Qi Gong in the NY Times

This New York Time article on Qi Gong is great and features a comment by local Tai chi instructor Kim Ivy at Embrace The Moon. The article is off in one respect: Qi Gong isn’t an umbrella discipline that encompasses Tai Chi. Tai Chi includes aspects of Qi Gong and goes beyond Qi Gong with it’s inclusion of martial aspects. Otherwise it’s a great article.

DrD

CHUNYI LIN remembers the first qigong class he ever taught in the United States. In 1993, he traveled from China as part of a cultural exchange between schools, and was asked to teach at a community center in Inver Grove Heights, Minn.

Only five people showed up.

“Nobody knew of qigong,” said Mr. Lin, 49, a master of the age-old practice, which entails coordinating slow movements with breathing to cultivate the flow of energy, or qi, in a sort of graceful, fluid dance.

Now, he runs a qigong center in Eden Prairie, Minn., called Spring Forest, where he teaches to packed classes of more than 60 students — and workshops nationwide to hundreds more. “Qigong is growing like crazy in the United States in the past few years,” Mr. Lin said. “People want to be more proactive with their health care.”

The face of exercise is changing in America. Instead of relentlessly pursuing a sculptured physique, people are chasing longevity, stress reduction and improved health through mind-body practices like qigong.

“The realm of working out has shifted from people just wanting to build bulk and lean, toned muscles to them understanding that the inner health of the body is just as important as the outer health,” said Bernard Shannon, a medical qigong therapist who works one on one with clients and sits on the board of the National Qigong Association, a trade group.

This vanguard of wellness-motivated exercisers prefers a regimen that encourages self-awareness to one with a high calorie burn.

“People want to get back to a simpler time,” said Ted J. Cibik, a medical qigong therapist and a certified health and fitness instructor, whose patients include athletes. “They want to find something they can practice that doesn’t take a lot of apparatus, allows them to deal with their stress, and gives them a good physical workout in the sense that it gets them moving.”

It wasn’t until recently that the ancient, gentle practice of qigong caught the attention of even the most sophisticated American exercisers.

The reasons vary. Mindful yoga has acclimated people to Eastern practices. Rising health care costs and expensive prescriptions have led people to look for alternative ways to feel vital. And an influx of qigong teachers from China has paved the way for new generations of teachers and students.

“There is a whole community of people who are intrigued by the whole mind-body shift happening in clubs, gyms and personal training centers who are now pushing these ancient arts,” Mr. Cibik said.

It’s taken decades for qigong — which is an umbrella term for numerous energy-based practices, including tai chi — to spread across the United States, in part because there weren’t enough instructors. That started changing in the 1980s and ’90s, when a handful came from China. Then in the late ’90s, after the Communist party made most forms of qigong illegal and cracked down on members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, who practice a form of qigong, an influx of teachers immigrated to this country.

“Many great masters have left China,” said Jampa Stewart, the director of Healing Tao Institute, a qigong center in Austin, Tex., and as a result, qigong education has improved in the United States.

Today’s qigong masters — “master” being an ambiguous title that requires no specific training — crisscross the country teaching their art, far beyond large cities to places like Heavenly Mountain, a wilderness retreat in North Carolina, where the Thailand-based Mantak Chia will hold six days of workshops this summer. This year, Yang, Jwing-Ming, a qigong expert, will travel to Boston and Chicago, but also to suburbs like Roswell, Ga., and more-rural towns like Glen Garden, N.J.

A decade ago, most Westerners didn’t know how to pronounce qigong (CHEE-kung). Plenty still don’t, but that hasn’t stopped them from attending classes at YMCAs, gyms, medical centers and college campuses. Roughly 950,000 American adults have practiced qigong in their lifetime, according to a study conducted in 2002 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and released in 2004 by the C.D.C. and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

The yoga boom has made mind-body exercise more run of the mill. “Yoga has now become acceptable,” said Judith Hanson Lasater, a yoga teacher since 1971 who now teaches restorative yoga, a form that encourages relaxation. “Qigong is a little further away, but yoga has opened the door.”

Because some forms of yoga are downright strenuous, qigong appeals to yogis tired of the mat race. “I went to power-yoga studios and practiced in heated rooms crammed with people’s mats, shoved over each other,” said Kyle Burton, 27, from Los Angeles. “But once I was introduced to qigong and learned the difference between a muscle-based workout versus an energetic-based practice, I switched.”