True History of Qigong

Qigong is 5000 years old discipline that holds the secrets ancients knowledge about nature of the universe and has developed as practice of healing, maintain health, improving general quality of life and in some instances , enlightenment .This is widely spread believe despite the fact it is completely false.

The truth is that Qigong as we know it today didn’t exist before 1950. Not even a term qigong existed before this time.

Communist party of China led by Mao Zedong finished long civil war as a winner and immediately established a dictatorship. China , after more than a decade of constant war was ravaged, poor, underdeveloped and in complete institutional chaos. Just like any other communist regimes, Chinse communists simply eliminated everyone who can even remotely represent any kind of threat to the new established regime. Among persecuted were intellectuals from every field , medical doctor as well as everyone else. All those who did not manage to escape were killed or sent to prison to die there.  In an attempt to define its self as communist country , government declared that doctors ( in China called doctors of the “western” medicine) were followers of western capitalism and imperialism. This practice left China almost completely without medical care. To resolve this problem , communist government turned to the “traditional” methods of haling because these methods didn’t require any special education and all necessary things for such practice were available to anyone , especially there were no special requirements for pharmacology because traditional remedies were based in domestic  plant and animal life and minerals.

In 1954. Mao Zedong and the rest of the leaders of the communist party ordered development of ” Motherland medical heritage” (Zuguo yixue yichan 祖國醫學遺產)  with a purpose to get under centralize control absolutely all methods of healing  and maintaining health. Government started a campaign under the slogan “  Inherit and develop the medical heritage of the motherland” (jicheng yu fazhan zuguo yixue yichan 繼承與發展祖國醫學遺產)  and Mao himself stated that “Western medicine should learn from Chinese medicine “. This situation brought many “healers” and herbalists to the hospitals where they worked  as doctors (and were addressed as such) and even “research centers" were established.

With “motherland medical heritage” development  a lot of different old healing systems spread over China and were presented to the people as legitimate medical practice. Reevaluation of “traditional” medicine took place and was widely spread and used for propaganda purposes by the communist regime ,.Lu Zhijun 鲁之俊 (1911–99), Chief of Chinese traditional medicine academy (Zhongguo zhongyi kexueyuan 中國中醫科學院)  became famous  after he said  “China is the first country in history of human kind which performed medical  studies “ and “ China is the first country in history  which synthesized  drugs “  

As a result of this campaign  Taoists  practices were also incorporated in “traditional” medical practice .Person specifically responsible for bringing mostly Taoists and to some extent Buddhists practices under the umbrella of “motherland traditional medicine” was Liu Guizhen. He was high ranking communist official and according to his words in 1948 he got tuberculosis  and ulcer although there are no documents about his diagnosis and medical procedure to confirm his story.

After unsuccessful treatment in “western medicine hospital” he retreated to his home village to and there, from some unnamed old man he learned Neiyanggong ,traditional Taoist from  of cultivating Qi ,After only three months he completely healed and then shared his experience with local hospital .Local government , hearing about his case opened him an ordination in the local hospital where he treated patients and after short time he achieved astonishing results. This successes draw attention of the Medical officials of the Hebei province and in 1953, Neiyanggong   officially became part of the “motherland medical heritage” . Local officials helped Liu to open “laborer’s sanatorium”. In 1954 in the city of Tangshan first Qigong organization ever was established and the term Qigong used for the first time , coined by Liu. This place became crucial spot for acquiring new types of exercises and then spreading it all over China. Soon, patients from Beijing started to come and Liu had to go twice a year to bring a report to the minister of health.

Tangshan medical department started in late 1954 to organize seminars for doctors of the “western medicine” to introduce them with the practice of qigong as a part of the campaign mentioned before where western medicine should learn from Chinese ‘medicine” . Doctors who finished the course were obligated to spread  qigong through their everyday work. Liu organized additional three moths course in May 1955 where enormous number of medical doctors from all over China were obligated to participate and later had the obligation to spread everything they learned on that course.

Li wrote several papers on setting up a model of research and work in the field of traditional medicine that have become obligatory  literature for health professionals in China. In December 1955 Tangshan sanatorium was rewarded by the central government and at the organized award ceremony it was emphasized how important their work is in the domain of "homeland medical heritage". This was crucial and the last step in the general national recognition of Qi Gong.

From this moment on, the national institutionalization of Qi Gong  began as well as  publication of works from the domain of Qi Gong research .

Word Qigong was born in 1954 as a term that will unite all the different systems involved in the practice that we now know as Qi Gong. These systems include massage, stretching exercises and gymnastics, folk forms of physical therapy and treatment of bone fractures and joint dislocation, strength and  flexibility exercises from martial arts  and esoteric and meditative practice of Taoism and Buddhism. All these different practices that have nothing in common are included in time in a new formed health approach  and are  still considered to be part of the Qi Gong, which until 1954 were not. The term Qi is used in "western" medicine and actually means oxygen while in Taoist practice represents a primordial natural force. Before 1954, the term Qi Gong did not exist. In the martial arts, the term that was used is Lianqi(練气)  roughly can be translated as the refinement of Qi and represents biomechanical efficiency in the execution of martial arts. In Taoism, the term Yangqi (養 氣) was used, which literally means "to feed or raise" and signifies the practice of increasing and invoking primordial life force in order to prolong life, , enhance the functioning of the autonomic nervous system, increase the mental capacity of the brain, give greater mind control, increase perception and intuition, uplift moral standards, and give tranquility to the mind, which in turn confers inner harmony and greater happiness  and the end goal of this practice is achieving immortality . As time goes by, these exercises slowly open up the functional and control channels that feed and activate the energy, nervous and psychic centers, enabling the individual to have a deeper understanding, consciousness and awareness of the spiritual world get achieve immortality. These terms have a completely different meaning from the term Qi Gong. This term has enabled various methods of training acquired from different sides to be representative of medical practice, prevention, etc. With the emergence of the term Qi Gong, the term qigong therapy appeared, which is completely wrong and does not respond to reality, but is widely accepted today. (More confusion comes when eastern terms are used in western languages. Term Qi by its self has  many meanings which depend of the place of the word In the sentence and with what other word is used in conjunction. Qi as a single term means gas. People wrongly think that everywhere they see word qi used means some kind of primordial energy or whatever they believe, for example, old way to talk about the weather included the word Qi, but Qi of weather has totally different meaning from Qi in Qigong where first is just an expression for general weather conditions, same goes with Qi in Qi gong and Qi in Taoist practice but westerners believe that term Qi has same meaning all the time 

With the acceptance of the Taoist  methods of exercise there was a change in terminology and heavy revision of  history. All "obsolete" terms that resembled backward, feudal, primitive practices have been changed and replaced with new terms that sound "scientifically". The Communist government could not allow itself any connection with religion or esotericism. Also, under the Communist slogan that "the working people are the master of history" in order to raise the national pride, "history" of the Qi gong is located in the distant past where every trace of any physical exercise in order to maintain health is called Qi Gong, which is notorious nonsense. The effect of light gymnastics on health is known to all old civilizations, is not an exclusive discovery of ancient Chinese and has nothing to do with Qigong. Imitation of animal movement for the purpose of exercise is not qigong, but exercise and light gymnastics.

This process of collecting and putting anything and everything under the umbrella of Qi gong is still ongoing. Because of Qigong popularity many practices that have no connection to Taoism or Chinese medicine or medicine and health in general, in any way are called Qigong. For example, today there is something called Confucian qigong although Confucianism never had such practices and in some points is totally the opposite of Taoism. Other major thing pushed under Qigong umbrella is Buddhism. Various meditation practices are now called “Buddhist qigong”  although Buddhism never had nor practiced such things.

Of course, during the time, many "studies" were done in China proving the efficiency of the qigong. It is not a surprise  that those studies have shown such positive results, taking into account the policy of China at that time and Qigong and “traditional medicine” is are today billions worth businesses and give the employment large number of people . The best indicator of the efficiency of "traditional medicine" is the average lifespan of Chinese general population, which had until recently been one of the shortest in the world and at the level of the 19th century. Only with the increase of the   living standards and the ultimate establishment of the modern health system based on official medical science, the so-called Western medicine, the average lifespan of the Chinese people has increased and came close to countries with similar standards and healthcare.

Many confusions bring  alleged medical studies showing the efficacy of qigong. As qigong is  the general concept for a large number of different methods of exercise , different practice will show different results , but it must be clear what kind of practice was used , not just call it Qigong. Of course, light gymnastics will have positive effects on certain diseases, that is what physicians across the world recommend to patients since the establishment of modern medical science. Also massage is proven to be useful, just because someone puts the word "Qi-gong" in front of the word "massage" that does not mean that this massage really has anything with Taoist practice of force cultivation. On the other hand, there is no evidence that practices coming from Taoism have any positive effects on the prevention of disease or increase in length of life. Practitioners of these exercise systems have the same average lifespan and are suffering from  same diseases in the same percentage  as the general population.

As we can see, Qi Gong is a sociopolitical project of the Communist Party of China and has nothing to do with health. It is sad that a large number of people believe in the truly aggressive propaganda of the Chinese government and people who make profit by selling these “superior ancient knowledge”. The history of Qi Gong started less than 70 years ago , there are still a lot of people who remember times before Qigong. It is not thousands of years old and it isn't anything that its proponents claim it should be. 

How and why Qi Gong came on the "West" and gain popularity will be a subject of another article.