Preparing for the gift of transformation Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong Theory and Methods Selected material from Volume I for Healing Intensive Retreat participants Activating and embodying wisdom and energy for health, healing and happiness Teachings by Mingtong Gu based on the works of Dr. Pang Ming Copyright 2011 Mingtong Gu. Please do not copy or reprint without permission.
Introduction to Retreat Reading materials Haola! All manner of things are well! Are you ready? The collective energy of our upcoming retreat together is already activated, the healing has begun, the Ocean of Light is surrounding us in our anticipation, expectations, preparations, yes, even our doubts. Welcome to a Wisdom Healing Qigong Healing Intensive! This is an intensive, not a vacation, AND Rest Qigong will be as important as Active Qigong, integration and stabilization of your learning and paradigm shifts will be as important as new information and new insights. Are you ready? What does it mean to be ready? The simplest of the keys to readiness is to smile into the future. Set up a smile inside your being, each time you prepare for the retreat in any way. If a worry or doubt appears, dissolve it purposefully into the smile and proceed with the next step in getting ready to come. We call this the Inner Smile and there are more detailed instructions inside this material. Here is a wealth of delicious information, insight, and opportunities for reflection we have complied for your preparation. Tasting, chewing upon, and digesting as much of this good food as possible will prepare you to jump in on the first day. We want you to have a flavor of the teachings, in the manner of Mingtong s speaking, and the language of Wisdom Healing Qigong. Welcome to the table. Eat up! Connecting with our healing chi field is another key to arriving at peak readiness. We call the collective energy that is gathering as each individual chooses to come and we prepare the chi field for you. The chi field of our retreat is embedded in the chi field of Wisdom Healing Qigong, and embedded in these 5,000 year old teachings, embedded in all that we are, have been and will become. There is more about this inside too! For now, focus on the field that is gathering for this retreat, as you prepare in all ways, as especially you read this material or listen to the audio files sent to you. Visualize your heart s desire manifesting along with a room full of smiling faces gathered around Mingtong and Linling. You might want to use some images from a flyer or the Chi Center website to help you see. What is your deepest desire? Are you ready to receive it?
Retreat Reading excerpts from Volume I What is Zhineng (Wisdom Healing) Qigong?... 4 Introduction to the Healing Intensive Retreat...4 Wisdom: Essence of Life Zhi...6 What is Qigong Healing?...6 Neng - The Power of Energy...7 The Power of the Mind: Informational Healing...7 Healing Experiments in China...9 What is Chi? (also written as Qi )...11 Perceiving Chi... 12 What is Gong?... 13 What is Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong?... 14 Outline of Wisdom Healing Qigong... 16 Five Stages of the Practice... 16 Five Aspects of Cultivation... 16 Six Golden Keys: Activating the full potential of the practice.... 16 The Theory of the Chi Field... 17 The Importance of the Chi Field... 18 Maximizing the personal and chi field potential... 19 Seven Characteristics of a Chi Field... 21 Have a Clear Intention, Be Purposeful... 22 Three components of the chi field... 23 Use Your Conscious Mind to Initiate... 24 Start Activating the Blessing in a Different Way... 24 Expectations and Intentions for a new direction... 25 Moving Up the Mountain with Your Initiative Mind... 26 How to Effectively Realize Chi Healing... 27 Haola... 27 Inner Smile... 27 Love and Service... 28 Trust and Belief... 29 The Chi Field... 31 Diligent Practice... 31 Making chi medicine... 32 Chi Reactions... 33 Strong Chi Reaction and Fast Purification... 33 A Positive View of Chi Reactions... 33
from CHAPTER TWO What is Zhineng (Wisdom Healing) Qigong? Introduction to the Healing Intensive Retreat The practical benefits of Wisdom Healing Qigong are very spiritual. Qigong brings a spiritual force into the physical dimension of life thereby completing the spiritual purpose of life: transformation, manifestation and fulfillment. From my experience in China, this kind of healing intensive retreat provides an opportunity for people who are fully committed and dedicated to realize physical transformation and spiritual fulfillment. Having been profoundly cultivated over millennia, the technology of Qigong has become a complete system of transformative practice. Historically, it took years to learn and realize the benefits of this type of practice. Dr. Pang Ming studied for more than three decades with nineteen masters and grandmasters from different schools, creating a system to more quickly and efficiently manifest the power of Zhineng (pronounced Tszu-nen) Qigong practice. He experimented with this system by offering many levels of practice and a large variety of retreats. In the medicine-less hospital in China, students attended an initial four-week retreat to concentrate on personal healing. Three months of training was offered to students who wanted to teach others. Six months of professional healer training was offered to students who desired to facilitate healing for others and to very dedicated students an intensive two-year Master training program was offered. We say in Qigong xiang xin (believe) and xin ze ling (it works when you believe) Once you have thought through this principle, that in itself is advanced Qigong. You should not think that practicing Qigong is just about practicing (the Form/Methods). In your daily life, your every action, every word and movement can be for practicing Qigong and advancing in Gongfu.! Dr. Pang, Developing Human Potential through Qigong This system, created by Dr. Pang, allows for the transmission of profound knowledge, and the fulfillment of a variety of needs to a broad range of students at different stages of practice and study. Over two decades, Dr. Pang trained thousands of healers and teachers while millions of practitioners benefited from this practice. He has written thirteen books on Zhineng Qigong, and over three hundred hours of lectures and teachings are archived on DVDs. They are, however, written and spoken in Chinese, and only a few sessions have been translated into English.
There is much we can learn about this lineage of teaching and system of practice. The purpose is not, however, to learn everything. I would like to be very clear about my intention for the healing intensive retreat: it is to present and share the profound power and depth of this system, along with its simplicity, accessibility, and sustainable benefits, and do so in a concentrated form. My approach condenses and streamlines four weeks of learning and practice into ten days. I have also distilled material, usually covered in six months, to its very essence, so it can be shared and experienced in a short time period. I have created a sustainable system of practice that draws from practices taught in the initial four-week training, the one-month training and the two-year training programs. The result is a ten-day or month-long retreat that merges and condenses these programs. The reason I am doing this is to help students maximize the practical benefits of the practice and realize healing as quickly as possible. The focus is on what we can accomplish, and not on what we can understand. We do this by concentrating more on what we want, instead of how we are feeling in the moment. How we are feeling is important, however, it is more important to attend to how we act on our feelings. The latter is what will really affect change. The priority is, What can I do about the way I am feeling now? If we concentrate on practicing and working with energy, this simple approach can yield tremendous results.! Mingtong Gu We want to realize the goal of measurable transformation through real commitment, real practice, and real action. This transformation is what drew people to the four-week training in China. It was not intellect or belief that made this transformation possible, but rather, a serious and dedicated commitment to healing, often from a terminal illness. Students were willing to work through whatever challenges they faced, and push themselves beyond their comfort zones to be fully present with what the moment demanded. I want to invite you on a journey where we deepen quickly and cover what is most essential in realizing tangible transformation. On this journey, I offer you all the ingredients of this energy medicine, which have been proven to be most effective for healing, and guide you in using these ingredients to make the medicine you need. We are not doing research here. The research has been done, and the benefits documented. We are making the medicine, drinking the medicine, and realizing the effects of the medicine. Of course we relax and meditate, and honor what we are feeling as well. Our priority, however, is to move from a reactive or witnessing state, to a proactive or initiating state. Together, we move forward and journey as far as we can, potentially going to a place where no woman or man has gone before.
Wisdom: Essence of Life Zhi The essence of this practice, called Zhineng Qigong in Chinese, means Wisdom Healing Qigong. I would like to share how the Chinese characters represent the essence of this practice. The most important word in the name is Zhi, which translates into English as wisdom. We all want wisdom and have been cultivating wisdom all of our lives. Though wisdom has many different definitions, the most popular is knowledge applied to life. There are many levels of knowledge, thus, there are many levels of wisdom. I would like to offer a new definition of wisdom, which can only be explained by looking more closely at the Chinese character. It consists of the following characters with the following translations. Heaven Vow /commitment Mouth/eat Know/knowledge Sun/source Wisdom can be understood as knowing and eating the source with total commitment. This captures the essence of Wisdom Healing Qigong. It also expresses the real purpose of this retreat: to cultivate with full commitment the wisdom of not only knowing, but also eating the source, as well as total communion with the source. The cultivation of this wisdom involves the following: 1. Knowing the source, through direct experience of practice, and reaching beyond the four percent of the universe, which is physical, tangible or understandable. 2. The commitment to be One with the source, including expanding and letting go of old identities and stories. 3. Giving the creative energy of the source a dedicated purpose of true healing and deep transformation, which can often be experienced as feeling uncomfortable and challenged as you release the old and familiar yet limited patterns. What is Qigong Healing?
Neng - The Power of Energy Neng is the second word in Zhineng Qigong. It means power and ability. The power component emphasizes the neutrality of energy. The form of energy we experience is usually a combination of energy and information. The energy of connection between human beings is not neutral, but rather informational. Informational energy is both destructive and constructive, both harmonizing and dis-harmonizing. Informational energy is infinitely powerful and an expression of the creative. In our bodies, which are bodies of energy, we experience energy in many ways. When we experience energy as dis-ease, it means that energy is structured with information that is not harmonized with the entire body. The energy itself is neutral. However, the information attached to the energy has become non-neutral. I ll use a writing analogy to better illustrate this concept. Let s say you compose a paragraph that has both energy and information/meaning. If you study each of the words of that paragraph separately, they contain different information, with the possibility of being paired differently and creating a new paragraph with a new meaning. If you break down the words into their component letters, there is neutrality. Before you assemble them to form words, the energy of those letters is neutral. The letters themselves have no meaning, but they have the inherent power to create meaning. As a teacher my purpose is to guide you to that place of neutral energy, regardless of the informational structure with which you begin. This understanding reveals not only the power of creative energy, but also the power of your mind. The Power of the Mind: Informational Healing The word Neng has a second meaning relating to the power of mind: the ability to transform. This ability to transform allows us to harness the power of energy as a neutral creative essence from which all meaning, form and experience arise. We then uses this power to create and transform. In the analogy of the written words, Neng refers to the ability to combine letters to communicate meaning and information. In the case of healing, it refers to the ability to change the information of energy within the body. Let us use another analogy. There are two forms of energy structured in two ways; one appears as a triangle and the other as a circle. When you look at these two forms, what do you see?
You see a triangle on the left and a circle on the right and you see the difference between them as the outline of their forms. What else do you see? What is there beyond the outline of their shapes? What if you look at the entire picture? The totality reveals the formless energy inside the shapes, as well as the framed or formed energy of the shapes. The formless within the form is pure energy that is the same in both shapes. If you study them at the level of form, you see only the frame, the outline: a one-dimensional view. When you study them at the level of formlessness, you can access the power beyond the differences. This power can transform energy into either a triangle or a circle, or any other form for that matter. How do you transform one form into another? It is simply and clearly a matter of changing the outline or frame. In the case of healing, it is a matter of transforming dis-eased energy into harmonious energy. Let us return to the analogy of the triangle and circle and say: Triangle/dis-eased energy " disharmonized energy Circle/healthy energy " harmonized energy When you see the form, without recognizing the formless, you are likely to perceive the following: I have to change the whole thing. I have to let go of the power in myself in order to be a new person. I have to replace the dis-eased part of the body in order to heal. Therefore, you are more likely to depend on surgery and other conventional intervention. This is an old, familiar paradigm. In the new paradigm, when we experience the body as the expression of the formless, we reconnect the power of pure energy to consciousness. Triangle/dis-eased energy " neutral, pure energy Circle/healthy energy " neutral, pure energy This relationship transforms the energy of the body, simply by changing the information of the energy. We don t need to replace the triangle with the circle. Instead, we can change the information, which is responsible for structuring the energy into form. Dis-eased cells, are composed of the same pure energy as healthy cells the same ocean of light. This is very profound to understand and apply to your healing spontaneous informational or mind healing can happen, even at this moment when you are receiving this wisdom information beyond your thinking mind, directly through your heart s wisdom and cell s wisdom.
Invitation to Practice Close your eyes and clear your thoughts. Look in your heart and feel your body inwardly. Be still and timeless with yourself. No rush. You can access the power within you, even when you are dis-eased, to transform and reprogram your energy body. When you identify with the story of dis-ease, you are attaching to dis-eased energy. If you identify with the story of health, you experience healthy energy. When you work with energy at the deepest levels, you are changing the story of that energy. You can heal any form of dis-ease with this power instantaneously. This is the secret to spontaneous healing. It explains the placebo effect as well as the purpose and power of positive thinking. This is the essence of Wisdom Healing. Of course, the question is: How do we realize this power most effectively? Below are ways in which we can engage the mind and body to realize this power. 1. Train the mind to connect with the formless. The practice of mindful movement and visualization allows us to experience the form as formless. 2. Train the mind to change the disharmonious information of the form at the level of the formless, to health, harmony and perfection, (i.e., change the story of the body, mind, emotions). The main practice is used to cultivate the healing mind through positive thinking, conscious awareness and visualization. 3. Embody and sustain the harmony of the whole. The practice of positive beliefs, positive lifestyle, and emotional clearing are important to sustain the benefit of deep healing. This is not only a map for healing, but also a profound process of eliminating the deepest causes of dis-ease. All dis-ease is caused by disharmonized or conflicted energy, either within the energy body or in relationship to life. Medical science understands that stress is a major cause of all disease. In the deepest sense, stress is an expression of the incapacity to process life s challenges or conflicts: an internal state of mental, emotional and/or physical disharmony. This new paradigm for healing is preventive as well as curative, healing as well as transformative, and physical as well as spiritual. Healing Experiments in China Among the many styles of Qigong, Zhineng Qigong is one of the most powerful. Translated literally, Zhineng Qigong means Cultivating Wisdom Energy. In the 1980s, Grandmaster Dr. Pang founded the world s largest medicine-less hospital known as Huaxia Zhineng Qigong Training and Recovery Center (a.k.a. the Center).
Patients admitted to the Center were initially diagnosed by medical professionals and then assigned to Qigong teachers. After twenty-four days of stay and daily practice, they were given a battery of medical tests. Patients were enrolled at the Center as students to learn the art of self-healing. Students graduated not only as physically healthy or recovering persons but also as much happier and integrated beings. The Center trained thousands of Zhineng Qigong teachers and many master teachers. Most of them have chosen to dedicate their lives to teaching and sharing Zhineng Qigong healing. Through enormous scientific research (3,000 research papers were published during the 1990s), and more than twenty years of experimentation with Qigong healings, Wisdom Healing Qigong has developed into a scientific system of working with energy to activate healing and improve life. Dr. Pang has published more than thirteen books, offering this cultural treasure to the world. Healing Research in China Over the course of two decades subsequent to the Center s inception: The Center treated more than 200,000 patients. In 1998, between March and June, 2,088 people practiced at the Center. From this patient sample, the following results were obtained: o Cured: 731 (35.01%). o Very effective: 488 (23.37%). o Effective: 863 (41.28%). o No effect: 6 (0.29%). Its total effective rate of 99% has been documented. Below are some examples, according to types of diseases. Cured Very effective Effective No effect Total Effectiveness # of cases Total # # of of cases Cases % # of Cases % # of Cases % # of Cases % # of Cases % Gall/Kidney stone (lithiasis) 1951 319 16.35 726 37.21 871 44.64 35 1.79 1916 98.21 High Blood Pressure (hypertension) 1935 439 22.69 653 33.75 774 40 69 3.57 1866 96.43 Bronchiole Asthma 493 100 20.28 235 47.67 157 31.85 1 0.2 492 99.80 Coronary Heart Disease 1838 389 21.16 711 38.68 726 39.5 12 0.65 1826 99.35 Experiments conducted at the Center, or medicine-less Qigong hospital, in China identified the main contributing factors to the effectiveness of Qigong healing:
1. Self-healing practice to deeply reprogram energetic functions. 2. Transmission from teachers and healers through group and individual sessions. (Note: A trained teacher can energetically transmit the healing information directly into a patient s energy system to accelerate or realize healing.) (See below.) 3. The collective effect of the chi field. The more you practice and connect with a healing chi field, the more effectively you can realize healing. At the Center there were many cases of spontaneous healing simply from a handshake with Dr. Pang. There were hundreds of recorded cases of spontaneous weight loss of twenty pounds or more, wheelchair-bound students that walked, recovery of hearing, and so on. In my own direct experience of working with students, I observed cases of total recovery from leukemia and other cancers, chronic pain, insomnia, and endocrine imbalances. Spontaneous healing from transmission strongly depends on the receptivity of the student, and is often more effective if the person practices Qigong diligently. The informational energetic structure of a healing chi field can facilitate and greatly strengthen the healing process for students and the more conscious the participation, the more powerful the healing. It should be noted that there are also some cases of people who experienced direct healing in a strong chi field without participating in it. That is, they were not consciously activating the chi field and sometimes did not even believe in the Qigong technology, and yet, were still healed. Invitation to Practice Recognize and write down a list of your obstacles and challenges (physical, emotional and mental). Then write down a list of opposites for these challenges. Ask yourself the following: 1. What kind of energy and thinking do I need to move from this limited place to a new creative direction (before the new result)? What is Chi? (also written as Qi ) Chi is Energy. Chi is everything and everything is Chi. Chi is formless yet form. Chi is tangible yet intangible. Chi is life force.
Chi is beyond the field. Chi is pure energy. Chi is beyond definition Chi is a pure state of energy, both as form and formless. The primal chi is formless and everything is an expression of the primal chi. It means that chi encompasses the whole spectrum of energy from the formless to the physical. Everything in the universe is an expression of chi; chi is everything and everything is chi. What is the meaning and purpose of calling everything chi? What is important here is not the name but the perception. Chi is about perception, and chi perception is different from our fivesenses perception or intellectual perception. Qigong cultivates a deep perception. Perceiving Chi In summary, chi is the formless creative energy that births all form. This understanding guides us to cultivate new perceptions while the practice of Qigong helps us to realize the capacity of our perception to experience chi. The following mark the different stages of this developing perception. 1. The first level of our awareness involves feeling and acknowledging all experiences in our bodies. We can feel the different frequencies of energy that have already taken form inside our bodies, and we can interact with the energy around us. 2. The second level of development involves feeling the formless. This deeper level of awareness carries us beyond the five senses and thinking mind, which is designed to sense and analyze the form. While we understand that space is full of formless energy, as acknowledged by both wisdom teachings and science, we can now imagine and feel the presence of formless energy within space. How is this possible? It is possible by imagining and visualizing formless energy as an ocean of light. Light is form and formless, particle and wave. It is the powerful creative source of life on planet earth, as we know it. So as we expand our perception, from physical form to energetic form, we move closer to experiencing the quality of chi as fire and the quality of nothing merging with something. The intelligence of our bodies, made of formless energy, starts to interact with the formless energy around us as we interact with it through imagination, and then, we can feel the formless in our mind s perception. 3. Feel the formless within the form. Follow the same process as above by focusing inwardly and transcending the perception of form. 4. Feel the form and formless as One. Words form and formless are relative concepts and can only be defined in relation to perception (i.e., a way of measurement). Formless means immeasurable while form means measurable according to certain technologies of measurement. What used to be considered formless is now considered form as we continuously expand our perception of human intelligence. For instance, magnetic fields were considered formless and unable to be measured before 1800. You cannot measure a magnetic field using the technology of a telescope. Just like
advanced science and technology, the practice of Qigong is intended to cultivate an expanded perception of the universe through the cultivated perception of the mind. This perception has been developed through a long history of practice and can be learned since it lies within the innate capacity of the mind. Conventional medicine treats the body like a machine, that is, separates one part of the body from another, like a car mechanic when he or she disassembles a car to fix the body. However, the chi perception experiences the interconnectedness of the body, mind and energy as formless energy, thus allowing you to access the creative power of formless energy inside and outside the form. Imagination activates the creative power of formless chi through the mind s capacity to shape perception. So, how do we feel subtle energy or formless chi? We imagine it and visualize it. In the early stages of practice, we synthesize energy inside of us creating a condensed energy field. When we visualize energy, we may not feel much at all or we may feel as though we are pretending. Then gradually, we can feel more subtle levels of energy by using imagination and visualization. With a lot of practice and mind training, we start to feel it. It creates a feedback of imagination and feeling; this is how the form and the formless relate to each other. When what we imagine becomes real and tangible with energy, we can experience it. We go to nothingness and the mind rests in the void and the formless, thus there are no thoughts. Then we visualize the sun in this nothingness and the nothingness takes the shape of the sun, creating a form of tangible energy. We feel the warmth of the imagined sun now, and we can visualize that sun the formless taking form in our minds nourishing all parts of our bodies that need healing. It is our medicine. Is this a placebo effect? Yes, at some level. However, in the deep level, it is beyond the conventional understanding of the placebo effect for the following reasons: In the conventional placebo effect, only mind is involved and the imaginary power is often easily dismissed as un-real. Chi, responding to mind s intention, can be felt and measured therefore it is a real process. Now, scientific studies have found that belief can have a direct effect on the programming of biological and chemical functions of the bodily life. In Qigong practice, you are not required to believe in healing through belief or visualization. Through practice or simply in the strong healing chi field, people can experience healing and measurable positive changes. The practice is a replicable way to cultivate not only positive belief but also the direct experience of healing. What is Gong? Gong is cultivation, practice, and the benefit of that practice. It is the power and ability we cultivate through practice. Think of the body as a body of wisdom energy. Through practice, this body increases energy as well as wisdom. This wisdom energy body expresses itself as its ability, its own intelligence, and its own purpose, and we become that. So Gong is the measurable realization of the practice.
What I want to emphasize here is that Gong is an energetic structure of wisdom you cultivate inside of you and around you, for example, the quality and quantity of your chi field. It literally means that Gong can be experienced energetically. It can be cultivated. It can be transmitted from teacher to student. Through a chi reaction (more information on chi reactions is included at the end of these excerpts), your energy body experiences purification and your Gong increases. You have a much deeper understanding and a power to overcome dis-ease. You have a purer form of energy now. More energy can flow into you because you have released stagnation and limitations from the past. Through Wisdom Healing Qigong, we can turn challenges into opportunities, and discomfort into progress. At the end of each day, we can think to ourselves, What have I cultivated today? What I have invested in realizing Gong? Did I increase my Gong today? As your Gong increases today, a sprout appears; tomorrow, a leaf forms; the next day it grows bigger and stronger. Eventually, you see a flower blossom and the tree bears fruit. Think about that, and keep it simple. Gong is cultivation and realization. Gong is the embodiment of the capacity of wisdom energy. What is Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong? Wisdom Healing (Zhineng) Qigong literally means cultivating wisdom and life energy to realize full human potential and embody wisdom energy. This is a simple definition of Qigong. Now we are more equipped to understand the deeper meaning of the definition of Wisdom Healing Qigong offered by Dr. Pang below. Use of the mind s intelligence to direct chi to transform, perfect and realize the conscious potential of the holistic body, thereby uplifting the consciousness of the practitioner from automated condition to that of autonomous wisdom. It is a path to equality, freedom and peace of humanity. Dr. Pang expresses this so beautifully. Meditate on these words, their meanings, and this teaching. The application of this technology and this wisdom can be summarized by the following methods. Mind controls chi directly, through the exchange of energy, to influence all areas of function in the body. Mind initiates change through visualization and healing thoughts, which then activate the power and holistic function of the mind. The holistic function of the mind can be activated at the cellular level as well as at the level of nothingness. Mind changes the informational structure of the dis-eased energy pattern. We want to emphasize these methods for the purpose of yielding quick results. One of the most powerful visualizations involves imagining and feeling the condition you desire. Visualize a perfect, healthy, transparent, holographic, energetic cellular form of existence in your body. Regardless of your areas of concern and your story, if you begin to do this now, every moment becomes your healing priority. Everything we are doing in Wisdom Healing Qigong is working to change the structure of energy to return to one of perfection and harmony. Harmony is realized when the mind, heart
and body are in harmony. The lack of harmony on any level will cause dis-ease of the whole energetic system and lead to physical and emotional dis-ease. As I teach, I am transmitting the informational structure of wisdom energy. As you receive, you can experience deep change directly through internalizing the experience, or by using the methods described above. The teaching is a healing process through changing the informational structure of energy; the method of practice is the teaching in another form. The teaching and method are one.