On a recent Oprah show, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a noted NY surgeon and health care advocate, sited energy medicine as the medicine of the future.  Quoting from Dr. Oz, "The reason I'm so excited and passionate about alternative medicine is (because it is) the globalization of medicine," Alternative medicines, Dr. Oz noted, deal with the body's energy, something that traditional Western medicine generally does not recognize. "We're beginning now to understand things that we know in our hearts are true but we could never measure. As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier in medicine is energy medicine. It's not the mechanistic part of the joints moving. It's not the chemistry of our body. It is understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel". 

Qigong
Qigong is a combination of two ideas: "Qi" (pronounced chee), means air, breath of life, or vital energy that flows through all things in the universe and "Gong" (pronounced gung, as in lung) means the skill of working with, or cultivating, self-discipline and achievement.  Together, Qigong means the skill of cultivating vital energy, or the ability to work with the electromagnetic energy of the body.  The body is enveloped by Qi or electromagnetic currents, affecting both internal and external organ functions. As Qi is the fundamental energy that sustains life, it is present in every cell of the body.

Medical Qigong
Medical qigong, is one of the four main branches of Chinese medicine along with acupuncture, herbal medicine, and medical massage. Medical Qigong is the study of the energetic map of the body based on classical and alchemical Chinese Medicine as well as more traditional Chinese Medicine.  Medical Qigong techniques can be practiced on oneself for self-cultivation or on others as healing protocols.  Prescription exercises, meditations and healing protocols, enhance body, mind and spirit and can also address the energetics of specific disease patterns.

With Medical Qigong, healing occurs through balancing qi or electromagnetic energy which surrounds and pervades all living creatures.  Chinese medicine is a complete system of medicine that recognizes the root causes of symptoms or disease, and treats the client as a  whole system.  In the future, dis-eases will be seen and worked with before they reach the physical body. This is true preventive medicine and a return to the ancient Chinese way where the doctor was paid only when the client was well.

Generally and simply speaking, some 80% of disease is caused by stagnation or blockage while the remaining 20% can be said to be caused by deficiency. The bottom line is that the client must remove the stagnation and take steps in order to ensure the stagnation does not return. Stagnation can occur in the physical body or any of the subtle bodies. Blockages occur in the physical or subtle bodies where there are inherent weaknesses. It takes time to remove blockages depending on how deep the pattern is. This is particularly true if any form of disease has infiltrated the physical body and more so if the condition has existed for any length of time. The same line of reasoning would apply to deficiency, although in this case, any areas of deficiency must be strengthened. Often a deficiency and blockage occur at the same time. The goal of all healing is not to just treat symptoms but rather to determine each client's particular imbalances with a goal on finding the root causes.

Following is a simplified list of the important things a medical qigong practitioner can do to help their client facilitate the healing process. The list consists of the client's own self-practices and support from medical qigong and/or outside practitioners. Self-practice is an important part of a client taking responsibility for their own healing process and it also speeds up the work performed by outside sources. Assistance from outside sources is equally important, having an experienced ally in the healing journey makes the road smoother and faster!

Clients Self-Practice

• Meditation and spiritual practices in whatever spiritual path the client feels most inspired by. This assists the client in connecting to something larger than themselves and understanding their condition from a greater perspective of wholeness. It also opens one to the possibility of tremendous healing forces that are available from the spiritual realms.



• Herbs or Dietary Changes are important to assist in the removal of stagnation and to give support to any deficiencies.



• Medical qigong exercises are simple movements and/or meditations that the client performs daily that will benefit their particular condition. Medical Qigong exercises combine the use of breath with individual physical movements, creative visualization and intention. The primary goal is to purge toxic emotions from within the body's tissues, eliminate energetic stagnation, as well as strengthen and balance the internal organs and energetic fields. Medical Qigong exercises empower the client to realize that they are an integral part of their own healing process.
  

We invite submissions for this section from the entire Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine community

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	February 2012
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