Chinese qigong history can track back to China’s primitive time that was over five thousand years ago. At that time, there was not any precision equipment for measurement, detection, or exploration. Then how ancient Chinese people got to know qi, the meridian channels, energy points, solar terms, and so on. Because they mastered the most advanced life science: qigong.
Even today, with all the modern science and technology, people still couldn’t detect qi. But Chinese people have been using qi and qigong science to understand the human body and the universe. Qigong has been deeply engraved into Chinese people’s culture and life. No matter how dramatically the world changed, Chinese people will carry forward the science of qigong. We spread qigong knowledge to the world so that people all over the world can benefit from this qigong wisdom. Therefore, we record great qigong grandmasters and sages to remember them for what they had contributed to qigong history.
Qigong and yoga look like cousins — a mat, some breathing, a calm finish. But the difference between qigong and yoga isn’t the movement. It’s the destination, and the two destinations point in opposite directions.
The traditional legend of Bodhidharma and the Shaolin monks contains a precise insight about meditation and energy: stillness on a depleted body produces sleep, not depth. The tradition’s own answer was movement first. Here is what that means for modern practitioners.
In 1968 the Beatles flew to Rishikesh to study meditation, and seven years later a Harvard cardiologist published The Relaxation Response — the true story of how the practice most people do today got deliberately stripped down to a clinical tool.
The word meditation covers four completely different practices — and confusing them is why so many people feel they chose the wrong path or failed at the right one.
One English word covers four completely different practices — and confusing them is exactly why so many people decide they failed at meditation.
When a disciplined, fit-looking person collapses in their forties, it looks sudden — but classical Chinese medicine has been describing the mechanism for five thousand years.