How to get started with Qigong as a beginner

if you've watched those old kung fu movies you probably have seen a scene somewhere where some old kung Fu Master does some Chi magic and knocks over a person or cuts a tree branch with his Chi Powers fanciful Tales aside chiong is a real practice that you can do daytoday that has lots of different health benefits it is not something you will ever hear your physician or PCP prescribe but it has many of the same benefits as exercise for example now chiong goes back several thousands of years and originally was called something called daan which means wring and pulling so in this video we'll talk about what chiong is how it can benefit you and introduce you to a very basic chiong form you can do on a day-to-day basis hey guys I'm Dr Alex hin board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master of the day so let's jump in so let's talk about the power and the purpose of chiong I mean after all you could say well why don't I just go to the gym 5 days a week and you should you'll probably be better off by doing that but in reality most of us are not going to do that and if the gym turns you off or maybe it's too intense on your joints chiong is a great alternative that has many overlapping benefits so if we break down this word Chong you have the character for Chi sometimes people translate as energy but I hate that translation and gong which means basically work or or skill so you could think of it as Chi work right but interestingly even in modern Chinese you could say that this also translates to breath work so a lot of the overlap of chiong with exercise is that it involves physical movements breathing exercises and often guided visualizations or some kind of guided intention setting so you could technically do your gym workouts as chiong if you do that if you're regulating the breath and the movement Etc now I don't love the concept of chi translated as energy but if you can imagine this comes out of a culture with traditional Chinese medicine with dosm with these channels and meridians you see all over the body in these acupuncture charts and so what chiong and really practitioners of it believe is that blage and stagnation of flow in these channels and meridians produces illness we know that's true on a material Level because if you have digestive problems long enough they can become bigger digestive problems you know if you have acid reflux long enough it can lead to barit esophagus barit esophagus long enough has a small chance of becoming cancer esophageal cancer stomach cancer so it is a very scientific statement that longterm disruption of physiological flow proper functioning of your organs can lead to very serious disease and potentially death now not everything progresses to that point but what ancient doctors noted was that what they call the free flow of chi in the organs and channels and meridians is what leads to longevity and a long life and even if you don't live a long life it's what basically prevents serious illnesses so how do we actually do that with chiong now there's a very neat research paper called da Yin origin development potential mechanisms and clinical applications in the Journal of evidence-based compliment and alternative medicine and in this research paper they pointed out the three ways the three mechanisms that chiong actually affects your health now it works number one on the HPA axis so the HPA axis is the interface between certain centers in your brain and your adrenals and so for many of us with chronic stress symptoms it can improve those by working on the HP axis secondarily it can work to reduce stress by causing changes in your nervous system now this shouldn't come as a surprise because physical exercise and breathing exercises both can decrease your nervous system activity and decrease certain levels of hormone stress hormones like for example cortisol and finally the Third Way chiong improves your health is that chiong actually has an anti-inflammatory effect and regulates your immune system so jigong in general has three key practices the three key practices to jigong are physical movement for example you might see people going breathing in breathing out breathing in breathing out they can do movements that look like taichi right these kind of like Cloud hands movements like this and like this they can have movements that are just up and down alternating Palms there can be tapping motions so tapping on the arms right tapping on the chest tapping on the abdomen but then we combine it with breathing breathing can be as simple as inhale exhale inhale exhale it can become even more advanced where you inhale you contract your stomach you pull up the perenium and groin you swallow and you imagine a ball of energy building in your low abdomen these are getting into the more advanced esoteric practices of chiong that are more on like the spiritual or religious side of dosm and finally we have visualizations so for example sometimes there are chiong where for certain kinds of anxiety or depression or sadness where the person will tap on their chest and they can either visualize for example things breaking up or opening or they can actually make sounds like ha so there's a chiong for emotional healing where you're knocking on the chest like this and you're saying ha as you're knocking knocking knocking knocking and it really does have a very strong emotionally regulating effect both the physical impact the tapping there as well as the certain sounds are associated with different organs now before we get into a very very basic chiong routine it's sometimes not always easy to know where certain symptoms are coming from and so I've taken the time to put together a free quiz according to traditional Chinese medicine this is likely the cause of your symptoms you can go to Dr alex.com quiz or check out the first link below this video and go through that quiz because it will help you figure out you know my anxiety or my bloating or my sleeping problems what organ or physiological pathway is it most likely correlated with so that quiz will help you figure that out and in addition we've also hyperlinked to some of our best videos on different organs in the body and what exactly can help you the most even if you never come to see me or another Healthcare practitioner so so let's do a very basic kind of chiong here it's called many different names sometimes I've heard it called yinyang regulate the chi palms and basically for this kind of chiong all we're going to do is the general physical movement you can either just go up and down or you can alternate your palms a lot like this so for this kind of chiong basically what we want to do is sit somewhere comfortable make sure your feet are flat and again the general motion can just be up and down or if it's a little easier on your elbows and your shoulders here just kind of this sort of motion so we'll do one of each and basically the physical posture will be Breathe In Breathe Out breathe in breathe out and I would try to do at a rhythm of four counts in and four counts out so even slower than this so one two 3 4 1 2 3 4 from there you can keep this Rhythm or Tempo going and one thing you can visualize here as part of our third part of chiong is as you're breathing in imagine you're sucking in energy from all around you from trees from the Sun from the moon from the earth below you're breathing it in with the breath and as you breathe out you're condensing it into this little ball like a little battery charge in your low abdomen breathing in sucking in everything sucking in everything sucking and everything and then condensing it into the battery charge and recharging that battery in What's called the lower danten right below the belly button here inside the body breathing in breathing in breathing in breathing in suck in all the juice then pressing it in pushing it into that ball and recharging that battery in the low abdomen so we have our physical Movement we have our breathing and then we also have our guided visualization breathing in everything's coming in breathing out and it's just going down the center line of the body and condensing into a little pill like this a little battery now doing this Chong is great even just for 5 minutes you'll notice your heart rate will come down right away if you're having a stressful day you'll notice less of that physical sensation of stress like a tension headache and again the heart rate is one of the best barometers so that's a very basic kind of chiong you can do every day I would say for good benefits minimum time would be 10 minutes if you really want substantial changes in blood pressure heart rate that kind of thing 40 minutes 4 days a week just like exercise so so you can do that chiong with different kinds of breathing you can do it at work if you're getting stressed out at the end of your day or in the morning you can also do it if you have problem sleeping get up and just do that Chong for 10 to 15 minutes heart rate will come down you'll be able to fall back asleep now don't forget guys I work with a limited number of new patients every month in my clinic in Los Angeles or virtually via tele medicine so if you want to connect just go to Dr alex.com clinic or the contact number and email from my clinic is right below this video so feel free to reach out and also I a whole host of other videos on how to use chiong to heal in the link up here