Learn Qigong with courses designed by and for Martial Artists
$94.99 for lifetime access
While all qigong is for health, i-Bagua qigong courses focus on training the mental and physical states helpful to martial artists and athletes during normal training and when working through injury.
Welcome to our comprehensive online course on Qigong, specially tailored for practitioners of internal martial arts and martial arts enthusiasts. Delve into the realm of Qigong with practical teachings aimed at enhancing your body awareness and refining your physical abilities, devoid of magical claims.
Our course not only offers invaluable insights and techniques but also emphasizes cultivating a deep understanding of body mechanics and energy flow, tailored specifically for practitioners like you.
Wait! Energy flow and Qi isn’t that bullshit? Yes, it can be bullshit.
For our purposes, energy and qi are the subtle sensations that make the difference between a great day on the mats and a mediocre one.
Energy and qi are how momentum flows from joint to joint, how tension in one place affects your overall movement, how parts of you body that are forgotten or are less well controlled can be better integrated into the whole. They are how breath and attention combine.
These courses are not about shortcuts to martial power, nor do they demand a belief in some special energy.
An authentic Qigong course for martial artists & athletes
To develop active control of your body, it can be very helpful to learn qigong.
Qi Gong is great method of increasing your body awareness and mental clarity.
Physical tension in the body excites emotions and mental activity. It makes you less sensitive to the forces that act on your body from the inside or the outside.
Reducing the forces on the inside is vital to increase the efficiency of your movement. Increased sensitivity to external forces can give many advantages in martial arts.
Learn Qigong methods that emphasizes the correct mental and physical states
There is a long tradition of breath-posture-focus training in Chinese martial arts. There are specific vocabularies that have built up around it. Unfortunately, much of this has been lost in translation or reduced to buzzwords so people can feel special about their exotic knowledge.
Originally these exercises are practical and down-to-earth. They are meant to augment and refine existing skills rather than act as a substitute for them.
The courses you find here avoid those jargon traps, and act as a key to understand many traditional systems functionally. It’s fun to look at texts or movements that used to leave you puzzled and have a frame where you can recognise what they are actually about (and also recognise the flowery deviations and bullshit).
Here’s the process in summary:
- Make your body comfortable
- Use your breath to direct your attention and quieten your mind
- Use the heightened attention to notice new things and further refine your movement
Yes, it can be that simple. Why make it more complicated?
There are specifics to be included. The ways you make your body comfortable, ways to use the breath etc, and traditional methods have a wealth of knowledge in these areas
The lessons in this course combine clear, modern language with traditional methods so you can enjoy the best of both worlds.
Health and Martial Qigong
The two of these overlap, there is no contradiction between them though there are some differences. Good martial arts require health, and good martial arts cultivate health (though anyone who competes or fights also knows that there are injuries too).
Health qigong focuses on maintaining a good range of motion for daily life while encouraging good circulation and emotional states.
Martial Qigong takes the same principles and applies them to the movement patterns that distinguish the technique of the art. There is often more emphasis on postures that are physically demanding (combat is demanding after all).
Health Qigong can be good to start with for many martial arts practitioners. I’ve observed many martial artists can be too ‘serious’ when they do ‘martial’ things.
In this course as well as general principles, and exploration of the breath you will find traditional health sets and qigong exercises for the martial arts of Tai Chi, Baguazhang and Xingyiquan.
Learn qigong drills that develop powerful movement by integrating whole body force and breath.
Body awareness and control
Diaphragm and vacuum
Spinal wave one
Spinal wave two
Spinal wave three
Old man strokes his beard
Putting it all together
Live class recording
Learn qigong the traditional way
Fang Song Methods (放鬆功)
These are relaxation & breathing practices for standing and seated meditation.
Mental States & Breath Magic
Mind, relaxation, emotion and interception Mind situation
Riding the exhalation and the hand method
Abdominal control and reverse breathing
Breath, emotion and interception
Stillness and not moving
Full body scan, relaxation and observation
Zhuang Zhung Methods
Santi – Santi Qigong
Bao Tai Chi
Bagua Postures
Movement and Connection
Body awareness and control
Diaphragm and vacuum
Spinal wave one
Spinal wave two
Spinal wave three
Old man strokes his beard
Putting it all together
Live class recording
QiGong Forms
Eight Pieces of Brocade
Baduanjin exercises and practice
Baduanjin follow along
Five Animal Play
Learn Qigong to keep you active during injury and complement hard training
Movement is life, but when sick or injured it can be hard to get moving.
Also, you cannot train hard all the time.
In this course, you will learn exercises that you can use to give yourself a boost when you are low – to stay active on days when recovery is a priority.
These include Baduanjin – eight pieces of brocade and fansong gong
Fang song gong (放鬆功) is a generic name for relaxation exercises—it literally means relaxed skill.
There are a variety of different approaches that I have learned to fangsong gong. In this course you will find a variation that has a thorough structured quality. Fangsong gong is similar to yoga nidra (yogic sleep). However, unlike yoga nidra, which is practised lying down, fang song gong is practised standing up, as such it develops a kind of relaxation that is more applicable to daily activity.
Where’s the magic? Where’s the poetry?
I work hard to present information clearly in ways that work in modern language. I do this because I believe there is too much unnecessary confusion and distrust around Qigong. This directness may turn some people off, especially those in search of the mysterious exotic.
The scientific materialism worldview is very good at explaining a great deal. It makes the screen on which you read these words possible.
It does not explain everything. In the realm of the subjective, in your actual experience of life, scientific materialism is at best clunky.
Life is full of magic. If you have never fallen in love, seen Spring arrive after a hard Winter or been greeted by a smiling puppy you may dispute this. I don’t.
But it’s easy to get numb to wonder in a busy and stressful life.
The best remedy for this is quietness and attention. These are to be found in Qigong. At the top of this page, I described Qi and energy in practical terms, as sensation and as body awareness. That’s what we work with the exercises in this course. We need to be practical to get through the day.
But when your mind gets so still you and the forest share one breath, yes that’s qi too.
Mind State & Focus Methods
Focus training – Yi –
- Focus on a part of the body or movement
- Focus on a movement characteristic
- Focus on breath
- Focus on void
Can you learn Qigong online?
Yes, you can – to a point. I’ll explain what you can learn and where it gets more sensitive.
There are many kinds of Qigong. For all the variety they tend to follow a similar process and of course we all share the same basic body plan.
It is absolutely possible for you to learn this process online. In the courses you find here that is what you get, exercises that help you develop the awareness control and understanding that will give you a solid Qigong practice. You can then use what you learn here to better understand other forms of Qigong.
At a certain point, Qigong can be taken from relatively simple (but extremely helpful) coordination of body-breath-movement and attention to deeper levels of meditation that are described as alchemical. This is where it gets more sensitive. To safely and reliably work in this way requires close supervision. It is too easy to misinterpret instructions and sensations and waste time or worse. I would advise against believing people who offer this kind of training online, and at the very least scrutinise then cross-check their credentials carefully. This is a field in which subjective sensations are paramount. It is extremely easy to bullshit, overhype and mislead in this field.
Yes, you can learn qigong online. But keep it grounded
Should you learn Qigong or Tai Chi?
There is a lot of overlap between Qigong and Tai Chi, but each presents different challenges.
For many people what is hard about Tai Chi is learning a long sequence of movements. The qigong you learn here does not involve a long series of movements, but rather individual exercises.
Tai Chi requires clarity on the relation between body position and forces in the body. This is not easy for everyone. Qigong is more about finding comfort in the body in different positions.
With both disciplines, you can go deeply into body awareness, mental focus and control. Overall you may find Qigong easier to start with than Tai Chi.
Qigong Chi Kung or Qi gong?
The three refer to the same thing, they are just different transliterations.
Chi and Qi refer to breath or energy, Kung or Gong refer to skill. The kung of chi kung is the same character as in kungfu.
Qigong is possibly the most correct and closest to the pronunciation. Chi Kung comes from an older transliteration system. It is much less commonly used for writing now, but certain spellings have stuck in English usage like Chi Kung or Tai Chi (Taiji) and Pakua (Bagua).
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