FAMOUS TYPES OF QI GONG

Ba Duan Jin (Eight Pieces of Brocade), Zhan Zhuan (Stance Standing),Yi Jin Jing (Sinew Metamorphosis) and Xi Shui Jing (Bone Marrow Cleansing) are discussed in the selection of questions and answers from the 1998 series and can be found at www.wahnam.com


Question 1
I have been practising the Ba Duan Jin exercises and Zhan Zhuang for the last 12 months and have experienced an improvement in my health (already good) and an increase in my energy. As there are no high level teachers in my area I prefer to practice every day on my own and so far I have not experienced any deviations.
Alan, UK -- Sep (1) 1998

Answer 1
Ba Duan Jin and Zhang Zhang are wonderful chi kung exercises. By themselves, without having to learn anything else, you can attain very high levels. Not only you can have good health, vitality and longevity, you may also attain spiritual fulfilment. If you are a martial artist, Zhan Zhang can bring you tremendous internal force. It is simply amazing that by merely standing still at a chosen posture for some time over a long period, you can be very powerful -- most people do not beleive this is possible.

But if you train on your own, you must pay attention to the following points. Practice Ba Duan Jin, or the Eight Pieces of Brocade, daily for at least six months before you attempt Zhan Zhang, or Stance Standing. You have to make sure you do not have any major energy blockage before starting Zhan Zhang, and Ba Duan Jin can look after that, provided, of course, you practice correctly.

Zhan Zhang is a powerful exercise, and is best done under supervision. Those who practice wrongly and still persist on, may vomit blood, have deformed bodily structure, or insidiously damaged internal organs. There are usually warning signs for wrong practice, such as discomfort, pain and nervousness. Whenever you have such warning signs, stop your Zhan Zhang and revert back to Ba Duan Jin. Resume Zhan Zhang training only whan the warning signs have disappeared.

If you practice Zhan Zhang on your own, which is actually not advisable but may be attempted if you are very careful, you have to proceed very slowly; I repeat, very slowly. If someone training with a master takes 6 months to attain certain result, you should aim at that for two years.

Question 2
I am studying Shiatsu and Wing Chun and would like to ask you if the type of Chi Kung I am doing is suitable for developing both healing energy for Shiatsu and Jing for martial arts?

Answer 2
Yes, Ba Duan Jin is good for Shiatsu, and Zhan Zhang for Wing Chun. After your Shiatsu practice, flick your hands as if flicking away some water on your fingers, so as to flick out any negative energy you may have taken in from your patients.

Question 3
Usually I will do the Ba Duan Jin exercises first and then do the standing Chi Kung immediately afterwards for 20 minutes. Is this approach correct in your view or should I modify my practice method?

Answer 3
Practice only Ba Duan Jin for at least six months. Then practice Ba Duan Jin and Zhan Zhang on alternate days, not both on the same day one after another. After about three months, practice Zhan Zhang every day, interspersed with Ba Duan Jin once or twice a week.

Question 4
The two chi kung practices I have picked to start practicing are zhang zhuang and Ba Duan Jin. Any comments or suggestions on these practices?
Jeff, USA -- Dec (1) 1998

Answer 4
Zhang Zhuang, which means stance training, is a genre of powerful chi kung exercises. It is the single most widely used genre by kungfu masters of various styles, including Shaolin, Taijiquan, Bagua and Hsing Yi, to develop internal force. But it is not suitable for beginners, especially those without the personal supervision of competent instructors.

It looks easy, as you remain in the same static position for a long time. It is easy for you to make mistakes, and easy not to realize the mistakes. Because Zhang Zhuang exercises are powerful, the adverse effects of the mistakes are potent. Even in the unlikely situation that you do not make a single mistake in your long period of training, but if you have substantial blockage in your body to start with, the accumulated energy derived from Zhang Zhuang would cause internal injury.

Ba Duan Jin, which is pronounced as "P'a T'uan Jin" and not as "Ba Duan Jin", and which means "Eight Pieces of Brocade", is a set of eight dynamic chi kung exercises. It is a wonderful set and is very popular today, although most people today practice it, like they practice other chi kung exercises, as physical exercise rather than as chi kung, which is energy exercise.

But even if they practice only the physical aspects of Ba Duan Jin, and missing its chi kung dimension, there are many benefits, such as loosening muscles, promoting blood circulation and relaxation. It does not have the adverse effects of orthodox western exercises like forcing the organs to overwork and depositing much toxic waste in the body cells. It is an ideal type of exercise for you to practice on your own. Without the personal guidance of a chi kung master, you would not obtain the wonderful chi kung benefits of Ba Duan Jin, but at least you would not have serious side effects from wrong practice.

Question 5
Two other Qigong practices I have been looking at to add to my growing list of practices, are Yi Chin Ching and Bone Marrow Washing. Could you explain the results of these practices and comment on them?

Answer 5
Yi Jin Jing, or Sinew Metamorphosis, is an advance chi kung exercise in Shaolin Kungfu. If you practice it without proper supervision, you are likely to injure yourself.

Bone Marrow Washing is reputed to be taught by the great master Bodhidharma to the monks at the Shaolin Monastery, but there have been no records of what the techniques were both inside and outside the monastery. From indirect evidence, I believe it could be some form of advance self-manifested qi movement whereby the practitioner channelled his energy to cleanse his brain and nervous system. In Chinese medical philosophy, the bone marrow flows into and from the brain; and corresponds in functions to the nervous system in western medical terminology.

In my recent chi kung teaching trip to Austria, when we did advance induced qi flow in a class in Guttenstein, many of my students reported that they clearly felt qi cleansing their nerves and their brain. It was certainly not imagination. Asking them how they knew it was qi cleansing their brain is like asking someone eating an apple how he knew he was eating an apple. They knew from direct personal experience. If you had never eaten an apple before, you might think it was not possible to eat an apple.

An expert in Yi Jin Jing, without having to undergo any hard conditioning, can have the power to kill a bull with just one strike. An expert in Bone Marrow Cleansing is very quick and accurate in his physical as well as intellectual response. Both are of course healthy, fit and full of vitality.

By "expert" I refer to someone who has trained the respective art devotedly for many years; not someone who has learnt the techniques, even if the techniques are correct, in a week-end course from an instructor who himself is incapable of such attainment. Again, you should have due respect for such advance arts. Don't imagine you can attain similar results by merely learning from books.

Question 6
I basically have been trying to 'create' a complete chi kung practice out of the ones I know -- but it seems as though so many have different aims and results that it makes my head hurt trying to put together a regimen.

I decided on Zhang Zhuang for generating chi, and Ba Duan Jin for increasing capacity for chi and internal health. If you wouldn't mind I could really use your advice on a really good and powerful chi kung exercise that would go together and cover all aspects -- i.e. inward/outward physical, jing/chi/shen, mental aspects (inc working toward realization).

I tried Zen for quite a while and got lousy results, so I would rather not have that included -- I don't think it's for me. I practice other types of spiritual practice so I would like to focus on the Qigong and not sitting concentration. Also, I have a decent amount of free time to practice. Would Yi Jin Jing, Ba Duan Jin, and Zhang Zhuang be a good regimen? Should I add bone marrow washing? Anything else? I think you understand my question and problem of deciding.

Answer 6
You really amaze me as to what little respect you have for a great ancient art like chi kung. Please do not take my comment as a reprimand, nor mistake me as implying you are not respectful. If this were so, I would not have taken much time to reply. I reply in some details because I know you are sincere in wanting to better your chi kung practice, and my answer will also benefit many others like you. although, for some reasons, some of them may have thought that practicing chi kung is nothing more than learning some aerobic exercises, and teaching chi kung is as easy as teaching physical education lessons to school children.

You have not actually started chi kung, apart from doing some physical exercises you gathered from some chi kung books, yet you imagine yourself competent enough to create a comprehensive chi kung programme that will cover all chi kung aspects, including jing, qi, shen and spiritual realization. You probably do not know what jing, qi, shen and spiritual realization really mean, apart from their hollow words.

Probably you also do not know what Zen means. You will find my webpage Frequently Asked Questions on Zen helpful. You will find much more information from my book, "The Complete book of Zen".

Speaking as a chi kung grandmaster, I would sincerely advise you, if you wish to get real benefits from chi kung, to choose only two or three simple chi kung techniques and practice them diligently, with the help of a competent instructor who himself has personal experience of the benefits.

Simple chi kung techniques are profound at the same time. They are the crystallization of many chi kung masters' effort over many centuries. One should not be so egoistic to imagine he is better than all these masters in a discipline they were expert at.

Question 7
When practicing Zhang Zhuang to get the full benefits of this form of Qigong, do you eventually need to start mentally moving energy around your body -- i.e. microcosmic, macrocosmic, etc.. or will that take care of itself?

Answer 7
As Zhang Zhuang is a genre of chi kung, there are many types of Zhang Zhuang exercises. Generally the practitioner does not intentionally move qi around his body; he merely remains at his stance thinking of nothing and doing nothing. Sometimes, for specific purposes, a practitioner may channel his qi in some specific directions, such as along his arms or down his legs.

Question 8
Also, will just standing eventually (without visualizing anything) allow you the ability to move chi around mentally at will without having to do any breathing or moving techniques?

Answer 8
The answer is yes and no. In theory, everyone has the power of mind over energy and matter, which means that not only you can move your energy to flow anywhere you wish inside your body, you can also, by an act of will power, move the shoes you are wearing to the top of your friend's head. In practice, most people have lost this natural ability. Most chi kung dancers, for example, cannot even start their own energy flow, which is actually a basic skill in chi kung training.

If you have the skill, you can move your qi around mentally at will without having to do any breathing techniques or moving techniques while you are in any position, at Zhang Zhuang or otherwise. This is not a difficult skill to acquire if you are properly trained. In fact many of my students can do it after just one chi kung course with me. But they usually do it while not at a Zhang Zhuang pose, for doing so would defeat the main purpose of Zhang Zhuang, which is accumulating qi and not circulating qi.

Question 9
There are so many types out there that it gets real confusing to know which ones are the best and most powerful -- especially since some give 'opposite' results. For example, Tai Chi practice creates body that's' hard inside soft outside and Hsing-I practice creates body that is hard on the outside soft on the inside.

Answer 9
They are confusing only to those who are ignorant of their philosophy and practice. To those who know, they are crystal clear.

What is the best and most powerful for one who has properly practiced, not merely read about, chi kung for many years is certainly not the best and most powerful for another who just performs gymnastics or dance.

The different types of chi kung, as well as kungfu, develop because they serve different needs and abilities. In your present situation, what serves your needs and abilities best is not the most powerful, but the simple, direct and effective, such as "Lifting the Sky" or "Carrying the Moon" as described in my chi kung books.

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