What is Qigong doing to my brain?

Stories of the history, development,

making and goal of 

Medical Qigong Neuroscience

I started my journey in Qigong about 25 years ago, while searching for answers to many issues that were prevailing in my life. In my late teens, I was spiritually lost and suffering from pain, fatigue and depression, because of the immune mediated disease which was affecting my respiratory system and skin. I was on immune suppressants, steroids and psychotropic medications, none of which really provided any real significant relief. I felt disenfranchised by the constant raft of medications on offer, with no real advice or help to learn about my health condition or to manage it on my own terms.

This lead me to the discovery of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which at that time in New Zealand wasn't exactly a popular or easily accessible health intervention. As I started to receive Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, and began taking Taijiquan and Qigong classes, this natural medicine lifestyle caught my attention in several ways.

There seemed to be a sense of synergy for me in the Taoist philosophical roots that were the source of the medical thinking and practices. This had been missing from my health journey thus far. The medications I had been taking started to work better. My overall mental health and sense of wellbeing was reignited within me. One of the things I loved was that I tangibly felt different after the Qigong lessons in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. It seemed a mystical, yet very practical way to nourish life. I'll never forget the first time I felt the power of Qigong. I was at a martial arts class and we were instructed in 5 flowing, smooth, gentle yet empowering movements, and for the first time in my life I felt my breath move smoothly with ease into my body, and a calm came over me. The agitation, stress and uneasy feeling that my physical and spiritual health disharmony had caused, lifted. It was like a home coming that just can not be put into words.

I knew from that day on I would be a life long Qigong practitioner. Little did I know at the time but it was also going to become my life's work to learn, teach, promote, heal and be a physician of this beautiful art, culture and science. 

It wasn't long after this that the first of many mentors and guides in my life appeared and saw something in me that at the time I couldn't see in myself.

Adejola Musa Olatunji

(27th of April 1950 - 12th of October 2017)

Founder of New Zealand School of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (NZSATCM)

Under Tunji's tuition I learnt the crafts of Acupuncture, Tuina, Qigong and Taijiquan. We enjoyed a great friendship that spanned nearly 20 years until his passing.

Tunji was the first person to encourage me to start teaching Qigong. I remember the moment well - he rang me during the summer break at the end of my second year studying with him and asked me to start teaching Tuina and Qigong. I said "thanks for the offer but no, I am not ready to start teaching, I am too young and still learning and need to get myself healthy first."

As Tunji often did with me, he just laughed and said "You only need to be one step ahead of your students. You will have far more impact in the health and wellbeing of our communities as a teacher than you ever will as a clinician!" I realised that my mentor had bigger plans for me than I could ever see in the future for myself, so I took the opportunity and ended up teaching at NZSATCM for over a decade.

Tunji knew I'd need help to grow and become a good teacher, so to assist me with this, he started doing private training with me each morning before the students arrived. He kept a very close eye on me in classes, and connected me with two very special people in my life who completely changed the trajectory of my journey.

Firstly:

Dr Stephan Yan   

Dr Yan took me under his wing in my early twenties and trained me in Tuina, many Qigong systems, Wu style Taijiquan and Yin Yang Ba Pan. I was lucky to spend over a decade learning from Dr Yan. He was one of the first practitioners who encouraged me to take an interest in neuroscience, as he was trained in biomedicine as well as Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Under his guidance I deepened my Qigong practice immensely and gained much more insight to the cultural roots of the medicine, along with the linages of the practice I was learning. He emphasised the importance of learning Qigong in a timely and sequential manner in order to gain the best benefit from the practices. As a Westerner and young male I was always looking to fast track my learning and cut corners to reach the end goal more quickly but Dr Yan trained that out of me by giving me just 8 postures from the Ba Pan to practise for the first three years of my learning! 

Secondly:

Peter Caughey

Tunji sent me up to Auckland early in my time teaching at NZSATCM to meet, as he called him, "The Qigong guy", Peter Caughey. This turned out to be a life changing event in many ways.

Shortly after starting my training with Peter C, and while working with him to create a Qigong Taijiquan diploma for NZSATCM, he introduced me into the monastery school of Qigong. This was the source of much of Pete C's knowledge. I felt an instant attraction to his teaching style, and could see how deeply his practice had evolved his own spiritual journey. This was something I was really searching for at the time, and hadn't really got from Tunji and Dr Yan. I proceeded to learn as much from Pete C as I could, and developed a lasting friendship that has had a major influence in my life and Qigong practice. 

In fact, it was in my mid twenties when practising the monastery school foundational system that I realised something that I've never been able to shake off, and it lead to the research and development of the Medical Qigong Neuroscience program.

Deep in the trance state that many Qigong practitioners will be familiar with, the question came to me: 

"What is Qigong doing to my brain?"

The world of neuroscience has developed and changed a lot in the last twenty years since this question struck me. Many of the questions I had were simply not well understood outside of the context of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Dr google was in its infancy. It wasn't an easy question to answer from the written literature and teaching available at the time. 

But there were some easy steps I could take to start pursuing an answer. 

I started the journey by learning everything I could about the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. Then I related this back to the training I had received in Traditional Chinese Medicine, comparing modern medical thought with the classical texts, like the Huang de nei Jing and Nan Jing that I had learnt from. Through this initial stage of development, I started to realise the similarities of the Jing Lou Mai (channels networks or meridians) that were mapped out in these texts, with the nervous, circulatory, myaofasical and organ systems of the body.  Qigong was revealed to be perfectly designed to regulate, modulate and rehabilitate the nervous system back to health.

The second phase was to develop a system to test my assumptions about how Qigong worked. To do this I learnt functional neurology, and orthopaedic and psychological assessment skills to develop some more subjective and objective testing regimes. Luckily by this stage I was teaching upwards of 21 hours a week of Qigong classes and creating Qigong prescriptions in a clinical setting, so I had plenty of experiences and data from these environments to test the Medical Qigong Therapy prescriptions across a wide variety of clinical conditions. 

It was during this phase of my study that I realised how difficult it was going to be to research Qigong mechanisms due to the variety of different traditions and their various stylistic approaches.  There is complexity of interwoven influences in Qigong, from ritualistic spiritual behaviours, marital arts, Chinese medicine and Taoist philosophy. To remedy this, I decided to look for some common themes which run through all Qigong traditions, in order to find some simple foundational components to research.

This is where I came up with the four foundational principles of all Qigong systems:

1) Postural integration  

2) Breath regulation

3) Meditation

4) Movement

There are four broad categories of Qigong practice that define the multitude of different practices, Martial, Medical, Spiritual and Scholarly. Across these different categories of Qigong practice, the common themes that can be found throughout is an emphasis on postural integration and alignment, breath regulation modalities, meditation, visualisation, metacognition techniques and movement therapeutics. I decided to take a deep dive into each of these foundational principles of Qigong from both Chinese medical and neuroscience perspectives to help build a bridge between these amazing medical systems and create a foundation structure for teaching Medical Qigong Neuroscience. 

I begin to realise that when we look at Qigong through the lens of Neuroscience, we find a treasure trove of protocols which regulate, modulate, mediate and rehabilitate the nervous system back to health and homeostasis. It also became abundantly clear in clinical application of Medical Qigong Therapy, that if I understood the underlying neural circulates that governed the four foundations of posture, breath, meditation and movement, and how they operated from a mechanistic view, I would be more able to steer the practices directly at the diseased and dysfunctional tissues. The need to rehabilitate my patients more effectively and efficiently, to communicate the functional restorative mechanisms in terms of modern bio medical language, and to develop new treatment protocols all influence the decisions I make about the complex conditions seen everyday in clinic.

During this period of research and development of Medical Qigong Therapy I found several areas of medicine that Qigong can be impactful for as a part of a holistic approach combined with standard care.

• Musculoskeletal conditions acute and chronic 
• Pain medicine 
• Mental health and stress management
• Insomnia
• Neurodegenerative disease 
• Traumatic brain injuries and post concussion syndromes 
• Vertigo, dizziness, balance disorders
• Stroke rehabilitation
• Metabolic disorders 
• Immune disorders 
• Internal medicine

In 2019 Pete C and the Forest Rock Qigong Taijiquan School asked my family and me to come visit them in Bali to teach on their 200 hour Qigong teachers' training retreat. This offered me the opportunity to share some of the research I had been doing in Medical Qigong Neuroscience. I gladly accepted the offer and started to compile the research I had to share with the students in Bali.

The feedback from the students was great. They wanted more! I got lots of questions during the retreat about how to treat different conditions with Medical Qigong Therapy, the basis of the science which underlies the effect of Qigong, and how to use this knowledge to enhance our own personal practice, teaching and communication skills with other medical practitioners.

This was the starting point of a big journey to document the foundations of the functional restorative mechanisms of Qigong and the neurosciences which underpin them.

During the retreat I realised a deeper calling within myself to share what I had been learning, and there was a big interest from the students in this group to learn more about Medical Qigong Neuroscience. This sparked the motivation over the next three years to document, film and create Medical Qigong Neuroscience.

I am forever grateful to all the students at this retreat for encouraging me to teach this knowledge.  

After the success of the retreat Forest Rock asked me to come back later in December of 2019 to start filming a more comprehensive version of Medical Qigong Neuroscience in this beautiful spot in Sanur. 

One of things I am so grateful for during this time was the help of Pete C's wife Josephine who filmed and edited the entire course. It took us about 25 hours of filming over 6 days. During the experience I practised Qigong every day and spent the evenings in Sanur documenting the content from the day's filming. Bali is a magical place and with Josephine's guidance, and filming the course in such inspiring surroundings, I felt very empowered and aligned with the making of this course.

I set myself some clear learning objectives for the students I was making this course for as the basis of the 90 videos found in Medical Qigong Neuroscience.

• Present the Anatomy and Physiology of Postural alignment, Breath regulation, Meditation and Movement therapeutics  
• Outline the Functional Restorative Mechanisms of Postural alignment, Breath regulation, Meditation and Movement therapeutics  
• Bridge the gap between Traditional Chinese Medical concepts and terminology with neuroscience
• Aid the students to learn how to communicate the effects of Qigong to students, patients and referring physicians in modern bio medical language 
• Enhance the students' personal Qigong practice by applying neuroscience protocols to their practice 
• Promote Medical Qigong Therapy to a wider audience to impact the health and wellness of our communities 

Who is Medical Qigong Neuroscience For? 

In the 90 plus videos found in this course I purposely set the tone of the learning for a particular audience that I see benefiting from sharing my clinical and teaching experience.

• Practitioners who have already learnt some traditional systems of Qigong who are looking to bridge the gap between TCM and neuroscience to enhance their personal practice.
• Teachers of Qigong who want to improve their teaching abilities by deepening their knowledge of anatomy, physiology and functional restorative mechanisms of Postural integration, Breath regulation, Meditation and Movement therapeutics.
• Teachers of Qigong who want to gain communication skills which would enable them to use biomedical terminology when teaching students or when communicating with referring physicians.
• Physicians in a clinical setting who want to implement Medical Qigong Therapy prescriptions as part of a holistic intervention.

The course is comprised of over 90 short videos, clinical case examples, research resources and Qigong practices presented in an easily digestible format. The learning experience isn't overwhelming and can be consumed at the rate that suits your personal learning style. Lifetime access allows you the opportunity to watch the content as many times as you need in order to put the knowledge into practice. Alongside this is the benefit of gaining the communication skills embedded throughout the course. 

Through the making of this course I have personally evolved as a practitioner of Qigong, and as a clinician and teacher.  I now realise that Medical Qigong Neuroscience is the foundational content of much more comprehensive programmes. These courses will be based in clinical assessment, diagnosis, pathophysiology and creation of Medical Qigong prescriptions for specific diseases.

So I am excited for the future of Medical Qigong Therapy, and wish to be a leader, promoter and mentor for students, teachers and clinicians alike. I hope this course will help evolve your personal practice and enlighten your understanding of both TCM and neuroscience, and also improve your teaching skills and clinical implementation of Medical Qigong Therapy. Most of all, my motivation has been to improve the health and wellness, of you as individuals, and of your communities. 

Get access to Medical Qigong Neuroscience 

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Pete C, Josephine and the Forest Rock team for inspiring and motivating me to create this course. I am forever thankful for your influence and mentorship in my life! To all the students and patients I have had the pleasure of working with over the last 25 years, and will continue to work with into the future - you have all had a part to play in helping the development of Medical Qigong Neuroscience and all the therapeutic interventions that will be created from this content. I am humbled and driven by all the amazing achievements I have seen you all make, and look forward to witnessing many more wonderful health stories. 

Pete Larking

Medical director of Neuromedtec.