Here’s quote from Kurtis over in this thread … ’
At his suggestion, I started practicing freeform, hard-stye Qi Gong. And what a difference it has made.
Qi Gong is Chinese for “energy work”. It’s often seen as a gentle flowing exercise that encourages the movement of Qi (life force energy) through your body, promoting longevity and good health.
Tai Chi is the most well-known form of Qi Gong, but not all Qi Gong is Tai Chi.
There are literally thousands of Qi Gong exercises, some more effective than others.
What most people think of as Qi Gong is a gentle, flowing motion. It’s like your arms floating on waves of water.
But there is another style of Qi Gong that uses dynamic muscle tension while compressing the Qi inside your body.
I knew about hard-style Qi Gong and I’ve tried it a couple of times, but I never really practiced it until Kurtis suggested the strength training.
I have performed other dynamic tension exercises and they completely exhaust me. After a hard dynamic tension workout, it’s not uncommon for me to need a full day and a half to recover enough for the next workout.
It’s effective at building muscle and does help me lose fat, but it just wipes me out so completely that I wouldn’t have the energy for living, let alone magick.
So a couple of days ago, I decide to give hard-style Qi Gong another try. And wow … talk about a huge difference.
Rather than wearing me out in the way the other dynamic tension workouts did, hard-style Qi Gong completely energized me and pumped me full of energy.
It’s hard to describe what you’re doing, but you’re effectively using a breathing technique combined with abdominal contracts and visualizations to force the Qi into your Dan Tien, the energy storage center at your navel.
I’ve practiced the normal flowing-style of Qi Gong for several years and it was great for learning the techniques for energy work, clearing the body of blockages, and just generally increasing my ability to feel energy.
But this hard-style Qi Gong really surprised me. The energy I can produce from it is simply staggering.
My body will completely buzz with energy and generate a lot energetic heat for a good hour after I’m done.
The other day, Ahriman suggested taught me a walking Qi Gong method and it was even more intense. All I did was walk around the store shopping while performing the abdominal pressure and breathing technique.
After only 3 minutes, I managed to store enough energy to keep my body buzzing and on fire for 2 hours.
Crazy effective.
Here’s a good video on the basic 9 Breath Method that gives you an idea of the abdominal contractions …
9 Breath Method
Learn that breathing technique and you’ll have a great tool to quickly generate energy for your magick.
The best part is my fat is just melting off while I’m building a lot of muscle at the same time. We can see huge chunks of fat just disappearing over night. I’ve had significant weight loss before, but I’ve never seen anything like this.
The other benefit is that I’m beginning to see how these flowing movements with a martial arts style of “snapping attack” at the end can generate a tremendous amount of energy toward a target.
I’ve played around with it toward a person’s hand while there eyes were closed. I’ve been able to move the person’s hand back visibly from across the room. About 6 to 8 feet away.
I greatly prefer the concept of qigong to yoga, though yoga certainly has its place. I use it as a sort of moving meditation.
