Once we start talking about using the imagination or the mind to visualize or create specific responses we are entering the realm of mesmerism / hypnosis / autosuggestion / self-hypnosis / self-talk or any of a number of other names. Those who still hold to the misguided idea that hypnosis is some type of trance where one person controls another would do well to read more modern literature on neuroscience and the workings of the brain and mind.

You are hypnotized daily by radio, television commercials, news commentators or your peers. Anytime you listen to someone who purports and idea and you buy into and believe that idea you are working with hypnosis. You buy a special brand of soap, diet food, natural foods etc based on something you read, saw or heard and you bought into the idea that it was good for you. This happened because you choose to believe this thing, person, or product was beneficial to you in some way. Your mind recorded it as a truth and you moved to make it happen.

Just in the same way you can get a cold or the flu by thinking, “I get sick every year.” That thought turns the brain on to lower your immune system and allow the bacteria or virus to invade your system. Of course, it is a bit more complex than this simple explanation but it is the basis of how and why you get ill, succeed or fail in many endeavors in life or have certain belief systems.

Today science is learning more and more about the mind and its mysterious influence over the body. We are learning more each year. Science is slow to make progress in these areas. Western science must see everything in concrete terms and be able to examine a process in minute detail.

In the East where the traditions of mental healing began, no such approach is taken. If a method works, it is accepted as valid because of the outcome not the process. Practitioners of a method will strive to improve the method until it is more powerful and effective but they seldom question why something works.

After over thirty years of observing, studying and researching various Qi- gong methods and systems Dr. Painter says he is more convinced that ever that it is what and how we think or rather how and what we imagine that has the greatest influence on our health or lack thereof.

Because many people have a problem with the word “hypnosis” he chooses to use the term guided imagery when discussing concepts of Vitapathic healing (Qi-gong) as this term seems to fit the processes used in Chinese and Tibetan methodology. Guided imagery is a simple process in which we can train ourselves to use pictures in our mind to turn on and increase your body’s natural healing potential and maintain it at peak efficiency.

It is very clear to see is we make comparative studies of eastern cultures and their healing methods that guided imagery is at the heart of all the healing traditions of the East and early shamanistic health systems. It is safe and very powerful if used correctly.

In one of the earliest know texts on Qigong theory written by Master Wei, Boyang, titled Can Tong Qi (Akinness of the Three) around 142 AD the master of Daoist energy development says, “In the end whatever you call it, it is not more than the mind (Yi and Xin), intention and attitude and the breath being together as one. It is simply the Yin and the Yang influenced internally with their spirit and energy entwined.”

Even earlier the founder or Daoist thought, Lao, Zi author of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), is reputed to have authored a previous work which was burned and later banned in China (today it is available again and in wide circulation). This was The Treatise of the Exalted One, On Response and Retribution written some possibly around 549 B.C. in this work the opening lines are: ‘The exalted One says: Curses and blessings do not come through the gates, but man himself invites their arrival. Good and evil is like shadow following object…”

Both of these passages would seem to imply that what we think and “invite in” to the mind becomes the progenitors of our success or failure, happiness or success. This message is not new it is repeated over and over again in culture after culture. Yet in the pursuit of Qigong, somehow the message has gotten lost in the forest of numberless exercises, breathing practices and ritualized dances all attempting to get the Qi flowing in the right way at the right time.

What seems to be lost in all of this is the fact that the mind rules the body and the body houses the Qi, which seems to be exactly what master Wei and master Lao Zi were trying to tell us. The best way to activate this powerful mechanism of the mind to take dominion over the body and the Qi is through visualization training and that can be called guided imagery. As Shakespeare said, “What’s in a name, a rose by any other would still smell as sweet.”

…………watch for part 3

There is no one thing that is Qi. Remember that the character for Qi can be translated as breath, air, vapor, steam or a host of other words. What you can see or rather cannot see in this definition is that each of these words describes something invisible. Something that is felt but not seen is my own personal definition of Qi. We can feel an unusual sensation moving across our skin, within our muscles and tissues. When we have no scientific description for the cause of these sensations, we are perplexed. The ancient Chinese, rather than being perplexed simply called such feelings Qi.

Feeling Qi energy in our body is a subjective thing for each of us. Our mind becomes aware of sensations as they arise inside and outside of our bodies. These sensations are then translated or interpreted into concepts to which we may or may not be able to relate.

Some sensations like warmth or cold or pain are easily identified, while less familiar sensations or a combination of sensations may feel puzzling to us. We are puzzled about a sensation when we do not have a definition for it in our personal memory banks, and often mistakenly believe it is some strange or even magical energy. It would be good to remember that just because we feel something that we do not understand does not indicate that it is not a normal phenomenon of nature, or that it is the result of some force outside the known natural forces we can feel or sense. Sensations arise from a variety of sources.

1. External sensation: Things acting on the body ranging from pressure sensations, as in touching objects or them touching us, to feeling heat, cold, wind, sound.

2. Internal sensations: Sensations from muscle contractions, blood pumping, digestion and nerve transmission

3. Combination of inner and outer sources: Combined results are a synthesis of external and internal sources interacting. Some examples of this are sound that comes from outside but is pleasing and so relaxes the mind, or heat that causes the body to sweat and blood vessels to dilate. Another example could be external pressure that produces pain or pleasure in the internal neurological system.

4. The mind: Our bodies are very susceptible to what our mind thinks or interprets. In hypnosis, for example, a person can be made to produce a blister on his or her arm merely by being touched with a piece of ice, which the hypnotist suggests is a lit cigarette. This blister can then disappear in a few moments with the suggestions that the body has healed the injury.

We are also becoming more aware of psychosomatic illness and psychosomatic cures for many illnesses that may or may not be psychosomatic in origin. It is easy to know and say; yes, the mind can heal, cure, and kill. Nevertheless, it is a very di!erent thing to explore our own minds and psyche to find out how to manipulate this power as needed. In my opinion after years of research, direct transmission by two masters, one Chinese and the other Tibetan, that all of Qigong begins in the mind that has been trained to understand how to manipulate the body.

I have come to understand that Qi follows the ancient maxim, which says, “The mind (Yi) commands, the body moves, and the Qi follows.” Mindless repetition of forms and exercises will not produce internal power. By using conscious thought and awareness of subtle feelings we can activate the imagination’s power, which is part of our emotion system also know in Chinese as the heart fire or Xin.

Without proper training in the use of Yi, or intention, and Xin, or attitude supported by correct biomechanical structure, one can waste years with meaningless forms and exercises and achieve only minor results, if any at all. Understanding how the mind functions in these waters is no easy task. We must learn to undertake a new way of feeling and sensing on a more subtle level and learn to “allow” things to occur instead of forcing them by will.

Be very clear that will power is not the same as Yi, or intent. Will power can be that process by which we discipline ourselves to sit or stand every single day, but if it is used to force the mind into concentration or some focused exercise in which we strain to create a specific e!ect we are on the wrong track entirely.

Ancient Daoist master Wei, Boyang author of the “Can Tong Qi,” often translated as the “Secret of Everlasting Life” and a Daoist manual for developing internal power written around AD 142, sums up the practice of Qigong in his first chapter with the following statement.

“In the end whatever you call it, it is no more than the mind (Xin) and the breath (Qi) becoming as one. It is simply the Yin and the Yang influenced internally with their spirit energy entwined.”

His book is one of internal alchemical transformation brought about through meditation. There is no mention of special physical forms or gymnastic movements that often pass for Qigong in modern times. Master Wei tells us internal energy develops in the mind, is transmitted to the body where it manifests itself as health and vitality.

Master Wei Boyang and other Daoist sages tell us that when we learn to take control of the fire mind that is our emotions and desires (Xin) with our intellect through specific intentions (Yi), sometimes called the water mind enhanced through the power of meditation; we will experience the growth of an indomitable spirit (Shen). This is why the Li clan placed so much emphasis on their concept of the four virtues (Si-de), for it was believed that by living these principles of Honesty, Humility, Patience and Sincerity one could achieve emotional balance and thereby increase and preserve the body’s natural Qi energy.