Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have cold hands, Qigong can warm them up. Qigong increases the Qi and blood flow to the hands. The hands get pleasantly fat and full and the palms and fingers turn reddish. Sometimes there is a red and white mottling. Warm hands indicate many good things: Your internal organs are charging up, excess energy in the heart is distributed to the periphery, overall blood flow is better. Hot hands can also indicate that harmful excesses of heat in the head or heart are being safely shunted to the hands–a place much better for body heat to reside. Qigong can warm cold feet too, which means the Qi and blood flow through your legs is improved and the body is more rooted, balanced in energy, and infused with life force.

Five Pairs with a Loyal Flush

Five Pairs of Hands

Above is a photo of my hands and four of my students’ hands taken at a Qigong class with a heat camera. The heat camera is a special device designed for finding heat leaks in houses. It works great as a Qigong tool of exploration. My hands are the white ones ringed with red, which indicates a lot of heat in them. Notice the palms of the others, which tend toward a middle-heat yellow with some warmer orange-ish red. Also notice the blue in the fingers, indicating coolness.

This photo was taken at the beginning of a Qigong Practice, showing my Qi-charged hands which are habitually, healthily warm already. In 1995, after practicing Qigong regularly for about a year, my hands turned on. They get pleasantly warm almost every time I practice my healing methods on someone, or practice Qigong exercises. They are warm to start with and get warmer.

Qigong Will Balance the Energy of Your Hands

Many exercises of Qigong help equalize the Qi, blood, lymph, and neural energy between your hands. Balanced hands indicate a balanced body. The blood vessels on both upper limbs are equally open and strong. The divisions of the cerebral cortex–left and right, front and back– are in equilibrium. The nerves coming from the spine to the hands are engaging equally as they travel through the shoulder complex, arms, and into the hands.

One Cold and One Hot Hand

The heat photo of the above pair of hands shows an imbalance between left and right. The right is much hotter. Qigong can help balance the temperature of these hands.

The Good Hands Practice

Robert's Hot Little Hands

These are my hands after 50 minutes of Qigong practice and teaching. Note that even the fingers are quite warm. An important part of my hands-on healing work involves using each finger, both independently and in conjunction with the rest of the fingers, the palm, and my whole body. I think that this engaged finger individuation also helps with keeping the Qi alive and warm in my hands.

A hot flash means you have too much heat being produced in the body. Usually the extra heat rises into the head, making you uncomfortable. It could arise for a number of reasons: sudden hormonal shifts, too much sunshine, a liver working too hard, or being drained of vitality so that your body has trouble keeping you cool.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Healing Sounds to Clear Your Body

Part of the expansive collection of Qigong exercises is the art of healing sounds. Over many hundreds of years, Chinese Qigong practitioners discovered and refined particular sounds. The basic use of healing sounds in this discipline is for cleansing the body, mind, and emotions of stuck, stagnant or excessive energy. Sounds vibrate the tissues, releasing contracting-tension and shaking loose what is stuck.

“Sheeeee” Helps Hot Flashes

Here is the sound for excess, high heat in the body: “Sheeeeee.” It is pronounced and performed in a special way. You will simultaneously do these three actions:

• Draw your hands from the top of your head down through your legs and into the earth. The eyes and head follow the hands down.
• Imagine and visualize and sense that you are clearing your body of extra heat from head to feet. It is like your cells are being showered with cooling water, or the inner windows are being squeegeed clean.
• It is a descending tone “Sheeeee.” This dropping sound starts in the high range and descends very low, like going from soprano to basso. The farther down your body you go with your hands and consciousness, the deeper becomes the sound.

Note: Do not bend over as you get closer to the ground. If you bend too much you will, via gravity, put energy in the head. With this exercise you want to get energy out of the head, not put more in.

The final video in this series puts each part of the the form together into a flowing whole.

The Ratio of Moves

Once you have practiced each of the 3 moves separately and can perform them well–with good amounts of feeling and healing–then you put them all together. The connected movement ratio is as follows:

1, 2, 3

2, 3

2, 3

Put Another Way, You Do

1. Lungs

2. Heart

3. Middle Burner

2. Heart

3. Middle Burner

2. Heart

3. Middle Burner

Then start over, again starting with the Lungs.

The Daily Exercise Prescription

The basic formula for practicing the full “Old Man” exercise is to do it for set amount of time. Get into a flowing groove by the set over and over and over again for 5, 10, 20 or more minutes at a time.

As you practice, you don’t need to count reps. Just glance at a clock every once in a while.

Urgent Prescription

Those who need to get their bodies on track quickly can elect to do 25 minutes of the “Old Man” 3 times a day.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Middle Burner

In this section of video training, I detail how to release blocking tensions in the the center organs of the body: the Spleen, Stomach, Pancreas, Upper Small Intestine, Gall Bladder and Liver, as well as the Solar Plexus area. The entire area is known as the Middle Burner.

Emotional Release in Masse

Releasing blocks in this area will help you easily release repressed emotions such as worry, over-thinking, anger, grumpiness, and rage. It will also help generally clear held-onto emotions from your body, resulting in more freedom for feeling well.

Ho, Ho, Ho

The healing sound used for this central section of the torso–the Middle Burner–is a long “Ho.” This sound is expressed to vibrate the target area from left to right (or right to left.) While making the sound you lower the bent arms to the lower ribs and turn the torso from left to right (or right to left, if you like.)

Twist the Towel

The torso-turning is a unique method that will take a little practice to get. It is an organ-wringing style–like twisting a towel–that is done from the center, between the chest and the belly button. This massages the organs of the upper abdomen and helps release tensions, trapped emotions and toxins from them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Open the Heart and Release Armoring

Opening the heart area can release stuck and stagnant emotions such as impatience, frustration, criticalness, anxiety, cold-heartedness, and armoring against feeling. All of these emotions get in the way of healing; as well as living a full, vibrant, friendly life.

The Healing Sound of the Heart and the Sparrow Fist

The Heart healing sound used in the “Old Man” exercise is a sighing, descending “Haaa.” The hands are held in a partly open palm shape called a Sparrow Fist. The hands descend from head level down to the lower chest as you make the chest-vibrating “Haaa” sound.

It is also important to slowly, slightly lower the head with the movements here, bringing  your gaze somewhat downward. This helps lower excess rising Qi.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are three movements in the Old Man exercise, beginning with the Lung Movement, as taught in this video.

Open the Lungs and Release Grief

In the Lung movement you will stretch the lungs open, massage them repeatedly with relaxed arm movements and release sadness into the earth. Each movement is accompanied by a directed healing sound, one that is specific for that area, bringing loosening vibration to the cells of the targeted area. The Lung sound is “SHHHH” or “SSSSS”.

Contraindications for Practicing Healing Sounds

According to Jerry Alan Johnson people should not practice Qigong sounds if:

• They have any bone fractures
• They are in the throes of an acute illness
• They are pregnant
• They are menstruating

I’m not sure about the last one. It seems to be more of something to be cautious about and aware of your own body’s needs. Refer back to the second principle of Qigong: Modify.

Note: The “Lung” movement is also a Kidney strengthener. Bending over while imagining your feet are in warm water is–in the Five Elemental Energy conception–nutritive for your Kidneys.

Without going into it in too much detail in this post: Full, strong Kidneys give you energy, healthy bones, mental clarity, and a sustaining connection to Nature.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Many People Have Benefited

I learned this set from my Medical Qigong teacher Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson. He credits Dr. Her Yue Wong with introducing it into the USA in the 1970’s. Dr. Johnson told me that he gave these exercises to more people than any any other healing prescription. He often found that very sick people were holding so much armor that they were unable to relax enough to let healing enter and spread through their bodies. So he taught them the Old Man to release their holding, usually to impressive results.

Open Blocks and Release Stuck Emotions

Following a sophisticated understanding of the Five Elemental Energies system, the Old Man Set opens blockages in the body so stuck fluids, Qi, and blood can flow again, resulting in healing. By upgrading from stagnant swamp internally to flowing rivers and rivulets, health naturally re-establishes.

Since 2000, I have taught this exercise to many clients. Over and over again they have come back to me with glowing reports of how well it has helped them manage or delete unhealthy amounts of blocking, sludgifying emotions, feelings, and sensations.

Many Emotional States Helped

I’ve truncated the name of the encompassing term of the video to depression, but the Old Man exercise is great for helping with many emotional weights, including: sadness, grief, impatience, judgementalism, anxiety, worry, low energy, unprocessed emotions, indecisiveness, lack of clarity, anger, grumpiness, and rage.

Below is the Overview Video of the Old Man. In the next post I’ll add the video detailing the Lungs and sadness tomorrow; and videos 3, 4 and 5 over the next week or two.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sequences

A Qigong sequence is a series of movements put together into an artistic form. I often call these forms, but many people use the word “form” for a single exercise or a set. I’m playing with the word “Sequence” as a more accurate, separate descriptor.

In a Sequence–or form–one exercises follows another in an arranged order. Sequences usually cover some ground with different types of steps, arm movements and torso movements. These patterned forms usually face all directions within the series of moves.

Forms are Artistic Patterns

Forms–or Sequences–can be seen as patterns performed on the ground, in time, and in the space around you.

Sequential forms are a more advanced way of practicing than Single Exercises or Sets (though not necessarily better.)

Sequences are like books or encylcopedias of skills and knowledge. Often Sets are created by taking and adapting movements from forms into successive drills. I have done this with the Primordial Qigong Sequence, creating the exercise Set I call the Delightful Dozen out of it.

Whereas the Delightful Dozen faces one direction and calls for about a dozen repetitions of each exercise; Primordial Qigong faces each of the cardinal directions eight times in a circling sequence and with varying numbers of repetitions for each sequential movement within the form.

In the formal sequence of Primordial Qigong, each exercise has it’s own number of reps to do—between 1 and 10 reps—before  flowing into the next exercise

Other examples of Sequences include much of the system of Wild Goose Qigong, including The First 64, The Second 64, Soft Palms, Spiral, etc…

Yang Style TaiJi (Tai Chi)

Every system of Tai Chi (at least 6 different major systems out there) has it’s short and long forms as a major part of their training. The Yang Style of Tai Chi Chuan, for instance, has a widely taught beginner form of 24 movements; the intermediate  20 minute (or so) long 108 movements form; and another, rarely seen, more complex, 108 move form.

New Frame Chen Style Tai Chi Form

In my Chen Style Tai Chi class with Bob Lau we practice something called the New Frame. This very long and complicated form (which I have a long way to go to really understand in a significant way) is made of 83 moves. However, most moves have several sequential components to them, so 83 is a but a method of naming. There seem to me to be about 250 separate moves. “Whew.” I’m currently learning a Sequence called Spiral Taiji from my internal arts teacher Bob Lau.

Advantage of Sequences

An advantage of working with Sequences is that they force you to be present and fully conscious as you are training. Spacing out and not paying attention leads to missing your next steps and getting lost. Sequences are a magnificent as moving meditations.

With the differing numbers done of exercises, the exact sequences, the steps being taken and directions to face, sequential forms are masterful ways of training your memory.

Sequences also encourage a the building of artful skill. Forms add a tapestry of artistic color and nuance to Qigong.

And they are fun!

Sets

Sets are collections of exercises that have a particular theme. Each exercise is practiced several to many times as a drill. A Qigong Set is an organized collection of exercises that you practice in order, doing so many of each exercise before going to the next. A Set is not a hodge podge, but is put together with particular training goals in mind.

The Five Flows Qigong is an example of a Set. It is designed to teach basic principles of Qigong while taking you through 2 successive movements to build health.

Shibashi

One famous Set is called Shibashi (also known as Tai Chi Qigong.) Shibashi has 18 movements adapted from the moves of Tai Chi Chuan. Shibashi–and Shibashi 2 and 3—are modern sets, put together recently.

Eight Brocades

A much older and famous set—one with many versions—is the Eight Brocades—just 8 exercises, often used as a warm-up in classes.

Snake Qigong

Snake Qigong is a Set I learned from Jang Jie in 1995. Intricately designed, it contains 36 different moves, separated into ten sections.

An example of a Set designed to develop flexibility in the joints is another 18 movement set called Wuji Hundun Qigong. There are also meditation Sets, standing Sets, and many more permutations.

This is just a small, overview sample. There are thousands of Sets out there.

Benefits of Set Practice

One of the benefits of a Set is that it is easier to remember a number of exercises when they are so organized.

Another advantage of practicing a Set is that each exercise tends to support the effects of the other exercises.

Sets usually have a balanced number of movements on the left and right sides.

In my next post I will talk about Sequences.