Chi Gung is a practice that came out of the Chinese Martial practices of old.
Usually associated with Tai Chi, which is usually associated these days with the Mindfulness crowd.
I've nothing against mindfulness, it's a useful concept, but in my personal opinion it's a little watered down.
But then so is Tai Chi and most of the associated practices.
I learned this nearly 20 years ago (and no, I don't practice I much as I ought to...) from a martial arts teacher named Sifu Mark Rasmus when I met him in Australia.
Mark taught old school Tai Chi, Wing Chun, Chi Gung and a few other arts. The training was TOUGH! This washing away set, in fact all the Chi Gung sets would leave you mentally and physically exhausted, some more than others. But the adaptation that followed was exceptional, the mind and body just felt sharper and overall health and recovery was second to none.
I fit at the time, but hit new levels with this training.
The inspiration for this session is simply that I haven't been feeling at the top of my game this last while. I'd say the recent treatment from David McGettigan has opened up some really old injury compensations and my system is doing a lot of reorganising. So the goal of the Chi Gung is to aid that reorganisation.
Slow movement allows for a nice awareness of how we're achieving motion, the split stance aids in loading through my old ankle issues that David worked on, the breath keeps the CNS arousal down even though the muscles are working, especially the legs. There's a lot to Chi Gung and the associated practices that stretch way beyond the modern definitions of mindfulness, and I'm not going nearly as deep as Rasmus had us go back in the day.
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If I've whet your whistle with this post and you're curios as to learning more about Chi Gung. I have a video series available for purchased from Vimeo in Demand that leads you through the most basic starting practice for Chi Gung, nothing as involved as I'm showing in the clip above.
Here's the links:
And if you have questions, feel free to ask
Regards
Dave Hedges
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