Relieve Stress Magically with Passive Qigong

What is Qigong?

Have you heard of Qigong? Many people haven’t, but you may be surprised to learn that over eighty million people not only have heard of it, but actively practice it each day!

Originally from China, but now practiced the world over, Qigong helps its practitioners improve their health and fitness, aid in healing and recovery of illness, develop energy and vitality, and gain a better sense of connection to themselves and the world around them.

The term Qigong (pronounced chee-GUNG) literally means “energy practice.” It refers to a family of practices for health, fitness, energy development, and stress relief. Qigong includes yoga-like movement exercises, standing and sitting meditations, massage, therapeutic healing techniques, and other health- and energy-building practices.

One of the areas where Qigong excels is in relieving mental tension, stress, and simple anxiety. These mental problems have been shown to cause disease. In addition, stress increases the time it takes for us to heal from even non-stress-related illness. Even if it doesn’t cause problems in and of itself, certain types of mental tension and stress can prevent us from physically, mentally, and emotionally feeling our best.

To help us clear ourselves of accumulated stress, tension, and simple anxiety, Qigong includes a number of physically passive techniques, that is, techniques that involve no body movement and are more like meditation. These passive techniques use the intention of the mind, rather than movement of the body, to clear ourselves of stress and have us looking and feeling great.

Mental Clarity Qigong

I’d like to teach you two simple passive Qigong practices. The first is called “mental clarity Qigong.”

Mental clarity Qigong uses vocalization—the making of sounds. These vocalizations may at first seem a bit silly, but they work almost magically to relieve mental tension, stress, and anxiety.

You can use these exercises any time you need to release mental tension. They are also particularly valuable when you need clarity and focus such as when learning new skills or information. You can practice these three exercises before any learning situation to help increase mental clarity.

I prefer to do them while lying down, but they can be done in any position—sitting, standing, or lying. However, you will need some privacy to do these exercises as you will be making vocal sounds to help you clear your mind.

1. Lie comfortably on your back with your head supported by a pillow or mat. You may also wish to place a pillow underneath your knees to take pressure off your lower back. Allow your arms to lie comfortably at your sides.
2. Once you’ve made yourself comfortable, do each of these exercises in turn, spending at least two minutes or longer on each one.
3. Sighing. Begin inhaling using deep abdominal breaths, expanding your stomach (not your chest) on each inhalation. Then exhale through your mouth, creating a long, audible sigh. Sigh out loud during the entire exhalation using an “ah” sound. Practice sighing for at least two minutes before moving on to the next step.
4. Chattering. After two minutes of sighing, continue to inhale with abdominal breathing. But now, on the exhalation, make chattering noises using your lips and tongue. For example, make sounds like “babababababa” or “tatatatatata” or “dadadadadada,” or any mixture of these sounds. Chatter out loud for at least two minutes before moving on to the next step.
5. Making faces. After two minutes of chattering, forget about your breathing. Instead, spend some time making faces. For example, roll your eyes, squish up your face, stretch your face out, stick out your tongue, stick out your jaw, or wrinkle your forehead. Try to move, squish, and stretch every muscle in your face and forehead as much as possible. Make faces for at least two minutes.

After you’ve completed sighing, chattering, and making faces, relax quietly for a minute or so, noticing any sensations in your body or mind. Do not dwell on any sensation, but merely observe and note it, then move on to look for other sensations.

Falling Water Qigong

The second passive Qigong practice is called “falling water Qigong.”

Falling water Qigong uses visualization, and visualization is a great way to help relieve tension and stress as well as reinvigorate yourself.

Falling water Qigong is great for relieving stress, focusing concentration, and releasing tension in both mind and body. It can also be used at bedtime as a safe and effective way to fall asleep. We’ve even had a Qigong student use it to stop migraine headaches when she first felt them coming on!

While the instructions below are for lying down, falling water visualization can also be done in any position—sitting, standing, or lying.

1. Lie comfortably on your back with your head supported by a pillow or mat. You may also wish to place a pillow underneath your knees to take pressure off your lower back. Allow your arms to lie comfortably at your sides.
2. Begin imaging or visualizing your body full of water, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Really feel yourself completely full of water. Stay with this image for a few moments.
3. Once you have that image in mind, imagine four small drain holes opening in your body. Two of these drain holes are in the center of your palms—one in each hand. The other two drain holes are on the bottoms of your feet, right near the ball of each foot.
4. Imagine the water beginning to trickle out of these drain holes, and visualize the level of water in your body falling. As the water drains, the level of water falls evenly through the body—front, back, and sides—but does so very slowly.
5. As the water level falls, imagine or visualize it washing away any stress, tension, aches and pains, discomfort, exhaustion and fatigue, or anything that just doesn’t feel right. The water leaves behind places that are washed clean, relaxed, refreshed, and calm. (No, we haven’t dried out these areas, but just given them a nice bath.)
6. Continue visualizing the level of water falling, until there are only a few drops of water left in your feet. As the drops leave through the bottoms of your feet, follow them with your mind as they sink deeply into the earth.

Now your entire body feels calm, relaxed, and comfortable. Stay with this feeling, and enjoy how calm and comfortable you feel. When you are ready, take a few deep breaths, then slowly open your eyes.

Passive Qigong uses mental techniques to clear ourselves of accumulated stress, and the two mental techniques you’ve just learned, vocalization and visualization, work almost magically to relieve mental tension, stress, and anxiety. You can use both mental clarity Qigong and falling water Qigong to help you feel your best physically, mentally, and emotionally!

** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health”, visit http://selfgrowth.com/healthbook3.html