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| Qigong health benefits |
Qigong and Health: What Does the Scientific Evidence Actually Show?
Qigong is practiced by millions of people around the world. In China it has a long and complex relationship with traditional ideas about health, breathing, movement, cultivation and qi. In the modern world it is also widely promoted as a form of exercise and sometimes as a therapeutic practice.
Claims about its health effects vary enormously.
At one end, qigong is presented simply as gentle exercise involving movement, breathing and focused attention. At the other, extraordinary claims are sometimes made about its ability to prevent disease, cure serious illnesses, dramatically extend life or manipulate a special form of biological energy.
Rather than beginning with the question of whether traditional theories of qi are literally correct, we can ask a much simpler question:
When qigong is studied clinically, what happens to the people who practice it?
That question can be investigated without either believing in qi or attempting to disprove it.
What Are Researchers Actually Studying?
One difficulty immediately appears: qigong is not one exercise.
The term is applied to many practices involving different combinations of slow movement, static postures, breathing, relaxation, attention, visualization and meditative activity.
Modern studies may examine Baduanjin (八段錦), Wuqinxi (五禽戲), Liuzijue (六字訣), Yijinjing (易筋經), Health Qigong programs and other practices under the general heading of qigong.
This makes broad claims about “qigong” difficult.
It is similar to asking whether “exercise” is healthy. Running, weight training, swimming and walking are all exercise, but they do not produce identical effects.
The same caution should be applied to qigong research.
Qigong and Blood Pressure
Hypertension is one of the areas where qigong has been studied repeatedly.
A 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis of seven randomized controlled trials involving 370 participants found significant reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared with control groups. The authors concluded that qigong could potentially be used as a complementary approach in managing hypertension.
Earlier research reached broadly similar but more cautious conclusions.
A systematic review involving 20 trials and 2,349 participants found reductions in blood pressure compared with no intervention. However, the studies generally had a high risk of bias.
Perhaps even more interestingly, qigong was not consistently superior to ordinary exercise.
An earlier meta-analysis of nine trials involving 908 participants found qigong superior to nonspecific or no-treatment controls for reducing blood pressure, but not superior to conventional exercise or medication controls.
This distinction is important.
The evidence can support the statement:
Qigong may help reduce blood pressure.
It does not automatically support:
Qigong lowers blood pressure because qi has been scientifically demonstrated.
Nor does it establish:
Qigong is necessarily better than other appropriate forms of exercise.
Those are different claims requiring different evidence.
Qigong and Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is another frequently studied area.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials published in 2015 found evidence suggesting that internal qigong could reduce some forms of chronic pain, although the authors emphasized the need for more rigorous trials.
Research has continued.
A 2025 systematic review examining chronic nonspecific low-back pain included 16 randomized controlled trials with 1,175 participants. It reported improvement in pain compared with control interventions, although the average difference did not reach the authors' stated threshold for minimal clinically important difference.
Another 2025 review examining qigong and tai chi for chronic low-back pain reported reductions in pain and disability but also found substantial variation between the included studies.
So again the evidence is neither:
“Qigong does nothing.”
nor:
“Qigong cures chronic pain.”
A more defensible conclusion is that qigong may be useful for some chronic pain conditions, while the magnitude of the benefit, the best form of practice and its comparative effectiveness against other exercise programs remain areas of investigation.
Sleep
Sleep provides another interesting example.
A systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2022 examined 13 randomized trials involving 1,147 participants and found evidence that Health Qigong could improve sleep quality.
Why might that happen?
Several possibilities could be investigated: physical activity, breathing, relaxation, reduced arousal, focused attention, routine and meditative components.
But observing an improvement does not by itself tell us which mechanism caused it.
This is an important distinction throughout qigong research.
A clinical study can potentially demonstrate that an intervention produces an effect.
Demonstrating why the effect occurs is another question.
Cancer Patients and Quality of Life
Qigong has also been studied as a complementary activity for people undergoing or recovering from cancer treatment.
This requires particularly careful language.
Improving symptoms or quality of life in cancer patients is not the same thing as treating the cancer itself.
A 2025 umbrella review examining systematic reviews of qigong and tai chi found possible improvements in overall quality of life, physical functioning, fatigue, sleep quality, mental health and anxiety among cancer patients. The authors also noted substantial heterogeneity and called for more rigorous trials.
Other research has reported improvements in cancer-related fatigue, sleep disturbance and quality of life in some groups.
These findings can be meaningful.
Fatigue, sleep and quality of life matter enormously to someone living with serious illness.
But they should not be transformed into a claim that qigong cures cancer.
Those are completely different propositions.
Qigong can be investigated as a complementary practice without presenting it as a replacement for evidence-based medical diagnosis or treatment.
Is Qigong Better Than Ordinary Exercise?
This is where the question becomes especially interesting.
My older view was that the benefits of qigong were essentially identical to those of ordinary physical exercise.
That statement is too broad.
Some research has found little or no advantage over active exercise controls. For example, hypertension studies have found qigong beneficial compared with no intervention while finding it no better—or sometimes less effective—than conventional exercise for particular outcomes.
But the scientific literature is not uniform enough to declare that qigong can never provide any additional benefit.
Qigong combines several components:
physical movement
postural control
breathing
focused attention
relaxation
and, in many systems,
meditative practice
Therefore its effects may not arise exclusively from physical exercise.
The more useful scientific question is not:
“Is qigong secretly just exercise?”
It is:
“Which components of qigong produce which effects, and how do those effects compare with other interventions?”
That question can actually be tested.
Does Research on Qigong Prove Qi Exists?
No.
But neither is that what most clinical trials are designed to investigate.
Suppose researchers randomly assign people with hypertension to practice qigong and observe a reduction in blood pressure.
The experiment can potentially tell us something about the effectiveness of the practice.
It does not necessarily establish the correctness of the traditional theoretical explanation for the practice.
This distinction is extremely important.
Traditional practitioners may explain an exercise through qi, meridians, dantian or other concepts.
Modern researchers may investigate breathing, cardiovascular response, balance, muscle activity, stress, attention or other measurable variables.
Those are different levels of explanation.
Finding a health benefit from qigong does not prove that qi exists as a physically measurable energy.
But rejecting a particular interpretation of qi does not demonstrate that the exercise itself has no value.
The Problem With Qigong Research
Qigong research has several recurring difficulties.
Different studies use different qigong systems. Training duration varies. Participants differ in age and health. Control groups range from no treatment to ordinary exercise or established medical care.
Sample sizes can be small.
Blinding participants to an exercise intervention is inherently difficult.
Some systematic reviews report substantial differences between individual studies.
And the quality of the underlying trials has often been criticized.
A particularly useful example comes from an umbrella review of mind-body practices for chronic spinal pain. It examined 72 meta-analyses drawn from 20 systematic reviews and found that many of the reviews were of critically low methodological quality. Results for qigong in chronic low-back and neck pain were inconsistent.
Therefore, finding a published study with a positive result is not enough.
We have to ask:
How many participants were involved?
What was the control group?
Was the study randomized?
How large was the effect?
Was it clinically meaningful?
Has the result been reproduced?
How good was the methodology?
And what exactly was being measured?
These are the same questions we should ask about any medical intervention.
Qigong Does Not Need to Be Magic to Be Useful
Perhaps the strangest feature of the modern discussion surrounding qigong is the assumption that it must be either extraordinary or worthless.
There is another possibility.
A practice combining gentle movement, breathing, attention and relaxation may simply be beneficial for certain people and certain conditions.
For an elderly person who dislikes conventional exercise, qigong may provide an accessible way to remain physically active.
For someone experiencing chronic illness, a structured practice may contribute to movement, relaxation and quality of life.
For another person, walking, swimming, tai chi, resistance training or another appropriate activity may be preferable.
There is nothing disappointing about this.
A practice does not need supernatural properties to have value.
At the same time, scientific caution should not become another form of dogmatism. If future high-quality research demonstrates benefits beyond those currently established, those findings should be accepted as evidence develops.
Conclusion
So, does qigong have health benefits?
The best answer at present appears to be:
For some conditions and outcomes, probably yes.
Research suggests possible benefits for blood pressure, some forms of chronic pain, sleep, fatigue and quality of life in certain populations.
But the evidence varies considerably in quality. Qigong is not consistently superior to other appropriate forms of physical activity, and positive clinical results do not establish every traditional explanation offered for those results.
Most importantly, evidence that qigong may improve symptoms or quality of life should never be transformed into evidence that it can replace necessary medical diagnosis or treatment.
We therefore do not need to choose between two extremes:
“Qigong is ancient magic capable of curing disease.”
and
“Qigong is nonsense and therefore cannot have health benefits.”
Neither position follows the evidence.
Qigong is a collection of traditional practices involving combinations of movement, breathing, attention and other training methods. Some of those practices appear capable of producing measurable health benefits.
Why particular practices work, which components matter most, how large their effects are, and whether they outperform other forms of exercise are scientific questions.
And those questions can be investigated without first settling the much older question of what qi itself ultimately is.
References
Bai Z, et al. The Effects of Qigong for Adults with Chronic Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26621441/
Ching SM, et al. Effects of qigong on systolic and diastolic blood pressure lowering: a systematic review with meta-analysis and trial sequential analysis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33407414/
Xiong X, et al. Qigong for hypertension: a systematic review.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25569652/
Lee MS, et al. Clinical effect of qigong practice on essential hypertension: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18199012/
Lee MS, et al. Qigong for hypertension: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17620944/
Effect of qigong on pain and disability in patients with chronic non-specific low back pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39994723/
Sotiropoulos S, et al. The Effects of Qigong and Tai Chi Exercises on Chronic Low Back Pain in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40530198/
Effects of Health Qigong on sleep quality: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35998756/
Effectiveness of qigong and Tai Chi for quality of life in patients with cancer: an umbrella review and meta-analysis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40240905/
The Effects of Mind-Body Exercises on Chronic Spinal Pain Outcomes: A Synthesis Based on 72 Meta-Analyses.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36231365/
Optimal modes of mind-body exercise for treating chronic non-specific low back pain: Systematic review and network meta-analysis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36466167/