Qi Sensation

When one practices qigong standing, it is often that one feels many different sensations such as cool, warm, bloating and itch on the hands and body after a few minutes of standing. This is called qi sensation. Qi is a form of energy. When one practices qigong, one is accumulating energy. During the process of accumulation, one may contact more than one form of energies which confirmed by their sensations. Generally, if one contacts electricity, the feeling is numbness. If one contacts cold energy, the feeling is cool. If one contacts hot energy, the feeling is warm. etc. Does not matter who, a qigong instructor or a practitioner, the conversation generally begins with the inquiry of qi sensation. People based on the qi sensation to determine and confirm the benefit, result, effective of the technique and the instructor's skill. However, if one solely based on this qi sensation to determined and confirmed a particular qigong technique's effective and usefulness, one cannot fully understand qigong, begin to has doubt, no confidence to continue practice and the result is not good.

Today, people generally comprehend information based on its presentation and immediate result. If there is something new, one only comprehend this new information if it presented in the form that one can see and touch. Since qi is a type of energy, power and it is invisible, it is difficult for people to understand. In order to confirm its present and effective, many instructors using suggestive words or signs to encourage students to feel the qi's present. It is based on this feeling which determined one's skill.

Although there are many people have qi sensation after few minutes of qigong practices, there are many people for one reason or others, not able to feel any qi sensation. They doubt and question the present of qi and techniques. These people concluded that practicing qigong is fault. It is fake. Although some people has qi sensation as the beginning but the sensation slowly go away, these people concluded that the technique has no effect and stop. Some people practice qigong to cure their diseases but after they learned the technique, there is no immediate result and they stop.

There are many people practicing qigong today and there are thousands of techniques available. Some experienced practitioners said that rather one is feeling the qi sensation or not, it is not an issue. Qi sensation cannot always determine or confirm the practitioner's skill. Following are three correct understanding of qi sensations.

a. The definition of qi sensation
The qi sensations are cool, hot, numb, itch, bloating, crawling, pain, sweat, tear, laugh, smell, eyewitness internal organ, witness color and hear sound, etc. Because of age, personality, disease, physical condition, experience and intelligence, the degree of qi sensation is different according to individual practitioners. eg. Take the sensation of hot for example. Some people feel hot, some feel just lukewarm, some feel hot as burning, some feel hot on fire. Different people feel the same sensation differently. Therefore, one cannot compare to how other people feel to determine and confirm the skill and technique.

b. No qi sensation does not mean no effect.
The amount of qi sensation is determined by one's meridians, experience physical condition and external factors such as the body has contacted with electricity, stimulus, physical labor and medication. People generally said that they do not feel anything because they do not have any pre-experienced. These people do not know what to expect and do not know how to describe the feeling. If one paid closer attention to the body, one will find that there are positive sign such as sleep better, energetic at work, able to work longer hour without feeling tired and get sick. There are many healthy people who have no feeling after practice. If they think it is not effective, this is a wrong conclusion. Qi is a form of energy. When one practices, the flow of qi current increases inside the body. Rather one has feeling or not, the qi still circulate inside the body. As long as one is practicing, the result and improvement will happen. A healthy body needs a larger current of qi circulation in order to have the qi sensation.

c. Feeling more does not means better
There are many experienced practitioners who can heal disease, however, the result is not as good as the novel practitioners. This demonstrated that feeling more or less qi sensation does not indicated one's skill. People with poorer health often experienced with qi sensation quicker than people have a healthier body. Therefore, when one has a stronger qi sensation, it does not determine and confirm one's skill.

From the example demonstrated above, we concluded that qi sensation should not be used as a criterion to determine the effect of the technique or the practitioners' skill. For qi's invisible and energetic in nature, qigong instructors often used qi sensation to re-enforce the students' interest and curiosity. To understand any qigong technique better, one must practice the technique longer to accumulate more qi and the qi sensation will be obvious.

Article By Vincent Chu
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