CHI KUNG (Qi gong)

Looking at the world's healing arts and techniques you see a basic split between the emphasis of the prevailing philosophies, Western curative and Eastern preventative. Both have their place and both are equally important.

Energetics falls into both categories but is primarily preventative. To take the holistic or body, mind and soul approach, you have three distinct personas that make up you as an entity.

You have a physical being, the one that you see in the mirror everyday, it is a biological organic machine that can break down and will wear out, being organic it is also subject to other biological machines hijacking it for their own purposes (fungi, bacteria and viruses).

You are also a reasoning and calculating being, this is the person doing the observing of you in the mirror. It is a biological organic computer that as with the modern electronic version can be subject to overload, information loss, or when the program gets corrupted, crashing.

Within these two physical personas is the energetic persona that makes it all work, and also provides the emotional aspects to your life. From the spark of life given to you at conception this energy is the means by which everything "works", your energetic being. In Chinese. It is referred to as Chi (Qi), in Japanese Ki and in India Prana. It can manifest itself in many different ways that western science is only just beginning to understand.

Each organ and bodily function has its own energy dedicated to its correct function, dictated by your genetic programming and controlled by your unconscious mind. This energy causes the growth, sustaining, and ultimately the decline of our physical and mental being. The purist form of this energy is given to us at conception and is referred to in some cultures as soul or spirit, it is the last energy to leave the machine when the lights finally go out. All the other energy we use and retain throughout our lives comes from the food we consume and the air that we breath, and the quality of this fuel is important for the quality of the resulting energy.

Energetics is the process of creating a "battery" within the body in which we can store spare or free energy, it also provides techniques for generating and directing that spare energy. In eastern philosophies there are many of these areas or centres in the body, in the sub-continent they are referred to as Chakras, in Chinese culture as Dan-tien. These areas are designated separately for physical, emotional or mental energies.

Energetics initially concentrate on the physical or growing and healing energy, which we train you to develop and concentrate at your physical centre (centre of gravity and mass) inside the belly between the kidneys, these reserves of energy help you fight off common ailments and help to forestall the onset of more serious complaints. You can then train to be able to move this energy with your mind for correcting structural weaknesses, repairing damage or to regenerate wear. This is done by training the conscious mind to direct or move that energy by using our will or intent.