Chi
Kung Culture Society of TAIPEI
A movement and meditation practice without the combination with chi flow will not be regarded as a chikung practice. Physical movement covers only the muscles and skeleton while meditation is a mental and spiritual operation: they cannot be easily combined together unless they trigger the meridian and chakra systems. Chikung practice combines the promotion of our mind, body, and spirit together with the help of the meridian and chakra systems, but physical exercise only focuses on external body strength while meditation puts more emphasis on thought control. In other words, physical exercise covers our body and meditation covers our mind: only chikung covers body, mind and spirit in a holistic point of view. According to chi theory, the mental activities are yin while physical exercise is yang. In between the yin and yang on the taichi diagram there is an interface zone shaped like the letter "S" which is the cooperative balance and transformation center. In our bodies,our hormone and endocrine systems are a delicate balancing system in flux with our other internal organ systems. When we focus on doing physical exercise as a life maintainance program we neglect the internal operation of our bioenergy system. This happens because when we exercise, we inhale oxygen into our lungs and heart. Our blood then circulates to our blood vessels and veins and then into our muscles and the surface of our skin. When this happens, our blood is not being pumped into our internal organs: less chi and blood are transfered into our internal organs during the physical training of our body. That is why a lot of people (especially over the age of 30) are easily injured while exercising.
For example, former jogging enthusiast XXXXXXXX has now advocated that people walk slowly, climb stairs or go hiking instead of jogging. His research found that 3% of joggers die suddenly, 3% develop cancer, 5% develop arthritis or joint problems, 5% develop respiratory system problems like asthma and allergies, as well as develop persistant problems like being more suseptible to catching cold or developing many other unknown diseases because they jogged. He found out that joggers faced the following problems: excessive exercise, inadequate warm up, irregular assistant training, an ineffective recovery program, insufficient sleep, mental tension, inadequate nutrition, and lack of time due to their obsession with jogging. These are caused because our body secretes wastes including carbon dioxide, acid and other substances causing blockages among which free radicals are the most serious elements causing our internal organs to age. In other words, if we can not eliminate these free radicals and bad elements from our body, it would not be best to avoid exercising a lot.
Meditation focuses only on cerebral activities, with the energy from within our internal organs, meridian and chakra systems largely going into our brain to support the activity of our cerebral system. Therefore, we may say that our mental power is improved; however, our bioenergy will be reduced and we will lose the balance we are looking for. The reason why meditation only partially benefits our mind at our body's鷔 expense is that in this way our chi cannot be balanced and operate throughout ourwhole body; instead the sitting posture will create more problems because our chi will be blocked all throughout our body, creating problems with the circulation of our blood and chi systems. In this way, long term practice of meditation will not help us physically or mentally because our mind will be in a blocked state, too. Our practice of chikung with the help of our chi operation supplies enough chi forces and flows to backup the internal and external interaction between the body and mind.
We may see around us a lot of people who have trained in yoga, aerobic dance, martial arts, body building, jogging, and so on, as well as in transcendental meditation, Tibetan Buddhist meditation, Zen Buddhist meditation and different Taoist types of meditation: they think they are combining both their mind and body together with these practices. In reality, this is a big mistake because they we are just using their body and mind at both extreme ends without achieving a harmonious state of merger. Imagine that pure mind training is like preparing a sharp but invisible sword, while the physical training is like becoming a robot which does not understand the limitations of the human body, mind, and spirit. We have to strengthen our internal organs, promote our bioenergy and balance our chakras and meridian systems together with our mind: then will it function completely at appropriate stages and steps. As we all know, chikung mainly consists of the movements of internal breathing, stretching, and mind control at the same time. No physical exercise combines simultaneous internal breathing and stretching. In this way, the upper chest-type of breathing in physical exercise will not provide the same effects as the internal breathing in chikung practice. On the contrary, upper-chest breathing consumes more energy rather than restores energy in doing physical exercise. Pure meditation which focuses only on the upper dantien practice will eventually lead to a hyper state of our mind, create illusions and deviation (attracting more negative forces) in our weak body. In this way, pure meditation is something like a floating lotus on a river, which tries but cannot sink its roots attached in the ground. This is why many people find themselves hanging in the middle of the universe and claiming that they were free during meditation. This is precisely the opposite of what we are aiming for in the practice of Tao whether in the Buddhist, Taoist, or other disciplines. During meditation, some other people find themselves dizzy or see too many images which only consumes their energy rather than accumulating energy or obtaining enlightenment. Modern people who have to face a lot of pressure may use either physical exercise or meditation as one of the methods to help them let off steam. However participating in sports will create another type of internal and external physical pressure, while meditation will create mental, spiritual or psychic problems. Therefore, professional players or national atheletes have more injuries than non-atheltes do. Many meditators claim that they have developed supernatural powers such as telepathy, mind reading, and healing, but they have bad health and develop ideopathic diseases. If they have a well-grounded foundation in chikung before they work on physical exercise or meditation suitable to their level, they won't waste time experiencing deviated methods or harming their body and mind without understanding the situation. Only chikung will help to bridge all these problems between physical exercise and meditation.