Pablo . P:
[quote=Nick W (aka Bagpuss)]
Have you guys realised any benefits you can directly attribute to Qigong practice?
I was thinking of just doing the "lifting the sky" movements while on retreat. The reason I am interested is mostly health related but also curiosity as I feel so much vibration in the body all the time, it may be beneficial to try to manipulate it a bit. Working with pranayama practices has not yielded much...
My actual Qigong practice is on maintenance mode for the last two years, when I finally dropped all hopes of attaining enlightenment through energetic practices, and got close to Dharmma. So I do just a subset of the Qigong exercises in order to keep healthy and boost my meditation. Regarding benefits, I don't see any particular one. But the thing is that when you stop doing them, your health worsen. By unhealthy I mean, muscular / bone / nerve pains, and organ diseases. You'll still have back pain or stiff neck if you have a bad postural habits.
Though you may experience some interesting stuff with energy, the bottom line is expect nothing. If you are here at DhO engaged in your meditation practice, then you're already on the right track [I'm telling this to myself too, of course]. My opinion (and my Taiji teacher's too) is that high level qigong and alchemical Taoist practices are for people with 3rd Path o more. You may reap some benefits if your're a kinesthetic guy (in the NLP classification) and have strong concentration, but then perhaps that's more close to the magick path.
If we ignore energy practices as means for insight, have the practice benefited you in avoiding/reducing symptoms like:
- unpleasant vibrations, or vibrations in general.
- tension in various parts of the body
- headaches
- energy 'blockages' in the body (at chakra points for instance)
- any other psychosomatic stress reaction.
I realize you don't have a different version of yourself who have not done this training for comparison, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.