Qi Gong (Chi-Kung)

Qi gong is an Eastern therapy favored by massage therapists whose goal is to instigate the body’s healing abilities to maintain the highest standard of healthy while increasing a patient’s overall vitality. Qi gong first came into common use as a practice to maintain physical health within China, but has rapidly spread throughout both the Eastern and Western worlds. There are several different types of qi gong practices, including medical, spiritual, and martial. Each area focuses on a different application of similar principles.

Simply put, qi gong means building energy. Qi is a Chinese word for breath or the life force that leads to the output of energy. Gong can translate as achieving or building towards an accomplishment. When you are considering a career as a massage therapist, qi gong may interest you because of its practices that evaluate the body and its physical symptoms holistically and seeks to not only heal current ailments but also to prevent future issues. Because qi gong can focus on the energy of a body, it heals not only physical sicknesses but also seeks to restore imbalances of energy that lead to mental disturbances.

There are three main practices espoused by qi gong practitioners working to restore their patients to balance. They are correcting and improving posture, teaching differing breathing techniques, and leading patients to achieve a mental focus that can help to remove non-physical blockages that disrupt the flow of energy through the human body.

The first main practice by qi gong practitioners is correcting and improving posture. When you study qi gong in your quest to become a massage therapist, you will learn a lot about posture an anatomy and how important it is to maintain good posture in order to positively impact many different areas of the human body. Some of the techniques that you will learn will help your patients to maintain the best possible posture both when they are in motion and also when they are stationery. It would not beneficially impact your patient to correct their posture while sitting but still maintain poor practices when walking or involved in other forms of physical activity. Improved posture leads to a better flow of both physical and metaphysical energy throughout the human body.

The second main practice by qi gong practitioners is focusing on breathing techniques. The very way that the human body takes in oxygen and expels carbon dioxide can impact that body’s health. Poor, shallow breathing can lead to poor health. Unstable breathing, or breathing that does not follow a good rhythm, can also lead to poor health. But with steady, robust breathing techniques, balance can be achieved that leads to good health.

The final main practice used by qi gong practitioners is to help patients to achieve mental focus. It has been scientifically proven that many physical ailments are impacted by mental or emotional well being. When a patient can focus their mind on their ailments through guided practice and can help to de-clutter their thoughts and cleanse themselves of destructive patterns, overall physical health can be achieved.

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