Energy Healing: Some Considerations

Qigong energy healing can be used to heal oneself, and in the advance levels, to heal others through psychic or distant healing.

Most commercialized schools that offer qigong today are only interested in the profits they reap in. Some will indeed offer medical qigong and other types of basic knowledge, but many will charge exorbitant prices and pull in students attracted to the idea of “new age healing” or the “qigong for the ultimate experience!”

I have seen too many students who are too eager to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a weekend qigong session, with the promise that they can do healing immediately after they finish the course.

If the instructor were honest enough, he/she might teach the real technique, but even with that knowledge, a beginner will not have sufficiently developed healing energy and the ability to control it.

Forget the weekend workshops and the DVD of ten or twenty lessons guaranteed to turn you into a master. There is no quick fix with qigong. It must be practiced regularly, with the commitment to incorporate it long term in one’s lifestyle. That is the essential difference between the traditional approach and the contemporary commercialized approach.

To transform the lifeforce energy that we call chi into healing energy is not something that can be done in a matter of days, weeks or even months. It takes years of patient and unrelenting practice and only the traditional training of committed regular practice can provide that.

Anyone who tells you differently is not following the principles of wude meant to uphold honesty and qigong integrity with the intention of causing no harm to people.

However, that is not to say that you won’t see healing take place in a matter of days or weeks when practicing qigong in the proper traditional manner.

When practiced properly, the exercises are meant to realign body posture; that itself can remove many imbalances in the body, thereby initiating preliminary healing in the practitioner. Developing the healing chi energy also activates the body’s defence system to begin detoxifying the body and healing itself.

On the other hand, to deliberately channel the chi energy to heal a specific injury or pain, either for oneself or for others, should not be done except at the advance levels when the healing energy and the yi consciousness are fully developed, and the qualified practitioner is specifically trained in energy healing.

Why is that, you might ask. Because of six important reasons:

First, when the chi is still young and undeveloped in the early stages, you can actually drain and even possibly injure it when you attempt to use it prematurely for energy healing. A beginner must first build a solid foundation to develop the healing energy.

How do you know when the chi is developed enough to be channeled for healing? The chi is collected in the dantian where it is generated and nurtured. At first, you might not feel anything there. Then slowly, as the energy begins to accumulate, you might feel a tingly or warm sensation. After a while, it will become hotter and more tangible, moving around as a separate live entity.

Once the chi becomes overwhelming and begins to flow out of the dantian, it begins the xiaozhoutian or so-called microcosmic orbit, which is a circulation of the energy along the major meridians from dantian to the back, up the vertebrae to the head and down the front, back to the dantian again, or other direction depending whether it is a Taoist or Buddhist practice that is utilized.

It will take many, many orbits of this to further refine and mature the chi. How many orbits? Perhaps hundreds to transform the raw energy to something much more refined and powerful. Only then can the now refined essence called jing be safely channeled for energy healing.

But developing the chi also has another purpose: detoxification and purification of the mind and body. The healer must be cleansed of toxins in order to channel uncontaminated healing energy. If the healer is ill, then not only would his/her energy be weak, but it would also be easy for the illness or other toxins to be transmitted during the healing process.

Besides myself, my mother has an even greater gift for energy healing. Though she has never received any formal training in tai chi qigong, after only a few casual lessons from my master, she has become extremely skilled in the art of healing, both in energy healing and in herbalism. Though her healing energy is far greater than mine, before any healing, she will purify herself through meditation and by fasting or limiting her diet to only fruits and vegetables to guarantee a more successful and uncontaminated healing.

The stronger the chi the more the mind and body will purge and cleanse themselves of impurities. The more the mind and body are cleansed, the more powerful the healing energy. Both play off of each other. Diet and fasting purifies the body. Meditation purifies the mind. The mind plays an important part, because it houses the yi consciousness.

If the mind is contaminated with negative thinking and other impure thoughts and/or attitude, the energy healing will be less than successful. While I know there are other forms of healing, such as reiki and the laying of hands, I do not understand how it is possible for any healer to take a nonchalant attitude of their own health.

How could healers who are not well themselves, possibly evoke an effective healing and not risk transmitting their own illness during the healing? Or to siphon the other person’s illness into themselves?

It is like having a surgeon perform surgery with contaminated instruments that have not been properly sterilized! Even my master, whose chi is the most powerful that I know, refuses to do healing, when he feels unwell.

Therefore, energy healing should only take place when the healer has undergone purification to effect a clean, uncontaminated healing.

Thirdly, besides developing the chi energy, advanced practitioners must also develop yi mind power. Without well-developed yinian, a healer is unable to control the powerful chi to channel for healing or for other purposes.

On the other hand, neither can the healer forcibly channel the healing energy to heal its intended target. If the energy is forced, the vital chi can be easily injured. Instead, it must be gently guided. That is why it is so essential that the yi consciousness evolves proportionately with the chi in order to develop the sensitive control of handling the chi.

It is only over time, that the practitioner is able to develop the healing energy and the yinian to channel it. This brings us to the fourth reason: well-trained healers are very careful not to use their own healing energy to heal themselves or others. If the illness, trauma or injury is severe, channeling one’s own lifeforce for the purpose of energy healing would not be wise, as this would only drain the vital force unnecessarily.

For minor energy healing transfers, such as for bruising, closing energy gates and reducing small pain, using one’s own healing energy is not a problem, as the drain is minimal.

However, for major energy healing, that is a different matter entirely. Stories are told in China of ancient times when healers would literally sacrifice their own lives to dedicate themselves to healing, because the only qigong they knew was to tap into their own lifeforce to heal others. This was why most of them would age prematurely, and very few would live past the age of 30.

In Chinese culture, there is a practice of “adopting” someone’s child to be your gan. Then their lives/welfare become your responsibility even when the parents are still alive. So for example, the adopted parent might finance their education or help them find work when they graduate from grade school.

When my master was young, he seldom engaged in energy healing because he did not want to drain his own energy when tapping into it. But at the time, he had a gan daughter who suffered from severe epilepsy. When she was six years old, her parents brought her to see him in the dead of night, pleading with him to save her life.

For the past several days, the child had suffered many grand mal seizures, each one becoming more severe than the next. She was taken to the children’s hospital and placed on an assortment of different drugs, but to no avail. When she slipped into a coma, her parents brought her home, then turned to my master in desperation.

My master took her into his bedroom and worked on her for several hours into the night, transferring his own lifeforce into her. The next morning she revived and even came skipping out of the bedroom, vibrant with energy and demanding her breakfast!

My master, on the other hand, looked pale and drained. So exhausted was he that he had to retire into deep jinggong meditation to replenish his depleted healing energy.

It wasn’t until years later, he improved his energy healing technique so as not to drain his own lifeforce during the healing.

Well-trained healers know how to tap into Nature’s energy. The energy from our natural environment is plentiful and freely available for us to use.

Ever been to the mountains or to the forests and note how fresh and revitalizing the air feels, especially after a thunderstorm? That is because of the bountiful chi in the air.

Negative ions clean the air leaving it fresh and revitalizing. The air feels alive because of the healing energy in Nature.

When we engage in energy healing, we tap from the bountiful reserves of Nature. This not only conserves our own lifeforce but allows us to replenish our own limited supply, as we heal others with the energy from the environment!

How is this possible? Because we are mere conduits from which the healing energy passes through from Nature to our intended target. Our yi consciousness is the key to channeling this energy, but our own chi energy also plays a vital role in pulling this healing energy through us as well.

Think of a hose that acts as siphon for water to travel from one end to another. Without water at one end, it would not have the atmospheric pressure to siphon the water to the other end. Without our own developed chi, we cannot tap the healing energy from Nature to transmit to our intended target.

In a sense, our bodies are instruments
of the healing that comes from without.

And then reason #5: even though we tap the healing energy from Nature, we must also be sure that our own vital lifeforce is strong enough to withstand negative influences during the energy-healing. It is not unusual for healers to inadvertently absorb the illness of the patient back upon themselves when their own chi is weak to begin with.

Therefore, before any healing can take place, the healer must ensure that his own lifeforce is strong enough to resist the negative influence of his/her intended target. Otherwise what good will it do if the healer is able to help the one healed only to result in his/her own poor health? So after every energy healing, it is important to drain out any excess negative energy that might linger during the transfer — as it so often happens.

Lastly, the healer must remember to close the energy gates of both his/her own, as well as the person being healed. If the energy gates are not properly closed, the energy will continue to drain, resulting in chronic fatigue, increased weakness and lack of energy.

For the same reason, beginners and practitioners whose yi consciousness is not fully developed, should not attempt any energy healing, as often, they are also unable to close the energy gates sufficiently to prevent this energy drain.

Usually, the healer will open the energy gates to increase the reception of the one being healed. However, after every energy healing, the healer must always be reminded to close those gates again.

Sometimes, the practitioner closes the gates, only to have them open again later, because the healer’s yi mind was not strong enough to close them sufficiently. The yi consciousness must therefore be developed strongly enough to withstand the force of the circulating energy that may inadvertently push the gates open again.

Qigong healing is not as simple as most people think. It is a mental discipline that requires many years of intensive training to develop the vital chi and the yi consciousness to their fullest potential.

Therefore, anyone who tells you there is a quick safe way to become proficient in energy healing would meet with my deepest skepticism. Let me emphasize again, there are no quick fixes in qigong.