气功 or 气攻?

If you are, like me, a fanatic Qigong practitioner, you might be aware that when you are concentrating on practising Qigong , very embarrassing and even annoying things can  happen. Most noticeably, if you have reached the stage where you can clearly feel the Qi (inner energy) flowing all over your body, chances are you keep breaking wind – luckily most being squeaky rather than smelly ones. 

If you’re practicing Qigong at home alone, obviously it  won’t bother anybody, as you’re far too familiar with your own physiological emissions to feel a thing. But when it comes to practising Qigong in a group, , things are getting a bit more complicated. Hopefully, the following account of  my personal experience in a group practice session years ago will give you a bit of  the “taste” of the “atmosphere” inside a group of Qigong practitioners.

Many years ago, after forking out dozens of Yuan,  I joined a  Qigong class on a university campus. The class, over 70 people in total, was a good  mix of the old and young, men and women as well as greenhorns and old timers. In a medium-sized classroom , standing in rows and keeping each other slightly beyond  arm's reach, we were listening intently to Master Peng, our coach, giving us a rundown on some basic  rules of  “智能气功”. For instance, we should keep our eyes shut all the time until the final movement and we should strive to completely ignore any strange things going on within us or around us during the exercises. We were also warned that if we didn’t follow the rules, we could end up with either mental disorder (i.e. being insane) or physical disability (i.e. being paralysed),  the horrible consequences for which we were solely liable.

Frankly, I didn’t find it too difficult to get myself in a meditative mood since I had been doing (on and off ) a couple of Qigong by myself for a few years . But how to maintain and prolong a tranquil state of mind did take a lot of determination and self-discipline. Firstly, I had to put up with random spasms of itch all over my body, which was regarded as a positive sign of Qi adventuring into the uncharted areas of  our bodies. Sometimes, I had to grit my teeth to resist  the strong urge of scratching those damn itches,  for fear that one tiny scratch would trigger a chain of  hearty scratches, which would certainly ruin the whole session.

Apart from itches, another source of distraction came from bodily noises (and concurrent odours) as a result of Qi working its way into various organs of us.  In the middle of a session, I could  hear a rumbling deep down from my own or somebody else’s stomach, often immediately followed by one or two long and shuddering farts.    Of course, I must confess that I wasn’t always on the receiving end of these acts and occasionally I did join in the “chorus”.   Initially, I felt rather embarrassed about my socially inappropriate act and strived to hold a fart back or at least to reduce its velocity, but I found the effort considerably disrupting my concentration, so what the hell, I  let it go freely all the way . I could only hope that the fellow practitioners around me were too preoccupied with their own exercises to hear a thing.

In a way, I suspected the silent but stinky farts were no less distracting or even more “far-reaching” because under the instruction,  everybody there  (the aspiring ones anyway) was trying  to breathe in and out enthusiastically and in the meantime to image  ourselves immersed in the fresh and crisp air coming from a beautiful meadow ...

As if the noises and smell were not enough, we were often assaulted by a host of mosquitoes, flies and gnats, especially when our exercises were in full swing. Some flies were boldly landing on our eyebrows; others were lavishly kissing us around the lip. Even more torturous were the merciless stings  left by mosquitoes right in your little toes or under your armpits. 

Despite all these hassles, we could take some  comfort in the fact (as told by Master Peng) that it was the Qi emitted from our bodies that had attracted different creatures to us simply because these creatures enjoyed the sweetness of Qi. In other words, the practitioners who found themselves surrounded  by insects (or even snakes if practising outdoors) were actually approaching the advanced stage.

In a word, it takes a lot of will power (and blood during the summer) to become a good Qigong practitioner. That’s why Qigong may be beneficial but it is not suitable for the faint-hearted.