Incredible Benefits of Qi Gong Revealed: An Interview with Ken Cohen

the turned Qigong is actually modern it's post 1950 post the Communist Revolution how do you achieve in Qigong that feeling of egolessness so this is essentially the same as what the Buddha called anata no self without I and a realization that who you think you are is not who you are hey friend before we get into the rest of the episode if you want to help support me make more videos like these to help you and to help us collectively live and balance I invite you to join the online wudang Dallas Wellness Academy this is

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if you enjoy the rest of today's episode I am so excited about today's conversation we are going to explore the world of mindful movement and particular Qigong this ancient healing practice and how moving meditation and Qigong can help heal our bodies and empowers to take charge of our wellness and it is a great privilege and joy to be with Ken Cohen who is one of the great Qigong teachers of our time and his book The Way of Qigong was a foundational book for me on my journey so Ken what privilege and joy to have you

here thank you thank you very much it's an honor to be here hopefully our listeners know about this that may be wondering well shouldn't they be shaking hands with each other instead of shaking their own ends of course this is a very ancient bout I mean it really goes back thousands of years and there's there's a lot of meaning to it aside from just an offering of of respect uh because as you know because I know you know some Chinese this looks a little bit like the word for the Sun the old word for the

sun which is like a box with a line in the center and this is like the crescent moon so the Sun and Moon together creates the word main which means bright illumination Clarity but it was also the name of the Ming Dynasty which was a flowering of Chinese martial arts and Qigong and in addition you're hiding the fist or putting a gentle hand over the fist so to suggest that we are we are here with respect not to fight each other when the hands are separated and some people also say this represents the various oceans

and lands around the world so when the two hands come together it means we come together in unity so there's again just a lot of beautiful symbolism and something as simple as a bow beautiful and yeah a taste of the the Ming the clarity that we may get some Taste of in today's conversation beautiful so yeah we could start with our journey of yeah stepping into this beautiful world of Chinese culture and The Healing Arts of Qigong for those that are just beginning their Journeys could you give us a bit about what actually Qigong is

sure well I think one thing that may be new for some of our listeners is that the turn Qigong is actually modern it's it's post 1950 post the Communist Revolution it was a kind of rebranding of very ancient primarily Taoist exercises I mean there were also exercises and meditations that were part of Buddhism and part of China's martial arts training and so forth but essentially if you're looking for Qigong literature you look in the Danos Canon that's the major source for information on Qigong or what we're calling Qigong today what happened in 1949 with the

Communist Revolution that is that many Arts that were associated with taoism were at least at first forbidden until there was a really a turn towards more religious freedom at a later date so in order to preserve these ancient Taoist Health and Longevity arts and ways of tuning in to the Dao to the universe both renowned in acupuncture in the case of kuya Jen who is also well known in Chinese martial arts and taoism they thought why don't we just rename these arts and make a case to show that these ancient practices are a wonderful way

of improving National Health that could even be used to combat disease so what was originally called now here's the original name for Qigong what was originally called yang y-a-n-g s-h-e-n-g nurturing life what a beautiful term isn't it I think that's a better better word than Chico so what was originally called yangshung or you could even say uh perhaps Tao John Young the Taoist Arts of nurturing life and in some ancient texts was also known as or alternately called Dao Yin d-a-o-y-i-n which means basically leading and guiding the life force leading and guiding the cheat so

what was originally called nurturing life or leading and guiding the chi was renamed energy skill she got and uh that's really the origin of the term Qigong so what is Qigong here's my kind of definition in progress and the reason I say in progress is because as we learn more as we cultivate more that is as we lured through our experience our definitions change and the chain and the definition should really be I think primarily based on our experience supported by knowledge supported by scholarship so let's let's try a definition right now so Qigong I

would say is the Art and Science abusing posture movement breathing and meditation and by meditation I include visualization to refine gather and circulate the life force to reprove health and well-being to develop higher level of skill for sports or martial arts and to transform our spirit so we feel almost a kind of permeability between ourselves and the universe some people would call that reaching the state of unity with the Dao Unity with nature Unity with all that is don't ask me to repeat that definition because I just made it but I think it's fairly I

think it's fairly accurate now if you want to put it very typely Qigong is ancient Chinese healing exercises and meditations which put us in touch with the realm of chi and she is I know we could say it's energy but as you know it's it's much more than that it's more even than life force it's a it's an energetic presence and a spiritual presence that we can sense not only in our bodies but in our environment for example a beautiful Sunrise you could say has Chi a spectacular Mountain an old tree has g a great

painting sometimes you could even feel that life force above the painting you'll hold your hands above the painting and it's almost like holding your hand near the hand of someone you love there's this this energy there's this resonance energetic charge uh great poems are sometimes uh well one of the criteria you could say for evaluating a great poem is that it has she you didn't she resonance you feel that the poet is so at one with the mountain that let's say so that the mountain has used the poet's voice and words to express itself it's

the mountain speaking through the poet and so when you read that poem when you read about the snowy landscape you are in that snowy landscape well that's that's a great example of Chief in fact I'll give you let's see if I still have this uh In My Memory Bank hope I won't uh lose lose lose lose it in the middle but let's see if I still remember this old poem I once memorized foreign a thousand mountains not a bird Ten Thousand Trails not a footprint alone in a boat an old man in straw raincoat fishing

through the Cold River snow no explanation is needed the images speak for themselves even the mood the emotions are there without being directly expressed in fact another criteria of China's poetry is that Jing and ching scenery and feeling interpenetrate that you can express the feeling through the scene and again the person who's reading it is immersed in the chi of nature so you might also wonder well is that does that mean that writing poetry and even reading poetry could be a kind of qigon yes exactly exactly so let's not even limit the term Qigong to

Healing exercises and meditations it's also the skill of developing cultivating understanding Chi through the arcs that's also Qigong beautiful wow so much depth in there already and something I love about your work is is you look holistically and this is a principle for Qigong and traditional Chinese medicine is to look at you know the totality of our our harmonic well-being between mind body and spirituality and relationships and Society they're all connected and so already you've spoken to the science of this art and that's how they Justified it to the early communist government and changed the

name and yet that term yangshan which really yeah is a striking beautiful phrase nurturing life and that you know life being a holistic thing like rather than getting ripped to the gym or getting super smart by working academically and it's it's nurturing life itself and then that light force and and you know there's nothing wrong I just if you wouldn't mind me interrupting but just a second there's nothing wrong with getting ripped at the gym a lot of people think oh I do taiji I do Qigong I only do soft arts and you know we

give you a limp hand handshake and they think that's cheating that's not Qigong means using the minimum effort unique well one aspect of Chico because using the minimum effort you need to accomplish a task and not a not a bit more so it's a kind of body intelligence but there's no inherent contradiction between doing soft taiji movements or more Dynamic Shing e-tran another martial arts shingy Trend movements no contradiction between doing that and working out at the gym or going for a run or playing a sport what we want is balance I think what uh

Chinese medicine warns against is very valid they say yeah it's good to have both external in and internal health that is mechanical Health as well is metabolic Health but given the choice better to focus primarily on the internal aspect and that's where Qigong really has its expertise otherwise we end up with a situation somewhat poetically called White the outside becomes strong there's the you know the ripped muscles while the inside dries up and rots no nobody wants nobody wants to be in that situation so let's let's work on both internal health as well as the

the muscular health and the cardio conditioning and stamina and so forth because people forget these Arts grew up in a society where there was a lot of hard work I mean it was an Agricultural Society for most of Chinese history I mean now it's moving more towards an urban environment but people who did Qigong the majority they worked they worked hard in the fields or they they were climbing up the mountains or down the mountain they were growing their own produce whenever possible even if they were taoists living in a monastic setting there was still

a lot of walking and exercise you weren't sitting down at a computer all day long so today you know the kind of world we're in now where so many of us me included we spent too much time at the computer it's just a sort of requirement of the crazy if you don't mind the same crazy lifestyle that we've built up I was going to say the west but now it's worldwide so we've got to complement a Qigong by some vigorous exercise and I I love that aspect of the Qigong practice of looking at ourselves yeah

again holistically and that form of intelligence as he said using the least amount of energy possible which I think is a really yes important aspect of the practice because for my journey for example starring tai chi I found that I got injured I had like seven injuries and I thought you know I went to China to learn Kung Fu to become you know strong man and I found Tai Chi which I thought it was a soft and then I found myself with seven injuries and so it turns out that actually it takes strength balance flexibility

to be able to do tai chi and you know Qigong and Tai Chi are accessible no matter where we are in our fitness and body Journey but nonetheless yeah that is an art form and needs to the art form comes from looking at ourselves holistically and so part of my practice is climbing trees running around lifting heavier stuff if I can find it and that complementing my my Qigong practice exactly in fact you probably have heard of sure saw uh Stone locks and those are essentially ancient Chinese uh dumbbells ancient Chinese weights that they're making

a comeback today A lot of people are working out with uh weights and not the kind of Weights you find in the western gym but the traditional Chinese weights so obviously people were doing Hard Exercise as well as the soft internal work and again one doesn't exclude the other we need both to be really healthy in every sense of the term I'd love to hear a bit about your journey what what have been three influential teachers on your journey to kind of create your unique Kenco and Qigong manifestation of what you teach and share of

course the problem is if I only mentioned three I'm leaving out other important words I'll try to let's let's see what comes to my mind right now one of them I would actually say is Alan Watts uh I was a friend of his and he was he well at first he was really a mentor uh but we we got to know each other quite well I collaborated with him in one of his books did some of the Chinese translations for his book on Taoism and he is really one of the primary people who introduced Buddhism

and taoism to the West there are still about oh I would guess around 30 of his books uh remain in Prince he was also an extraordinary speaker originally from the UK he spoke a beautiful King's English and and which to the American ear is very intransome but then lived in California lived in the U.S for for many years and I was accepted into a scholarship program with him I was one of five students studying with him five days a week for it was about two or three months in 1973 and it remains a a kind

of idyllic period in my life I would hitchhike uh up a Mountainside and then walk a mile into where his library was and then sit and listen to this incredible speaker talk about taoism and Buddhism and life and we would meditate together he introduced me to Japanese tea ceremony which I also began to study not long after that so he was a big influence another one I would say is uh Dr Huang Hong Kong shirt he was a Taoist Abbott born 1910 just to give you an idea of his date she passed in 1999 he

was a Taoist Abbott from Southern China from seychell sichao Shine the sacred mountain in the south and he grew up in that old world I mean there's hardly anyone from that time period still alive today and when I think of Dr Wong more important than the specific teachings he shared such as meditation external Qi healing how to project she to treat a client or patient feng shui I also learned feng shui from him so many different things but more important than any of that were the stories the stories of his yunyo his Cloud wanderings the

word for sacred pilgrimage in Chinese the way you travel all over China to meet great Masters and learn from them Dr Huang was summed of a renaissance man he was Taoist Abbott martial artist he had been a director of the Jing Wu Association of Hong Kong for many years that's one of the most prestigious martial arts organizations in China founded by the famed hoyunjab uh Dr Huang was also a student of shuyun empty cloud a Dharma Master Buddhist master who lived to a documented age of 120. and is largely responsible for the Revival of interest

in Buddhism in modern China Dr Wallace's disciple he was also a student of the previous Dalai Lama and the previous panchalung so he had wide broad knowledge that the guy I remember when I met him I first met him by so-called chance in a bookstore we're both reaching for the same book at the same time and thinking that he may speak Chinese I I asked him if uh who he was and he told me and then I realized that this was the mysterious Dr Huang I'd been hearing about I called him doctor sometimes or sherfu

because he was a doctor of Chinese medicine he made his living as an acupuncturist uh so we we met I found out he spoke not only fluent Mandarin but his original Cantonese uh toizan dialect which is really and I think it's more another language than dialect he spoke jaiman Dal ha haidan Island dialect as well as perfect English Japanese and German I mean this guy was I sometimes I felt like he lived five simultaneous lifetimes how could anyone have acquired that much knowledge and wisdom uh being young and thinking I could do anything I was

in my 20s a very arrogantly went to his home the next morning he had given me his business card in the bookstore and I knocked on the door I had a dozen red carnations and a bag of fruit and some incense and I said oh Wong sifu of course I was being very tricky I was already addressing him as teacher Master as though I was suggesting I wanted to be a student I was already addressing wait I said Wong sifu I met you in the bookstore yes a yes young man I remember you how can

I help you while I know you're an acupuncturist and if you don't have any patience right now could I offer incense on your altar I presume you have an altar also in your home and I'd love to arrange the fruit and flowers and or for some instances he said oh please I've lived I've lived in the US for 10 years and no one ever thought to do this you're the very first so I arranged the his altar he introduced me to all the figures on his altar both the statues of the spirits you could say

as well as his ancestors and those who taught and trained him then they said well I'm sifu you sure found the mail have you eaten yet said no I haven't I said can I take you out to your favorite restaurant yes let's go well that ended up being three times a week for the following five years and continuing afterwards when I moved to the mountains of Colorado but for those first five years basically three times a week I was at Dr huang's home fixing up his altar taking him out for a meal and spending all

day learning from him Alison's only Apprentice throughout his lifetime I was the only one he trained so that's another big influence and I guess for a third it's really it just pulls in that story because that what a story I mean that's just that beautiful innocence and confidence of years as his 20 year old and just that Curiosity of wanting to learn and and the fact that yeah yeah only had one one Apprentice during his lifetime and that was you so celebrating that story that's that's wonderful about fact yeah he was uh he was a

great man and uh you know he was one of those people who will shoot matched his woo dub his martial arts matched his martial virtue or you could say his Integrity his character his kindness was as high and as great as his skill as a Taoist as a Qigong Master as a martial artist so I felt okay this is someone I can really learn from because he you know I would say someone can walk their talk he he walked his talk and he talked his walk he he lived consistent with the principles of taoism yeah

and that Integrity is so important in in life and in training so that if we can find those teachers that live in keeping with with their teachings Nigi was just talking to someone who does coaching with people and how he had a person that he was supporting he was a coach who would on the outside you know claim to you know believe in yourself and you can do anything and like you've got this and then on the inside crippled with with um yeah scarcity mindsets and doing and Gloom and obviously that that incongruity has felt

and so yeah Integrity is a really a central place the first coverage actually I mean it takes it takes courage we have to have the courage to deal with our own stuff I think it wasn't a Boswell who asked Johnson one time but what sir is the greatest or most important of Virtues and he if I remember this all literature still he said the courage served form without courage you can't follow any you can't have any of the other virtues you need the courage most people they succumb to whatever the crowd is believing or doing

or they don't have the courage to deal with their stuff as I call it an Integrity would be super easy if it didn't take courage you know like the tag sacrifice and personal hardship to stay in keeping with your alignment and your principles and willingness not to uh use hideouts you know some some people they'll engage in a certain spiritual study whether it's meditation or Qigong or whatever and it and at least in part it could be a strategy for actually avoiding their issues rather than facing them so it does take courage to say you

know what I'm a human being I've got difficulties and challenges maybe things from my childhood or past that I need to resolve and make sure they're not influencing the way I interact with other people some people who go through a trauma they they end up having a fight or flight reaction that's prolonged so yeah it takes courage to do our inner work and we have to do that if we're going to be happy human beings I'm just I'm not talking just about being a teacher just to be a happy human being it is so essential

so I always look for that Integrity in in all of my teachers and this was also true that integrity and that kindness as well as great skill level in BP Chan my teacher for my first teacher of Chen style taiji Trend as well as bakwa Zhang and shiny Tran he also told me Dallas meditation and various Qigong methods and then William CC Chen I had the great honor of training with someone who to me represents every High aspect of taiji trend not only the beautiful mechanical efficiency graceful flowing movements learning how to relax but also

a superb martial artist I remember when I was in my 20s and let me tell you I was fast I still have a darn fast punch when I was in my 20s I was sparring I was in a private sparring class with Grand Master Chen and his face was about oh two feet away from like this you know about this distance but I don't know if you can see it and I'm ready to I got a pretty fast jab let me tell you before my fist could land on his face he had sized stepmate and

clipped me twice in my face when this guy uh even now in his 90s unbelievable speed and strength so he showed me just what is the potential of the human body and again a very kind wonderful person and then Madame gown calf who was a senior student of fungdu Chong renowned in Chen style Tai Chichen who I would say had the most meticulous way of teaching attention to the tiniest details so that everything is properly aligned according to your intent because I think maybe you found this too as you work with out different students to

see other people practicing often we're we're working across purposes that is we want to do one thing but our body is trying to do something else at the same time it's almost like as though you were delivering a punch into doing this you wouldn't want to do that you want to look at the Target and you want to turn so the power of the foot supported by the waist is generated in the fist that's called Yao Twilight waste and light strength not fist strength but a mash himself is delivering a punch and going like this

or if they want to do a slow taiji push-like motion and instead of Shifting the weight to the front they're Shifting the weight back you see what I mean one of the things that these Arts teach us is how to be more intelligently excuse me intelligently organized and so that our body is aligned with our intent and Madame gal uh galfu the student of fungdu Chang who again trained me in both primordial Qigong and uh Chen Sal taiji she was just a ultimate one of the ultimate teachers in that and by the way I'm going

to be sharing her uh her Legacy you could say the primordial Qi young system which I think is is certainly one of my favorites one of the beautiful styles for really understanding the energetics of the body and how to gather fresh Chi how to get rid of old or toxic Chi how to circulate and move the energy I'll be sharing her Legacy at a workshop I'm doing in London I hosted my Alternatives in May May 19th to 21st unless this year 2023. I'm planning on being them and so yeah it's really exciting to have you

sharing yeah teachings and there'll be a link in in the description for anyone that wants to check that out because yeah it's a would be a privilege to to learn more with you and that's amazing to hear your your story and and so many kind of qualities that we got from the Integrity courage to as one of the key qualities of Integrity attention to details and alignment with intention I I want to get into intention as you know as we deepen our understanding I'd like to say one of the beautiful things that you explore in

your in in the way of Qigong is the healing potential of Qigong and I'd love for you just to yeah give us an overview of what is the approach of healing in in the Qigong Arts so um you know that that of course is a big question and I'm so grateful actually that today we could even speak about Qigong not only from the Chinese perspective that is you know encouraging fluidity of movement of Qi we don't want stagnation because like stacked at water that can breed toxic algae so we could breed toxic chi chi is

not moving so we have the traditional Chinese explanation but Western science looking at Qigong through the lens of Western science we discover a complementary Viewpoint about how Qigong works and what it can what it can treat as an adjunctive therapy not as a substitute for Western medicine but as something that can complement it in fact I just read a few days ago a study that just came out in the Journal of the American Medical Association so that's of course one of the great scientific peer-reviewed journals that examined the effect of taiji Tran of Tai Chi

on the cognitive abilities or the cognitive impairment of adults who had type 2 diabetes and Inc and why is this important because as much as 45 percent of individuals with type 2 diabetes develop some degree of cognitive impairment that's huge and that could for some people lead to Dementia or or Alzheimer's and of course we're all concerned with maintaining mental Clarity especially with advancing years well in this study the people who did taiji had significantly better mental functioning than those who by contrast in the same study did Fitness walking again very significant difference that's that

surprised a lot of people we've seen similar studies of Qigong for controlling high blood pressure compared to Conventional exercise Qigong or Tai Chi and again taiji seems to win out same thing with the landmark study that was also published in the Journal of the American Medical Association looking at the effects of taiji it was probably young style tai chi on balance and I was informed by a friend of mine who's a physician that on some of the licensing exams for medical doctors in the United States there's actually multiple multiple choice test a question rather about

which method is scientifically proven to be the best for helping balance issues among seniors and the only correct answer was taiji so IGS and Qigong are both made significant inroads in Western medicine and when I think of the wealth of data that is now available that is all the published reports I basically came up with a kind of outline of conditions that the evidence so far suggests qigon and taiji can be extremely helpful for it I'll give you a I'll give you just a sort of sampling what some of those are for example on the

cardiovascular Spectrum you could say I mentioned XI young is good for normalizing blood pressure and this also applies to taiji because insofar as we're doing taiji for health even though taiju began primarily as a martial art but insofar as you're practicing for Health it qualifies as qiga again just to be clear because they're not the same taiji began as a martial art but people have found over time that there are fantastic health benefits okay so taiji and chiga so this cardiovascular benefits improved cholesterol level uh it tends to be Chilean tends to be anti-inflammatory we

know that's a major factor for both heart disease and for cancer uh respiratory function of course improved breathing because Qigong teaches us to breathe you know Chinese would say breathe with the dantian what does that mean it means your abdomen is so relaxed and there's such a feeling of internal openness and spaciousness allowing freedom for everything that needs to move to be capable of moving because of that when you inhale the diaphragm muscle drops and the lower abdomen which is considered the primary Energy Center the dantean the lower abdomen expands gently on inhale and releases

on exhale that's not only the lower abdomen it's also the lower back the dot hand is actually more towards the center so there's a responsiveness in the entire abdominal region so when you inhale lower abdomen and lower back both open like a balloon very gently not the force when you exhale they release and retract again gently no Force what does that do it slows down the breathing rate lessens stress reduces has the potential to reduce inflammation improves oxygenation of the blood which has other residual effects that means one example the brain the human brain takes

up two percent of the body's weight but it requires 20 percent of the body's available oxygen if you're providing more oxygen because of quiet deep abdominal respiration daunting breathing then there's going to be sometimes a very pronounced effect on all sorts of neurological functions and it's very popular to say oh deep breathing massages the internal organs it's also true it changes the stresses on the fascia on the connective tissue that hold our organs in place no organs can be displaced through physical tension through poor habits of posture through poor habits of breathing through emotional stresses

so if you can grieve with the diaphragm Don chin breathing abdomen expanding on inhale releasing on exhale you have all kinds of benefits and George this is just that I mean the tip of the iceberg there's there's uh effects of longevity just about every biomarker of long life everything from lung capacity to the quality of the skin to not having as many age spots a skin elasticity flexibility libido so many things that are for most people strongly affected by aging speed Reaction Time coordination all those are improved and through chica look I'm I'm 70 years

old and I feel like I've not reached my my Peak yet with with Qigong and with taiji I seem to have I don't think Ahmed an anomaly I seem to still be gaining in speed and strength I'll sometimes complain to my wife it's not actually a complaint but I'll say are they supposed to be feeling old that's really not the not the case effects on digestion improved digestion a lot of people not only older people young people as well have problems with digestion again we've got some great great evidence improved circulation what about cold hands

and feet look you're in the UK and it rains a lot I know that and uh not something I've been trying to work on on in Scotland because I've just been in the mountains for three months I'm trying to send energy to my hands still a work in programs yeah yeah and and how does that happen when you relax the small blood vessels the capillaries because you're learning how to relax through Qigong and taiji the capillaries open up because you're relaxed but when they open up when those tiny blood vessels open up they're carrying more

blood obviously and more oxygen and that greater capacity poor circulation and for oxygen delivery tends to translate into a subjective feeling of warmth it's not just subjective you can measure it warmth and also a kind of energy uh kind of tingling or vibration offered out in the hands so bees are just as I says the tip of the iceberg among the just a sampling of the many many benefits that we get through practicing and that you can even read about in scientific literature yeah and it's a beautiful world the science is catching up with these

Timeless practices that have been proven through experience and I think that's a great thing that you said of the Stars our definitions should be Works in progress that adapt with our experience and in the same way that our understanding of our Tai Chi and our Qigong practice are intuitive and embodied understandings and something I want to explore so first of all celebrating the breath and you know it's been so powerful in my life and it's a great privilege for me I've been sharing breath work and in hospitals here in the UK with people who haven't

done meditation or any breathing courses before and it's so powerful to do that Dan Tien breathing as he expressed such a simple thing and really empowering because again one of the great things about Qigong is that we can take charge of our own Wellness in complementary in tandem with other approaches but we don't know how the drugs work and we don't know what the doctors are doing with us really but what we can do is come to our breath in times of stress and move our bodies as little or as as much as we can

one thing I'd love to understand more about is this Yi and this intention and yeah what is the training of intention in Qigong and have you got yeah any thoughts on the power of that intention for healing in particular well let's look at two things intention and something that's rarely discussed a state where there's no intention where there's no mind where there's no Focus that doesn't mean confusion it means emptiness so we could say that you know that the term Wu way in taoism means literally no action but actually it implies no action against the

natural stream or current of nature no coercive action no forceful action so that's one of the primary principles in in Taoism but there's also Yahweh something that involves intent and deliberate action life consists of both we kind of need to know when we need to act and when we need to allow life to just unfold so let's look at the yoway side of things the deliberate side of things Qigong trains mental focus and concentration in a fantastic way and there there's a saying where the E goes e means intent or will where the E goes

the chingos it's actually literally where the E when the E arrives the chi arrivesing where the chi arrives the blood flows so when you focus on a particular part of the body energy tends to go there I mean very simply if someone opened their I don't know right palm and you just bring your mind to your right palm you're going to start feeling something so the Mind directs energy and directs blood flow as well when we combine intent with the principles of Qigong posture movement and breathing such as being sunk into the ground minimum effort

relaxation straight spine releasing the chest suspending the crown of the head all these different wonderful principles of taiji and Qigong when you combine those elements of posture and movement with intent then intent is that much stronger so a set of Simply thinking of the broken ankle that's a hypothetical example when you bring your mind there you have been trained through your Qigong to bring healing energy to that spot and hopefully speed up the repair of the broken bone or the sprained strained ligament or whatever is going on so Qigong really is fantastic for training intent

if you're just and here actually I disagree with some of my uh esteemed colleagues in China because maybe a minority but I've heard people say well it really doesn't matter what your mind is doing uh when you're doing standing meditation for example standing with your arms rounded in front of the chest some people call that embracing the tree it's good to stand for about an hour actually I think that's a little bit long but some people say for an hour and so why not just watch a TV show for an hour while you're standing uh

uh I disagree I mean who wants to have their mind resonate with some I don't know violent news channel on TV or a movie or whatever no you want to cultivate a clear quiet State of Mind so in intent is really mental focus if knowing how to beat present to whatever you're doing and uh you could call mindfulness Qigong is great for training that presence of mind but in addition to the power of intent to mobilize qi we have to have to look at the other side of meditation and that is cultivating a state of

emptiness freedom from all thought all worry there'll be an initial intent then I'm going to sit in meditation or standard meditation But ultimately what we want to reach is a state of not Yahweh not with action but ruleway without action so that you are present without an object without any particular focus a state of pure unqualified being in the ancient Taoist texts there are two words for this type of meditation and I think it's worth learning them because the the connotation of ancient Chinese characters is often very rich one of those words actually both terms

come from the juanza juanza is a fourth Century BC Classic of taoism so one of the terms for meditation in the Juan set is sinjai the fasting of the Mind the body is sometimes refreshed by fasting from from food brief periods of fasting the mind is refreshed by fasting from Concepts fasting from thoughts fasting from all ideas sometimes people ask me students might say well how do I think about emptiness so I'm supposed to stand in meditation to think about emptiness right I said no don't think about emptiness be empty that's the fasting of the

Mind and then the other word that's used is sua one literally sitting and forgetting from the same text that you answered sitting and forgetting but if you look at the word to forget the Chinese character means the Mind disappears so we're no longer distracted by thought or worry so this again is the other side of intent that we need to remember are you there she uh I have been here but I seem to freeze Hing seems like your screen is frozen or you are have truly mastered Stillness I see an image that is absolutely unmoving

George how did you do that teach me how to do that absolutely still let's see if we can take care of this brief us to the god from absolute Stillness during this brief computer glitch that should have any admit to to shrendra yoshan mystery gond mystery the darkness of the Dao was just a black screen I've got to take some classes of you I need to find out how to do that you know he's so still and then be absolutely invisible although let me tell you I once asked I got to know John blofeld you

know who lived in China in 1930 to 1948 and uh he used to say it is possible to be invisible it means to go unnoticed in a crowd man it is possible to levitate it means to take yourself lightly of course I think he was paraphrasing GK Chesterton when he said Angels slide because they take themselves lightly yeah I love that um oh before yeah on that discussion between UA and we were really critical and something that again I love about Qigong and the journey is that it is a journey and it's a practice and

that training of awareness is something that comes easier over time and when I first started my Qigong I didn't really get the depths and you know there's many deaths deeper than my current practice as well but I have got to levels where yeah actually being present with the sensations and that that kind of beautiful Paradox of the having an intention for practice and having that new way but then letting go of all those intentions and this actually links really well to a question that we got from the community from Paula who said yeah thank you

for all of your teachings and she wants to understand this state of egolessness and the way of practicing where they have a feeling where they're not there and there's this egoless presence and her question is how do you achieve in Qigong that feeling of egolessness have you got any tips to help people reach that stage in their practice so this is essentially the same as what the Buddha called anata no self or a Chinese that gets translated as without I without self War how do we achieve that it's going to be really a matter of

practice and patience I wish I could give you a different answer a simple answer say well do this and you're you'll be free of egoed and you can reclaim your ego whenever you need it but it's no longer be going to be a distraction it's just going to be a long well not necessarily taking a long time but it will require patience perseverance and practice and a realization that who you think you are is not who you are any more than the word Apple is an apple you can't eat the word you can eat the

apple so people have confused their descriptions with that which is described so then what is the self let me try to answer your wonderful question this way Shakura one of the great commentators on the upanishads a spiritual classic from India says the following in talking about the ego-free state just as a sword cannot cut itself nor a fire burn itself so the subject cannot be the object of its own knowledge I'm going to repeat that just as a sword cannot cut itself nor of fire burn itself so the subject cannot be the object of its

own knowledge so who you think you are is not who you are so then who are you obviously you're the one doing the thinking you're the mystery behind all of that what precedes what is antecedent to words and thoughts so the question to ask yourself is who is that but don't give an answer if you give an answer that's not it because you're the one doing the thinking who is that mystery it requires a certain I guess you could say trust in the unknown and maybe that's one of the central challenges that taoism presents to

us since the Dao is by definition what is beyond words Beyond knowledge a mystery Beyond mystery a gateway to all Wonder as the first chapter of the doubtaging ends a gateway to all Wonder so we ask ourselves and my courageous enough to trust a realm Beyond knowledge beyond words when you're in that realm there is no ego um we can just sit with that and that courageousness coming back the courageousness courageousness to trust yeah to trust in our nature and to not need words and labels and stories to trust ourselves but just to to relax

into being powerful thank you we've got time for one more question I'd love to again something I love about your work is the synthesis between Western science and the Eastern wisdom traditions and I'm interested in the energy centers and I'd like to to hear your thoughts on this so the dantien as people may know and you've already talked about is the Alexa field where one of you know the core energy centers for the Chinese Arts the lower Dan Tien but there's three and I was wondering yeah what what are the energy centers mean for you

and what the differences between the three in the Chinese Arts so every part of the body has a capacity to store energy and to move or release energy if you look at a dead cell in the micro with a microscope compared to a living cell the main difference is that the living cell has a bioelectric charge and thus as the capacity for movement now certain places in the body have a greater or lesser capacity to store energy I have a theory that and this is not from the Chinese literature it's from my own idea that

at the level of the cell the donchian is the mitochondria that's the energy Factory of the cell so we have dantians even at a cellular level but the major Don qens the major fields of The Elixir Don is elixir 10 is a farmer's field it's the field where we plant the elixir of longevity and wisdom the major danteans are usually divided into three however according to the system of Qigong or taoism that you're practicing the location of the donkins May differ it is not as some religious Dogma where if one teacher tells you the middle

dancing is the heart well that's the correct location no because there are donkeyens throughout the body classically the major three danteans by classically I mean in the probably the majority of literature and among the majority of practitioners the upper dantean is the third eye we call that the Shang dantian upper dantin it stores Shen or spirit accounts for our intuition our connection with spirit it is easily lost if we're too involved with the outside world and forget the interior world so sometimes we close our eyes to conserve shed so the light of the eyes does

not go out it illuminates the microcosm so upper dungeon between the eyebrows middle Don Chen related not to Shen but to Chi the life force connected geographically in the body with the diaphragm is at the heart we conserve Chi through not wasting our energy through periods of quiet especially quiet breathing through not talking too much talking too much also wastes cheap and then the lower dot chin about three inches below the navel is in for most teachers connected with Jing j-i-n-g which literally means life Essence it's actually a picture of weak germ if you look

at the old character so it's the germ or essence of life it's related to reproductive Force you could say that the upper dantian is the nervous system middle dantean respiratory system lower dantian endocrine system and we conserve the Jing through reproductive health through balanced sexual relations so we might also think of the three dog hands as three pillars of Taoist healing practices meditation Qigong and ballast relationships but there are other styles of Qigong where the upper dantin remains at the third eye but the middle dachshund is the navel and the lower Don Chen is the

perineum and there's still another system very popular in China where the teachers say oh oh no the three danteans are not vertical they're horizontal gives the rear doctian which is the mingmen or gate of life the area of the lower back opposite the navel there's the navel which is the front Don Tien and then there's the middle dantian the place of emptiness where it's easier easier to realize emptiness by focusing on the region between the navel and the lower back so there you have three donkeyens and a horizontal alignment so again dot 10 is just

an area that has a greater capacity to store energy and if you were to ask me well which of those different models of the body are right I'd say all of them they're just in ways of explaining or visualizing energy storage and flow that is consistent with a particular School of Qigong or Daoism powerful answer and thank you for that and yeah I invite the lesson is to listen back to that because there's a lot of depth in it and for me yeah I think I haven't had too much Dan Tien training and kind of

a traditional Chinese medicine but my kind of intuitive understanding is that exactly as you're saying like we we have energy centers throughout the body and there's particular emotions or energies that get stored in different parts of our body so you know tension in the foreheads where you know the third eye is this often where we hold a lot of our our life tensioners in that in the forehead and the eyes and we can soften the heart obviously is very responsive to our emotions and the belly just as we've talked about today is we can tense

up and Brace ourselves or we can invite that relaxation and sending our ye Our intention down to the lower dance Yen actually rebalances us it's our physical senses the center of our gravity and so if if we send our intention down then yeah we can rebalance and act from our Center thank you George you know uh you've also been sharing wonderful things I hope our conversations will continue well it's been a real privilege and yeah thank you so much for joining and if people want to learn more with you or what are you up to

at the moment how can they find out more about your work the easiest way is just to go to my website go to uh I've got a couple of domain names the easiest one to remember is probably going to be my name Kenneth cohen.com k-e-n-n-e-t-h-c-o-h-e-n so Kenneth cohen.com and you'll see a listing of both online Zoom type classes as well as increasingly some in-person events one coming up in the UK but I have others around the United States sometimes in other countries as well and if you'd like to join my mailing list go to the

contact Section on my website and just fill out the information that will put you on the mailing list and then you can get my free newsletter which I send out a couple times a month you can cancel your subscription and time there's no cost and then because now the updates on my schedule but new information such as new research that's happening in Qigong essays about unusual aspects of Qigong for example I had a theme issue of my newsletter that was just on Qigong and poetry another one on qigon and music the relationship between classical Chinese

music and Chico so I think you'll enjoy it and that's a good way to kind of keep up with my work and thoughts and other than that I just look forward to seeing all of you again maybe in person at an event someday or better still joining me in my cabin in Colorado High up in the mountains so we can just sit silently and enjoy some Chinese tea um well I'd be foreigners to finish on and all those links will be in the descriptions and thank you so much Ken keep sharing your light and your

joyful explorations of these nourishing Arts here changing lives so thank you so much thank you thanks so much for watching my friend Ken Cohen's links are in the description have a look at some of his workshops in London and worldwide and if you'd like to support me make more episodes like this as well as learning loads for yourself check out the online wudang Dallas Wellness Academy Master Goos teaching platform you can learn Tai Chi chigo meditation Taoist philosophy so much amazing content from the ancient Chinese and Taoist Traditions to help you take charge of your

Wellness there's a free seven-day trial so you can try with no risk to see what learning is available and join perhaps Master goo for some of his live streams and the community there's so much for you to explore click the link in the description hope you have an amazing day and I'll see you for the next video