Welcome to the fourth edition of Qigong and Energy Arts Forum, a regularly updated collection of the best new articles on qigong (chi kung), reiki, ayurveda, kundalini yoga, and other related disciplines.
Why Energy Healing Is Often Considered “Woo-Woo” by Loolwa Khazzoom (Dancing with Pain)
The vast majority of people who would say that energy work or energy medicine is “woo woo” are also people who hold strong religious beliefs. For example, Christians believe that there was a man who lived in a whale…
The Key to Natural Healing by Anmol Mehta (Mastery of Meditation, Enlightenment and Kundalini Yoga)
The key to natural healing is to be positive, relaxed and at peace mentally. The concepts of you are not your body, and the body’s fantastic inbuilt healing capacities greatly help facilitate this state…
Fake Acupuncture Outperforms Fake Drugs by Jessica Ruvinsky (Discover Magazine, via North Star Martial Arts)
Medical researcher Ted Kaptchuk pitted two types of fake medicine—sugar pills and pretend acupuncture—against each other to see which one worked better…
Natural Recipe for a Healthy Prostate by Mag Herrera (Life, Money & Development)
The prostate is a gland of the male mammalian reproductive system, whose main function is to produce a portion of the seminal fluid that constitutes semen. The prostate also contains some muscles that help expel semen during ejaculation. Some studies have suggested a link between a high-fat diet (which frequently include few servings of vegetables) and prostate’s disorders…
Relieving Neuropathy Pain Naturally – Part 2 by Joe Lasiter (Natural Pain Relief)
The practice of acupuncture is believed to have begun in China as a part of traditional Chinese medicine. It remains a controversial practice in America, but its effectiveness is gaining more support as research on acupuncture continues to grow…
Reiki Healing Tutorial Series by Alexander De Foe (SpiritualBlog.com)
I would like to share some of the great videos the web has to offer on Reiki healing. Some of the topics are quite interesting to learn about, and a number of the videos go beyond the scope of Reiki healing in itself…
Purna Yoga teacher training
Learn Relaxation by Axel G
There are thousands of meditation techniques, many of which are advanced, but why make it complicated? I believe in keeping things simple…
What Hypnosis is NOT! by Covert Hypnotist
Hypnosis has been given many false pretenses through the media, movies and just plain rumor. Hypnosis is not the ability to have complete domination over one’s mind, nor is it domination over another human being…
Guo Lin’s Qigong Cure for Cancer by Martial Development
There were no officially sanctioned qigong activities in China until its rehabilitation in 1978, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. However, one woman, Guo Lin, an artist and cancer victim from Guangdong province who had cured herself by practicing qigong during the 1960s, was brave enough to teach…
Other submissions:
Opinions expressed in this article series do not necessarily represent those of its publisher, and should not be taken as a substitute for professional medical advice.
Fake acupuncture over fake drugs? I wonder how the study on fake qigong will measure up?
That is an interesting question. A painting can be uninspired, or ineffectual, or it might just totally suck, but it can never be fake, can it? Same for a musical composition, or a dance routine…
Anyway, with neither a needle nor a pill to serve as a talisman, I would expect “fake” qigong to underperform.
Not necessarily. I would say that since 90% or so of the population has no idea of “authentic” qigong looks like, they can be fooled with non-authentic qigong, that is, something that is explained to the subject as qigong, but actually bears no resemblance to the real thing, as defined by those familiar with the authentic qigong.
Dance and music are concepts without concrete definitions to describe them. Have you heard “Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds?” I wouldn’t consider it music exactly, but other people seem to think so. Paintings (and qigong) are described by their processes. If I carve something out of clay, it would not be considered a painting. If I take a picture of something, frame it, and sell it as a painting, it would indeed be a “fake painting,” even if the picture is of a collection of pigments on a flat surface. Just waving my arms around in a ritualized and athletic manner certainly wouldn’t make my actions qigong, would it?
The talisman of qigong is the actions and performance as witnessed by the subject, along with any information you provided them describing what qigong is, or information they had prior to the experiment.