Is qigong a spiritual experience? The short and simple answer is – yes. Qigong is a practice that lets you gain control of your life by gaining control of yourself.
It’s often said that while you can’t control everything around you – you can control how to react to these outside factors. Qigong helps you take your first few steps towards self-control.
If you’re here – chances are you’re looking for ways to create a deeper meaning in your life. Perhaps forge a more spiritual experience to help guide your way through life?
One of the most effective techniques today is Qigong – a spiritual practice that can have a huge impact on how you live your life.
What Is Spiritual Qigong?
The word is pronounced as “chee-gong”. This practice was developed by the Chinese, and draws heavily from different schools of thought like Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
At first glance, the technique looks much like Yoga, but with more focus on the mind rather than the body. In most cases, people describe qigong as a combination of yoga and meditation practices.
The name itself tells you exactly how it is supposed to improve the mind and body. The word “qi” roughly translates to “life energy,” while “gong” means the cultivation or practice of some act.
Qigong is therefore the cultivation of your life energy through self-awareness, tranquility, and being able to reach harmony with natural means.
On a spiritual level, practitioners of qigong train their mind and body so that they have a deeper understanding of how their body works. As a result, practitioners of qigong have a more grounded center, allowing themselves to have more clarity in life, and how they go about their day to day tasks.
Typically, the practice involves focus on several aspects such as breathing techniques, meditation, and precise movements.
What Is the Purpose of Qigong?
The main goal of spiritual qigong is to reach spiritual enlightenment or be one with God (or any other higher being you believe in).
However, note that spiritual qigong is just one of the aspects of this practice. There are actually different ways it can be done – depending on the goal you’re trying to achieve. For example, there’s medical qigong and martial qigong which helps address other aspects of self-development.
But how exactly does practicing qigong help you in achieving spiritual enlightenment? Qigong manages to give you this end-result through postures, breathing techniques, meditation, and guided imagery.
The typical individual radiates energy. All their efforts and focus are targeted towards the outside world.
Think about it – every day of your life, you are reacting to one event or another. The television, your phone, the cars on the road, music, or an officemate. You expend all that energy outwards – rarely allowing yourself to contain the energy inside so that you can benefit from it.
This is exactly what qigong does for you. It helps you contain the energy and focus on yourself. The combination of postures, movements, breathing, and meditation helps keep your mind at a balance, so that you’ll be in a better position to connect with your spiritual self.
This isn’t new – those who practiced Qigong for centuries have reported on the same spiritual benefits from the discipline.
Qigong: Spiritual Benefits
As already mentioned, qi gong has tons of benefits – not just for your mind but also for your body. When practiced for meditation and self-cultivation, here are some of the benefits you can expect:
Achieve balance
The goal of qigong is to really help bring you to neutral. Think of it as a good way to detoxify your mind and spirit. Over the years, the mind and spirit accumulate lots of toxins that come from a roller coaster of emotions you experience. These include anger, stress, anxiety, depression, and various other mental hardships. Qigong helps you properly address these burdens and somehow manage to let them go so that you will have a more positive outlook on life.
Make healthy choices
Qigong doesn’t just help heal your past issues, but also helps create a blank slate for the rest of your life. If practiced daily, qigong places you in a position where you become more self-aware and therefore conscious of what’s good for your mind, body and spirit.
Bring out your best self in all your activities
The practice of qigong lets you thrive and tap into the power inside you. Most people look for energy outside themselves – seeking out sources of joy like social media, food, or television shows.
However, you will find that through the practice of qigong – you can actually cultivate energy within yourself and use this to drive your mind and body towards goals and dreams you’ve always had.
Think of qigong as a self-filling source of power that you can channel towards goals that really matter to you.
Get clarity and develop your intuition
Qigong helps eliminate the uncertainties you might have in life by teaching you how to truly listen to yourself. Have you ever been confronted with a tough choice and find yourself deliberating for days – causing you to stress out and lose sleep? Qigong helps you achieve clarity and gain a clear line for a decisive, thorough process.
Work with the other energies in your life
Every day, you are confronted with energy from other people, work, family, and the environment in general. Think of these as frequency waves and in many cases, the flow of your energy contradicts the flow of others.
This is where all the anxiety and tension comes from – the opposing flows of energy in your relationships. Qigong teaches you how to harness your energy and create a more peaceful flow that works in harmony with others.
Even if this isn’t possible, however – the discipline of qigong teaches you how to self-heal so that you can work out the stressors and give your spirit a reset button for renewed vitality.
Of course, as mentioned already, there are different approaches to qi gong. There’s martial and medicine qigong – which means that you can expand the discipline to achieve other benefits, depending on the qigong practice you’ve decided to learn.
Where to Learn Qigong?
If you’re interested to learn more about Qigong practice and what it has to offer, here’s my favorite Qigong teacher talking about many Qigong benefits:
Lee Holden is an internationally renowned Qigong expert and practitioner and I highly recommend his Modern Qi Gong course which is included in Mindvalley membership as well.
Before you jump in though, check out his FREE Masterclass where you’ll learn how to discover your youthful energy and how you can get freedom from physical and emotional pain with Qigong.
Related Posts:
QiGong for Beginners: A Complete Guide
Qigong vs Tai Chi – Differences and Benefits
How To Start Learning About Spirituality (9 Top Tips For Beginners)
