Qigong for Healing (Part 2 of 2)

By Paul Cavel

In Part 1, we discussed how breaking the reciprocal-inhibition habit and using moderation are essential to healing. Now we’ll look at how consistency and personal factors also play key roles.

Healing Requires Consistency

Drilling down into the mechanics of how exactly you will apply neigong to heal is a highly personal matter. What can be said is that the power of regular practice cannot be overstated. Practising qigong relaxes the mind and body, sheds tension and increases circulation of blood and qi. As your practice improves, so too can all the positive health benefits. Daily or near-daily practice is the aim, but should not be the requirement when you begin, as pushing or forcing yourself to train more than you are willing builds up internal resistance. This is one of the main reasons why most people stop training. 

After an initial, tuning-in period, the quality of your practice becomes the focus of your attention. Accurate practice with a relaxed yet focused intent for short periods of time is much more effective than long training sessions with the mind wondering off and only being engaged once in a while. Start by doing a little, often, and then let you practice grow naturally.

How Embedded Is the Trauma?

Trauma can be physical, energetic, emotional, mental and any combination of these. Once you have established a personal practice, the depth and layers of the specific illness, injury, etc. that are embedded in your system become relevant. How well you practice neigong and whether the trauma is superficial or more profound will influence the time it takes to reinstate balance and fully recover. Healing is ultimately cultivated by strengthening the relationship between your body, your mind, your practice and your ailment. It all starts with growing your presence and awareness, which is why I encourage students to make Taoist breathing and Outer Dissolving a stream of practice right from the beginning.

Headaches

As an example, debilitating headaches are commonplace in modern society. If the cause of the headaches is poor posture while sitting at a computer, learning the basic alignments and implementing them when you work or use devices can be accomplished within a relatively minimal amount of time. You will have to make an initial effort to remember to make postural adjustments, but most people can easily begin to assimilate them in the flow after a few days or weeks. If, however, the source of the headaches is the incessant churning of the mind, learning how to draw down the blood and qi that is being pulled up to the brain and causing stagnancy, and therefore the headaches, could take relatively a lot longer. Getting blood and qi back into the body and quietening the mind requires some level of competency with sinking qi, as well as being able to rest in your alignments while breathing according to the tenets of Taoist whole-body breathing.

If the cause of the headaches is even more profound traumas, they might take considerably more time and finesse to completely diminish. Examples could be to do with childhood that have enacted negative emotional states and resulted in a collapsing of the muscular skeletal frame over time; or a motor-vehicle crash that delivered a strong whiplash to the neck in an instant. Ultimately, your willingness to accept what you find as you go inside and commitment to engaging with yourself and your traumas through ongoing qigong practice (and other Water Method techniques) will guide all levels of your development of neigong skills. These are practical and pragmatic strategies for progressively letting go of anything that holds you back, so you are free to live, and even enjoy, your life.

Cultivating Mind-Body Trust

The Water Method starts by opening the body, opening the mind to let your internal wisdom come into the driver’s seat. There is no equation that you can formulate, no computer programme that you can write to get the answer. All you can do is make a commitment to yourself by establishing a regular practice, taking it one day at a time, and focusing a relaxed intent on building a better relationship between your body and mind. From this place, positive change becomes more than possible, it becomes the reality.

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