{"id":3694,"date":"2025-08-28T09:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T07:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robertofagnani.com\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2025-09-02T17:05:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T15:05:19","slug":"the-ancient-art-of-qi-gong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertofagnani.com\/en\/the-ancient-art-of-qi-gong\/","title":{"rendered":"The ancient art of Qi Gong"},"content":{"rendered":"

After many years of teaching, I decided to write this article to try to provide a theoretical basis and historical-cultural context for my students and anyone interested in learning about the discipline of Qi Gong<\/strong>. Here is a brief overview of this ancient art, its benefits, and its methods.<\/p>\n

If you are interested in trying a class, you can find the course schedules, locations<\/strong>, and details about the practice program<\/strong> at this link<\/a>. The lessons<\/strong> are also available online<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Qi Gong – \u6c14\u529f – The origins<\/h2>\n

Along with other ancient health practices, such as Shamanism and Yoga, Qi Gong also conceals its origins amid historical gaps, bibliographical contradictions, and notions that border on legend.<\/p>\n

The genesis of this ancient art of breathing and subtle energy control is unknown, but its origins are lost in the mists of time, given its profound affinities with yoga and the various legends surrounding its birth.<\/p>\n

One myth attributes its beginnings to Bodhidharma, the 28th patriarch of Mahayana Buddhism, who in 527 AD reached the Shaolin Temple in China and found the monks unsuitable for practicing this lifestyle. He then retired to meditate for nine years on a mountain, and upon his return, he taught them the basics of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, Qi Gong and Kung Fu (Gong Fu), even though it is unclear why those who professed Buddhist compassion should have learned to fight…<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Qi Gong known today in the West is typically Daoist in nature, having always been incorporated into this philosophical tradition as part of those \u201cgymnastic methods of cultivating life\u201d (Yang Sheng Fa<\/em>), which form the foundations of self-development, the arts of longevity, and the exploration of consciousness, already present in ancient China (and therefore connected to indigenous shamanic arts, the oldest and most widespread method of healing and \u201caccess to knowledge\u201d that has survived to the present day). References to Qi Gong appear in both the \u201cDao De Jing<\/em>\u201d and the \u201cHuainanzi<\/em>\u201d (respectively \u201cThe Book of the Way and Virtue\u201d and \u201cThe Canon of Dao and Virtue\u201d), classical texts written several centuries before our era, and therefore before the advent of Buddhism in China.<\/p>\n

Regardless of its origins or religious influences, this \u201cwork on internal energy\u201d has always been integrated with both spiritual and martial disciplines; moreover, since the 19th century, even the Shaolin Temple, of Buddhist tradition, has included practices described in Daoist classics. All this makes it difficult to pinpoint the historical and geographical origins of Qi Gong, which nevertheless managed to ride the wave of the vicissitudes of time and intercultural exchanges, surviving until the 21st century.<\/p>\n

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Qi Gong today<\/h2>\n

The Chinese Cultural Revolution, followed by the hunt for rebels, led to the gradual and systematic destruction of all ancient books that were not in line with the moral principles of the new communist government. Anything that offered freedom of thought, \u201cspiritual autonomy,\u201d health, and self-awareness was seen as an enemy of the State and therefore had to be banned or destroyed. Thus, over the last two centuries, the world has helplessly witnessed what has probably sealed the disappearance of much of China’s millennia-old culture, both medical and spiritual\/esoteric, with a few rare exceptions consisting of texts that survived in the independent provinces of Hong Kong and Taiwan.<\/p>\n

As a result, it is very difficult today to access the original theory on Qi Gong, and it is necessary to rely on the few masters who have inherited the tradition within their families, often secretly, or on scholars and practitioners who are able to interpret the obsolete ideograms underlying the methods of this art, but only after mastering the techniques and \u2018feeling\u2019 the flow of Qi – bioelectricity, to simplify – in their own bodies.<\/p>\n

In recent decades, China has finally recognized the potential of this practice and, in addition to scientific studies on the effects of Qi Gong, which began in the 1950s, in 2001 experts and scholars selected four forms of Qi Gong for health<\/strong>, choosing from among the countless existing styles:<\/p>\n