Pranamaya, Breath, and QiGong

Pranamaya, Breath and QiGong

by Leonard Shen

One of the offerings Akhila Health provides to our clients is the 3,000 year old practice of QiGong. Translated from Chinese as “Life Force Energy Work”, QiGong is a sophisticated system with exercises and meditations used to support physical and emotional healing, martial arts, and spiritual/mystical practices.

Through gentle movement, breathing, and intention, QiGong allows practitioners to purge toxic energy accumulated in their body from historical stresses and traumas; refill their body with positive, healthy energy; and concentrate and manipulate this life force energy.

Central to QiGong: Energy and Use of Breath

Breathing combined with visualizing the inhalation and exhalation of light (of various colors) can be used to cleanse the body, refill it, and connect to the universal energy which surrounds and permeates us. If certain organs are depleted of life force energy and therefore not functioning optimally, breathing in light (green for liver, white for lungs, blue for kidneys, gold for spleen/pancreas, red for heart) and directing it to saturate the needy organ can boost life force energy in that organ.

By the same token, exhaling a milky color of that same light from the organ will help remove excess or toxic energy stored in--and afflicting the normal function of--that organ.

The inner central core of energy, the vertical line of chakras running from your perineum through the crown of your head, is known as the "tai ji" pole. Focusing the breath, light, and intention on the "tai ji" pole can clean one's energy field in the central core and the surrounding energy channels, to purify, tonify, and open capabilities.

Midway between the inhalation and exhalation is the Still Point. If through meditation you become very quiet and attentive, in that still point moment at the end of an inhalation you can sense the universal energy and the blissful peace that underlies all. When you then exhale, you return to the physical world, though with a lingering beneficient thread of that universal energy.

Interested in trying QiGong?

Check out Len Shen's 8 minute QiGong video for an introduction to the basics.

QiGong Exercise

Want more Stress Management and Holistic Health

exercises and resources?

Visit Akhila Health's Resource Page

Free Exercises

For more on QiGong and a host of breathing and meditation exercises to increase your well-being, see our facilitator, Leonard Shen, at www.twotreesqigong.org.