by Jennifer Sexton
    Stress.
    It’s the worst. And it’s bad for your health.

    Everyone knows that we are supposed to be trying to reduce our stress. There are new stories about it on the television news just about every night, sandwiched in between the rising global temperatures and the latest super-influenza strain to watch out for. Stress attacks your emotional well being, bringing about feelings of fear, distrust, anger, and depression. In turn, these feelings may bring about headaches, upset stomach, insomnia, ulcers, skin rashes and eyelid twitches, not to mention the even more serious problems of hypertension, heart disease, and stroke. Stress wages war on the immune system, making us less able to resist diseases of all types. Scientists have even revealed a clear connection between stress and cancer. Stress is the worst. But what can be done about it? Life is a struggle, right?

    To a certain degree, yes. But there are answers to the problem of overwhelming, debilitating, or just plain annoying degrees of stress and the health and wellness issues that stress presents. One answer is qigong.

    Now, what the heck is qigong? And how do you pronounce it? Qigong (chee-gung) is an ancient Chinese self-healing art that combines movement and meditation. Regular practice of qigong has been proven to prevent and treat disease, establish balance, bring peace and integrate body and mind while enhancing and bolstering the immune system.

     You may have seen qigong written as two words, or even spelled differently. This is due to the fact that Chinese is a pictorial language, and for many years the phonetic translations of the Chinese language into our alphabet were quite open to individual interpretation. In the 1940s, the Chinese created an official transliteration called Hanyu Pinyin. The official spelling was established as qigong, though Westerners still use many spellings and remain largely confused about the spelling of qigong, as well as in general.

    David Silver of Harwich teaches qigong. He describes qigong in this way: “Qi is the word for energy, and can be understood as the life force in the human body. Gong refers to work, as in something which takes effort or work to achieve, such as an art or practice. So qigong can be translated as energy work, or the art of working with human energy in the body.”

    At a qigong class, expect to be relaxed. Classes are typically held in healing spaces, such as yoga schools or centers for acupuncture or chiropractic care. Loose clothing is best, and whether or not to wear shoes is purely up to you. Qigong movements are very low-impact, simple movements, coordinated with breath and visualization of qi moving in the body. Specific postures and movements are used to help move energy through specific pathways, known as meridians. Classes usually last about one hour, beginning with a stretching and gentle warm up and working into a sequence of qigong movements and ending with a cooling down section in which individuals find their centers, gather energy, and hold it there. “The movements are very relaxing. Anyone with any experience level will gain benefits from even one class,” says Silver.

    Silver began his exploration of qigong in the 1990s, reading books on the subject and taking several classes. “I learned everything I could, and wanted to learn more, but I felt that my instruction up to that time had been somewhat vague. I am a person who likes to understand how things work. I came across a book called Qigong, The Secret of Youth, by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming at that time in my life. His teaching was very clear, and I realized that I wanted to study with that teacher. It happened that I was moving to Boston where Dr. Yang lived, and I also needed to find work there. I called him out of the blue and asked him for work.”

    There were no openings for employment at Yang’s martial Arts Association (YMAA), but after hearing Silver’s story, Dr. Yang created a job for him. Over the years, Silver worked his way up through the YMAA Publication Center from unloading trucks to his current position, running the video department, where he writes, directs and produces instructional martial arts and health DVDs. As he advanced though the ranks at the YMAA Publication Center, he also advanced in his study of qigong. Today he is one of a handful of individuals certified by Dr. Yang as YMAA qigong instructors.

    Dr. Yang’s solid explanations, grounded in the hows and whys of qigong’s benefits, appeal to Silver and to anyone who gets lost in more esoteric, hard-to-pin-down writings and teachings about energy work. Says Silver, “Dr. Yang’s background as a physics professor and PhD in mechanical engineering provides a concise Western scientific perspective throughout his qigong teaching that resonates well with me as a real search for a true understanding of the human energetic circulation system, qualified with modern Western research in the field.”

   There is every reason to anticipate the same sort of surge in growth and expansion of interest in qigong here in the West as has been seen over the decades for other now beloved Eastern practices like yoga and tai chi. Qigong offers a wide range of health benefits, as well as the opportunity to simply turn the attention inward, at least for the duration of a class, something we busy and distracted Westerners can certainly benefit from.

    David Silver teaches qigong at....... Please call for more information. For more information about David Silver and the Spiral Center, a community healing center, art gallery, retail store and performance space...please visit www.capecodqigong.com.

Current class times are different than those at the time of this article. Please see schedule.