What are the methods we use?

Qigong

The word “Qi” has many meanings, but first among them is life energy and breath. You can think of Qi as the general quality of your life and wellbeing. “Gong” means attention or dedicated time spent with something. So literally, qigong means energy work, or dedicated time and attention towards nurturing energy or breath and its quality.

Qigong is an entire wing of traditional Chinese medicine and can be applied to nearly anything that ails you. When someone says they practice Qigong , in general, they mean that they are practicing an art meant to create greater health and wellbeing in the practitioner.

There are, of course, a tremendous number of benefits that come from opening the energy channels of the body and learning to circulate your energy throughout the various parts of the body/mind. It gets the blood and lymph circulating, calms the nervous system, and helps you regulate yourself through breath and mindfulness.

Tui Shou and San Shou

Tui Shou translates to “pushing hands” and is a two-person training method used to develop the timing, sensitivity, and mind state necessary to be calm and effective in a self defense, or really any, stressful situation.

San Shou roughly translates to “fighting form”, or “dividing hands”, or “separating hands.” You can think of it as the bridge between Tui Shou and the actual fighting elements of the art. It’s a form that helps to develop timing and applications for self-defense and actual fighting. While San Shou helps to build you into a fighter, we use the practice to develop ourselves and our ability to stay centered, and harmonious under stress and conflict.

The skills that come along with the study and practice of Tuishou and San Shou are useful for almost every athletic activity you could possibly do. Pushing hands helps you cultivate a level of physical and energetic sensitivity that is difficult to achieve with other methods. These sort of awarenesses can be applied to martial arts, healing work, or any activity where hand sensitivity or body awareness is important.

Benefits of Practice

Tai Chi and Qigong have a massive range of benefits.

Physically, Tai Chi and Qigong can help you cultivate strength, balance, flexibility, aerobic health, aids in counteracting arthritis, recovering from sickness, and the list really goes on and on.

Here are just some of the benefits as has been demonstrated through research:

• Live longer

• Improve muscle strength, balance and flexibility

• Boost cognitive function

• Improve COPD symptoms

• Get better night-time sleep quality

• Improve symptoms of fibromyalgia

• See improvements in cardiovascular fitness

• Reduce risk of falls

Mentally and emotionally it can help you relax and hone in on a deeper sense of calm and poise that can ground you and recalibrate your mind/body/spirit connection and mitigate stressful situations going forward.

Here is a small list of some of the potential mental and emotional benefits:

• reduced stress

• reduced anxiety

• reduces depression and mood disturbances

• increase in self-esteem

• increase in overall sense of acceptance and joy

• improved focus