Ten years ago it was almost unheard of …

Now it’s looking like it could even overtake Yoga as
the new in-vogue mind-body practice of the day. Any
guesses what I’m talking about?

You got it if you said “Qigong” and “Qigong Meditation“.
(It’s pronounced chee gong).

In fact, today is “World Tai Chi & Qigong Day”, and
to celebrate, I thought I’d share the story of how
this remarkable practice is taking off in the West.

So What Exactly Is Qigong and Qigong Meditation

Qigong, translated into English means “energy exercise”.
The practice utilizes relaxed movement and special
breathing exercises to normalize energy flow in the
body.

Many claim it helps to develop a relaxed meditative
awareness, alleviates sickness and increases energy.
I’ve found this to be very true in my own experience.

My first introduction to Qigong happened in my second
year at Manchester University. I had suffered pretty
severe emotional and physical trauma as a teenager.

When I started practicing Qigong and meditation I
noticed an immediate shift in my energy level. Then,
much of my old “stuff” came up and started to drop
away. My story is pretty typical.

So Why Is Qigong and Qigong Meditation Taking Off Now?

In the late 1990s, the Communist Party made many forms
of Qigong illegal and so any masters left China and
began to teach openly in the West. That was the
catalyst for the huge shift that’s going on right now in
the world of exercise and fitness …

“Qigong is growing like crazy in the United States in
the past few years,” said Master Chunyi Lin in the
April 5th issue of the New York Times. “People want to
be more proactive with their health care.”

Whereas in the past, exercise was all about increasing
stamina, endurance and the having the perfect abs. Now,
more and more, practitioners are focusing on stress
reduction, relaxation and developing spiritual awareness.

People are beginning to understand that “fit” does not
necessarily mean “healthy”. An effective exercise
program supports the internal as well as the external.
That’s the beauty of Qigong and Qigong Meditation.

To this day I thank the Universe I stumbled onto these
skills. They were the beginning of my healing. There
have been several times since then when I was able to
overcome serious illness with the help of Qigong and meditation.

In my experience, Qigong is amazing for your health and
it’s a truly wonderful way to approach meditation and
spiritual practice.

To celebrate “World Tai Chi & Qigong Day”, Kevin
Schoeninger and I would like you to have 10% off our
new program – “Learn Qigong Meditation”:

Full details at this web site:

http://www.QigongMeditationSecrets.com/

Be happy,

Matt Clarkson
The Mind-Body Training Company

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There is really no question that breathing exercises are the cornerstone of any good meditation program. Sometimes those who want to get on to the more advanced elements of meditation such as the use of the mantra or visualization underestimate the value of their breathing exercises. The danger here is that if you do not give this part of your meditation regimen it’s proper time to prepare your system for meditation, none of those other elements will do you a bit of good.

It isn’t too much of a stretch to say that most people who fail at putting a meditation program to work in their lives, do so because they don’t have the patience for the breathing exercises that are so important to the discipline of meditation. Proper incorporation of breathing disciplines are so central to a strong meditation program that it is really out of the question that you could have success without giving this part of your program its proper dedication.

So it is appropriate that we spend a little time on how to make your meditation breathing exercises pay off.

A Proper Understanding

The first step toward empowering your breathing exercises to impact your meditation program properly is to understand why the focus on breathing is so crucial to any meditation program. Because you breath all the time, it is easy to underestimate the impact how you breath has on your general well being.

You can get a good feel for the relationship between breathing and your state of mind by thinking of what happened to your breathing the last time you were upset. Whether it was from fear, anger, anxiety or depression, invariably if you are in a state of mental and spiritual anxiety, your breathing will become shallow and irregular. In fact, for most people who do not make controlled breathing a staple of their lives, the breathing of a normal adult can be highly erratic during the course of any given day.

By the same token, that negative or disturbing emotions causes erratic breathing, taking control of your breathing can directly control your mood. In that way good breathing exercises are the most effective meditation process of them all because you can go through a virtual transformation in a matter of moments of controlled breathing. When you capture control of your breathing, slow it down and teach it to give you a steady, soothing flow of oxygen, your heart rate will stabilize, the oxygen level in your blood gets richer and your mind works better. So your state of mind will both elevate and become more focused and tranquil. And that is the perfect way to enter into a meditative state. Breathing exercises enable that process.

When is it Enough?

A big mistake people make when designing their meditation program is setting a time for how long you will be in each phase of your program. When you say, “I will do my breathing exercises for five minutes”, you are imposing a scheduling limit on something that could take more or less time to work.

Instead, a good breathing exercise should be measured by its effect rather than a time frame. Remember, you are not baking a pie here. You are seeking some measure of spiritual and mental peace and that may take ten minutes or an hour. Whatever it takes, you should plan to allocate sufficient time to your breathing exercises so they will work.

Breathing and Focus

Your breathing exercises are the first step of bringing the focus of your concentration to bear and taking control of that focus. As you settle into your meditation discipline, you will take a number of long slow cleansing breaths. It is during these that you envision your body being cleansed of all negative energy with the exhale and filling with good energy with the inhale.

After the cleansing breaths, you will settle into a pattern of steady deep breaths that are consistent, satisfying and measured. You will focus on the drawing in of air and the exhale working to think of nothing else. This has a powerful effect of calming the mind and causing less important issues to depart for this period of time allowing you to give your breathing exercises perfectly focused attention.

If by chance you doubt the value of thinking of your breathing, think of how you council someone in emotional turmoil. You always help them focus on their breathing so they will settle down and become rational. Remember, the breathing exercise is not the end of the meditation session. Soon you will use that improved focus for more sophisticated and complex concentration exercises. But those would not be possible had you not used your breathing exercises to quiet your mind and enable it to hone in on one focus point. You can attribute all of the success you have later in your program to those early breathing exercises.

The Breakthrough Point

It is very common later in your mediation program to experience an “epiphany” or a breath through. This is a natural event that comes from the outcome of your vastly improved ability to focus your thoughts. There are also physical benefits from your breathing exercise that will sometimes result in a rush of energy. Breathing exercises combined with posture and mental focus can cause profound improvements in how the spine interacts with the rest of your skeletal system. So you may feel a sudden rush of energy that drives up your spine and bursts into your mind.

This phenomenon is well known even to the ancient philosophers and religious gurus who taught meditation. It can be an amazing experience and when you get that breakthrough point, it is a big turning point in the progress of your meditation program. And you facilitated that wonderful break through moment through your studious adherence to a well-designed and stubborn devotion to your meditative breathing exercises.

Want to calm your mind, super-charge your energy level and manifest what you truly desire in life?  We’ve created a FREE audio e-course to get you started.  You’ll get guided meditations, free tips and techniques to help you transform your life from the inside-out.  If your happiness is important, click here to sign up

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Sometimes it seems the idea of meditation exercises are the work it takes to get into the lotus position and moreover, how to get out of it. But as you research various meditation approaches to find the one that is just right for you, you will find a variety of meditation exercises that combine the good of a physical discipline with the value that meditation can bring to your mind and spirit.

We now know that the mind and the body do not function independently from one another. That is why the heart of any good meditation exercise program is a good discipline of breath control. If you pay attention to athletes when they work out, you see them using breath control very effectively with they are striving for their goals as well. So we can combine a discipline of physical and meditation exercises to come away from our “work out” refreshed in more than one way.

Putting Yourself in the Right Frame of Mind.

Any exercise program, even a program of meditation exercises starts with mental preparation. The race, they say, is won in the mind. So as you prepare for your routine of meditation exercises, a short period of contemplation to look ahead at the work you are about to put your mind and body through is in order. It is during this time that you will do your initial breathing regimen that will put your body and your mind into a state of calm that you can draw from if your meditation exercise program is rigorous.

But more than that, you are starting the meditation part of the meditation exercise program which you are going to sustain throughout the physical element of the work out. At no time does it stop being meditation or stop being exercise. The combination of the two disciplines cleans your soul and body at the same time, which is tremendously invigorating and healthy.

Working Your Program

Once you have entered into a meditative state, you can begin the physical portion of your meditation exercise. You should select your physical exercises for both their physical value and for how they contribute to your contemplative state as well. As your exertion continues, you want your meditation exercise to remain unbroken and only helped by the physical stress you are putting yourself through. In ancient days, monks would stay in a state of meditation exercise for days because their duties were solitary and demanding and they could rise above them via their meditative disciplines which worked to both tune the mind and the body at the same time.

Solitary meditation exercises where you can continue your internal contemplations work better than social programs that not only would require you to focus on the interaction but could become disturbing to your sense of peace. As such basketball, while a fine sport in it’s own right, is not a good choice for a meditation exercise whereas long distance running or swimming is just right.

Endurance and Determination

With both meditation and exercise, when done separately, there is a level of determination that you are going to finish the standard that you set each day. You don’t start out meditating for an hour a day. It takes practice and the building of the mental “muscle” to have that kind of stamina to endure a meditation exercise of that length.

This is true of a physical endurance program as well. So when combining the two to design a meditation exercise program, you will use that preparation time to set the standard that you will reach and then reach it because there is a part of you deep down that is not going to accept less. That “toughness” both makes your meditation exercise program stronger, it is a direct outcome of the work you are doing to refine your sense of self, as is often the positive outcome of any meditation regimen.

Winning the Race

When you were first learning how to use the discipline of meditation, the focus was on learning how to enter, sustain and then finalize your contemplative state. But a silent “tension” of your purely contemplative part of meditation exercise is that you set a goal for each session. And meeting that goal gives you that sense of accomplishment and self worth that is part of the reward of the program.

This sensation of “winning the race” continues as you expand your program to include meditation exercise. Since physical exertion is even more measurable, you can set a goal a bit higher with each session or week and reach that goal giving you that short-term completion satisfaction that helps keep your program going.
But don’t forget that your sense of winning now is a combination of the joy of success at the physical level and the sustaining of your contemplative program throughout your exercise.

When one goes on without the other, the win is not complete. And like any program, continued patience, endurance, unwillingness to give up and determination will eventually give you the reward from both meditation and exercise and especially from the rewards that doing both will give you both in the short and long term.

Want to calm your mind, super-charge your energy level and manifest what you truly desire in life?  We’ve created a FREE audio e-course to get you started.  You’ll get guided meditations, free tips and techniques to help you transform your life from the inside-out.  If your happiness is important, click here to sign up

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