Medical Qigong

One of the things I did after being told there was a tumour in my esophagus was turn to the field of Medical Qigong.

I have been teaching Qigong classes for almost a decade now, but this is not the same. Medical Qigong, like Reiki, is when a practitioner applies energy to a patient through their hands. There are a couple of well-viewed videos on YouTube showing a small team of Qigong practitioners shrinking tumours. Here's one of them:

A few years ago I bought a Medical Qigong textbook with the intention of studying and becoming a practitioner. For some reason this didn't happen. I looked at the massive book a few times, but for the most part it just collected dust until I pulled it off the shelf a month ago.

I generally don't follow written instructions very well, but I did glean a few points from the book - such as how to breathe -  and combined them with my knowledge and intuition to create my own Medical Qigong application.

The foundation of it is a visualization technique I learned in Japan. In a standing or sitting position, put one hand over the other on the lower abdomen and close your eyes. As you inhale, imagine the energy (Qi) of the earth coming up through your legs and into your lower abdomen. In your mind you swirl the energy around in your abdomen before exhaling and sending it back down your legs and into the earth. My shiatsu teacher, Mishima Sensei, called this 'breathing through your feet'.

Instead of the deep belly breathing I have trained myself to do over the past twenty years, Medical Qigong uses 'reverse breathing'  - where the belly comes in as you inhale - to focus the power of the breath (Qi) in the body before it is released. This also ensures that you are not using the energy from your body, just the energy you are gathering with your breath and mind to deliver healing.

After I finish meditating in the morning, I stay sitting with eyes closed, and place my hands on my lower esophagus. I breathe in 'through my feet', building up a sense of concentrated Qi in my upper abdomen, and then I exhale imagining the energy moving down my arms and out through my hands.

As in the video above, there are certain things the practitioners say - mantras - to help create the right energy for things to shift. In this case, as far as I know, they are saying: 'It is accomplished.'

I decided to personalize the mantra. I alternate between saying 'It is accomplished' and 'Thank you'.