FIVE LEVELS OF CHI KUNG
Five-Animal Play is very good medical chi kung
Sifu, you emphasize again and again that those who wish to overcome their so-called incurable disease, including cancer, should practice mainly what they learned on the first day of your Intensive Chi Kung Course. Exercises like what you taught on the second and third day are advanced and powerful, and should be attempted by sick students once a while to maintain their skills.
I thought that sick people should practice powerful chi kung so that they could recover faster. Did I miss something important?
— Eric, UK
Answer
Yes, you missed something very important. But your mistaken concept is common amongst many people. Many people think, wrongly, that sick people should practice powerful chi kung to get well quickly.
A useful image to keep in mind is as follows. Teaching sick people powerful chi kung is like asking them to run marathons or lift heavy weights. It will aggravate their illness. Even healthy people need to train systematically before they can successfully run marathons and lift heavy weights.
According to chi kung masters in the past, chi kung may be divided into five levels as follows:
- Medical chi kung.
- Health chi kung.
- Chi kung for philosophers.
- Chi kung for warriors.
- Spiritual chi kung.
The lowest level is medical chi kung, which is used for overcoming pain and illness. The next level is chi kung for health, practiced by healthy people to enhance their daily performance.
The next two higher levels are chi kung for philosophers and for warriors, or chi kung to enhance scholastic performance and chi kung to enhance martial art performance. Warriors' chi kung is rated higher than philosophers' chi kung because while both philosophers and warriors need a lot of energy and mental clarity, the demand of warriors is greater.
If a philosopher lacks energy or mental clarity, he is a bad philosopher. If a warrior lacks energy or mental clarity, he may be a dead warrior.
Unfortunately, many martial artists today exhibit a glaring lack of mental clarity. While good health and self-defence are the two cardinal aims of any martial art, many martial artists today are unaware that their practice not only do not help them to fulfill their aims but actually make their health worse and they submit themselves routinely to be punched and kicked by their classmates!
Many students attend my Intensive Chi Kung Course with the primary objective of overcoming their illness. Why, then, do I teach what they need on the first day, and teach advanced exercises that they do not presently need on the second and the third day?
It is because there are also many other healthy students attending the course with aims of peak performance and spiritual cultivation. It is also because I want the course to be comprehensive, ranging from a basic level to a master's level.
It is indeed incredible that students attending the course will learn in just a few days skills ranging from the basic to a master's level, like entering into a chi kung state of mind and generating energy flow that enable them to practice chi kung effectively, to progress to tapping energy from the Cosmos and to develop internal force for peak performance in their daily life, and to culminate in expanding into the Cosmos for spiritual cultivation.
It is a course for both beginners and masters. Indeed, many masters in our school repeat taking this course.
The above is taken from Question 1 February 2016 Part 3 of the Selection of Questions and Answers.
LINKS
Courses and Classes