I tried Qigong meditation every day for 1 year. Here’s what happened.

a mystical practice that I've been trying to get myself to do has been chiong now chiong translated as Chi work has been one of the foundational practices in living a long healthy life in East Asia for technically several thousand years although it wasn't called chiong in ancient times it was called da Yin guiding and pulling it's sometimes translated as now chiong is said to be the fusion of three things breathing exercises are breath work visualization as well as physical postures and physical exercises the three combined are really the criter for something becoming chiong or Chi work now in this video I want to detail a little bit about my experience doing this as it was required as part of my doctoral program in in terms of like a true creating or training of a traditional Chinese medicine doctor hey guys I'm Dr Alex hin board licensed acupuncturist and doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master of the day so let's get in they say that chiong is one of the ways you ward off the 10,000 illnesses in Chinese now the 10,000 illnesses is really just an expression or a metaphor that is equivalent to the Myriad all the various kinds of illnesses like it is a Panacea in a way it's a lot like exercise in that regard there are dozens if not hundreds of symptoms of illnesses that symptomatically can be treated or even potentially reversed through exercise alone and in some ways chiong is not really that much different from exercise on a physical material Level the breathing and the physical postures involve cardiovascular flow and improved cardiovascular health respiratory Health good good for your lymphatic flow which is very very important but the other aspects of chiong the visualization the breathing are what really make it Chong as opposed to just bicep curls now what was Chong designed to do in other words if I want to live a long life why don't I just go for walks every day or why don't I just do bicep curls and pull-ups chiong is very distinct in the sense that I can prescribe it to someone with cancer and what chiong is designed to do is to recharge the batteries it is designed to recharge that kidney battery the mingmen as they call it the Gate of life and one con of physical exercise is that physical exercise does in the short run damage the body right that exhaustion the soreness you feel the damage to the muscles that makes them rebuild stronger can also have a negative consequence which is that if you exercise too much you actually see a decrease in health so there's this whole thing going on on the internet called chronic cardio people who have too high training regimes too high volume in terms of running and road work will experienced immunosuppression so so Runners who do too much volume will actually see a decrease in immune system functioning and an increase in how much they get sick why from a traditional Chinese medicine point of view you've pushed past the threshold of exercise being a positive stimulus to now you are depleting your batteries to the point where your immune system is depleted enough that you're getting sicker than even someone who may not exercise at all so this fine line between how much should I exercise and how little do I exercise is not always easy to know but chiong is one of those things where if you have cancer the more chiong you do every single day the better you will feel and the better you will be because chiong only recharges the batteries it doesn't have the negative consequences of being hard on the joints of causing lots of muscle soreness of causing lots of fatigue and chiong the number one focus is on Tong opening movement or flow because again the ancient doctors in our profession say that basically the key to longevity is maintaining proper physiological flow and function now Chong is just one of those practices that people do to live a long life there were two others or three others recommended by this one famous DST recluse I guess you could call him named Le Ching Yun now le Ching Yun was actually interviewed by this famous Taiwanese General named Yang sen because he was supposedly very long lived I've actually put his interview of the four daily practices he said helped him live to be well over 100 into a PDF called the four daily practices to live a long life you can download that right below this video or you can go to Dr Alex hind.com free and there's a whole little report I put together on this guy Lee Ching Yun and the three to five daily practices he recommended to do every single day now in terms of the kinds of chiong that I ended up experimenting with I basically started playing with one which is called standing janang or like holding the tree like the universe stance now in this particular stance what you're trying to do is effectively hold a physical posture while feeling the pain of the burning shoulders and regulating your breathing and you're trying to concentrate on this Circuit of since Sensation that goes between the hands specifically in the palms of the hands so it can involve you standing like this like this like this holding your belly all kinds of variations and there's a famous School of traditional Chinese martial arts called zorman I think it's called natural style boxing and they primarily use this kind of universe stance standing chiong as their main way of physical training and also mental training to control the mind and basically to have the body be active but the mind be still which I think is really the prescription for a lot of modern people these days more physical activity less of the mental chatter the second one is called many different things but it involves just basically inhaling as you bring your palms up and exhaling as you bring the Palms down so basically up and down and up and down you can do it with the Palms too sometimes it's called yinyang regulate The Palms Cloud hands and taichi right all different ways you can do it and what these are training a mind to the body and doing is you're training the body to move in a rhythmic way which in Chinese medicine also opens up certain channels right if you're tapping on the chest you're opening a lot of the channels that relate to the heart you're tapping on the GI opening up the channels relate to the GI if there are blockages there and at the same time the breathing is designed to regulate the nervous system I shared in one of my videos that a monk once told me in a monastery the two practices for modern people Yang in the body movement activity exercise Yin in the mind keeping the mind still and calm this is very difficult to do these kinds of exercises because it's boring you know you want to fidget you're sitting there you're like uh fidgety fidgety fidgety crack my neck open my jaw but that's the practice the restlessness of the mind is shown in the body the primary realization that I had from this was thinking a lot about what we call the direction of chi now the direction of chi is a lot like on a day where you haven't been well rested and you know you're feeling a little bit anxious but you decide to have that cup of coffee anyway because coffeee is what you like coffee makes you feel good mentally that is you like the ritual of it but today was the day where you shouldn't have had that cup of coffee and you're noticing that you're just kind of feeling a little bit off you're noticing the increased tension you're noticing accelerated thoughts you're noticing you're getting maybe a little fidgety or a little shaky and what chiong does is when you can understand what is going on with the circulation and the physiology of the body you can learn to almost micro do your life in certain ways to make your life your medicine so if I notice you know when I don't sleep well I get a little ungrounded a little more anxious and I can normally tolerate coffee but today's not that day because today I'm feeling this sensation and the coffee is just going to do this even more it's like a double positive or double negative you're not going to feel good and maybe on a day where you noticed you felt a little stressed and you have that work project coming up and you know that work also increases activation of the nervous system you know today I shouldn't do that or else I'm going to get insomnia again or maybe your stomach's feeling a little funky because you ate a little bit heavy last night and and normally you like to eat a big breakfast but today you know you're feeling that stagnation in the digestive system and you need time for that little blockage to move and you know today I'm going to make my life my medicine and maybe this morning I'll just fast till lunchtime or maybe I'll eat berries instead of a hearty meal or maybe for lunch I'm going to eat a smaller meal a salad and some chicken one thing that chiong helps you do is become hyper attuned to the inner landscape and once you are hyper attuned it becomes a lot harder to ignore how you feel paradoxically a lot of people as they increase inre in sensitivity they increase in symptomology which is very confusing and very discouraging but it is a sign of waking up and becoming more aware so chiong one of those practices I highly recommend for the modern person to become very acutely attuned to how you feel because if you can spot the de seed of illness or disease at a 1% you're not going to let it get to 80% like most of us do where now you need to actively treat a disease or illness chiong fascinating practice again one of many practices recommended by this DS Monk leing I put together the free guide Dr Alex hind.com sfree or it is the first link below this video and don't forget there's another related video on this exact topic right up here for you