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Tap the Qi - Accessing the Power of the Universe to Get What You Want, Need and Deserve

By Roger Jahnke OMD

What gives you life? Health? Wealth? What causes healing, strength, winning, intelligence, fun? What keeps you young, vital, sexy, creative?

Energy! Vitality! Life Force!

Scientific research, on a nearly daily basis, establishes that underlying everything in our experience is a primary force, which creates and sustains life. Yet, it has been difficult for scientists to determine exactly what the fundamental energy of life is, how it behaves or how to improve it.

Ancient Chinese scientists recognized this force over two thousand years ago. They called it Qi (Chi), the foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

When your life energy is deficient, your productivity and creativity are compromised. Surgeries, medications, and other medical advances are limited in their effect if your essential life energy is exhausted. There is some exciting new research that validates this. Recently an important New York Times article revealed this distressing news: the new findings in gene research cannot actually create cures when an individual's basic health is compromised. However, in the same article it says, "especially encouraging news is that the body has the unappreciated capacity to heal itself."

Self-Healing Capacity, Self-Healing Methods

The combined research statistics of numerous universities and institutes empowered the US Department of Health and Human Services to report that over 70% of disease is preventable. Yet contemporary medicine's primary tools for prevention, screening and inoculation do not actually enhance health status. Fortunately, the ancient Chinese created simple, prevention strategies that we can easily utilize to prevent and heal disease - simple personal practices that are neither complex nor expensive.

These techniques or methods, which enhance the life energy - Qi - are having a radical impact on modern culture. You have seen the images of thousands of people practicing Tai Chi, a popular Qi cultivation practice, in China's parks in the early morning. Now there are rapidly rising numbers of people outside of China using Tai Chi and other methods for tapping the Qi, know as Qigong - in parks, YMCAs, hospitals, corporations, schools, churches and even correctional facilities.

Whether you want healing, healthy longevity, better sex, more money, or winning capacity in sports and business, experts will tell you that energy is the key to success. Ancient Chinese Qi masters were mindful of the healing promise of Qi thousands of years before the birth of modern science. We can profit from their profound endowment, when we practice the ten steps to utilizing and mastering these universal life energies to tap the Qi.

Ten Steps to Mastering and Cultivating Your Life Energy (Qi)

First Discover Qi - In this stage you literally encounter the Qi within yourself and throughout the world. This initiates your relationship with Qi, your awareness of Qi and eventually it informs your practice of purposefully engaging the Qi to support you in getting what you wish for, hope for, need and deserve - healing, vitality, courage, beauty, intuition, love.

Second, Gather Qi - The second level of cultivation explores the capacity to access Qi, maximize its presence within and around you. One of the easiest ways to gather Qi is to implement the Three Intentful Corrections, the basic components of Qigong and Tai Chi that can be learned in a few moments.

Third, Circulate Qi - Qi is pervasive throughout the universe, therefore it is present within you. To access the benefits of optimal Qi within yourself and your life, augment the capacity of the Qi to do its work within you and to reach its destinations. Acupuncture is particularly focused on circulating the Qi. With Qigong and Tai Chi you can circulate the Qi yourself.
Fourth, Purify Qi - The quality of the Qi may be refined through Tai Chi and Qigong. By enhancing your skills of purifying the Qi you being to create what the Chinese ancients called the Inner Elixir. This aspect of Qi cultivation is particularly associated with the practice of herbal medicine.

Fifth, Direct Qi - As you advance through the steps of Qi cultivation and energy management it becomes possible to direct the Qi, using inner focus as well as simple self-care methods from Chinese medicine including self-applied massage and deepened intent or focus.

Sixth, Conserve Qi - One of the most powerful phases of Qi cultivation is when you gain the capacity to conserve Qi. It then becomes possible to accumulate Qi. Only by accumulating Qi can you access the more advanced levels of cultivation and mastery known as Inner Alchemy. In Conserve Qi you develop the skill to avoid wasting your inner resources by mastering special methods of approaching diet, rest, sex, work, and communication.

Seventh, Store Qi - When you accumulate Qi you can then store Qi. Rather than needing all of your inner resources for survival, you can begin to build and inner treasury of energy for work, play, healing sex, love, sport and creativity. Storing Qi gives access to healthy longevity, sustained youthfulness and deepened wisdom.

Eight, Transform Qi - Here is where your relationship with Qi goes beyond amazing. When the Qi is cultivated to a very highly refined state it is transformed from an elixir of healing to a remarkable spiritual elixir. With sincere and authentic practice the conditioning and trauma of your life can be overcome to bring forth the latent splendor of your essential nature. This triggers intuition, compassion and the coincidences known as miracles.

Ninth, Dissolve in Qi - This aspect of Qi cultivation is almost impossible to describe. Imagine you have the capacity to understand the working of the universe so that you could use it to gain your greatest desire. You dissolve into oneness with the light of the universe. In most cultures this is called enlightenment.

Tenth, Transmit Qi - The transmission of Qi is the process of using your own life force - Qi - to serve others. It is always best to have made some progress in the previous nine phases of personal practice before using these phenomenal techniques to assist others.

Qigong progresses from the practical to the profound, from health and healing to transformation and enlightenment. Practitioners move through the steps or phases at their own time and pace. Whether your practice is simple or very complex, employ the Three Intentional Corrections along the way to deepen your intent and focus. Where the mind goes, Qi follows.

Three Intentional Corrections

1. Adjust your body - Sit or stand fully upright, or lie outstretched. Lengthen your spine to allow for the organs, glands, blood vessels, nerves, etc to have as much space to operate as possible.

2. Deepen your breath - Allow your breaths to be deep, slow and relaxed, but not urgent. On the exhalation, relax even more.

3. Clear your mind - Briefly, or for as long as you wish, focus your mind on something simple like clouds drifting across the sky, a prairie of grass in the breeze, water moving in a river or as waves against the shore. Smile gently.

The Three Intentful Corrections are present in every form of Tai Chi and Qigong, as well as yoga and meditation. Even though this practice only takes ten seconds, you can apply it constantly throughout your day. When you do this, you are tapping into the Qi with greater effectiveness and you will derive remarkable benefits of health and inner peace.