and nobody is suggesting you go back to that. But the choice was never between clenching and emptying. There is a third option, and it is the one that actually works: let the feeling move without either forcing it down or pouring it all the way out.

Think of it less like a valve you either shut or open all the way, and more like a river you let run at its own pace. A river that is dammed causes its own problems. A river you drain completely leaves the bed dry. What you want is the water moving, steadily, without you deciding to empty the reservoir behind it in one afternoon.

So what do you actually do when the tears come?

Neither chase the feeling for its meaning, nor pour it out to the bottom. Keep the movement going. Keep your breathing exactly as it was. Let the feeling move, and finish your practice properly instead of stopping in the middle of it.

You can verify all of this in yourself. Next time it happens, notice which one you are doing — chasing, pouring out, or simply letting it pass while you keep going — and notice how differently each one leaves you feeling an hour later.

If you want a steady place to test this for yourself, the Onenergy App carries a guided daily practice built for exactly this kind of moment.

Related reading

• Why Do I Cry During Qigong?
• Why Do I Feel Empty After Crying?
• What to Do When Emotions Come Up During Qigong
• What Is Qigong? The Complete Guide