Ancient Chinese practice cultivates life balance

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BAR HARBOR – Paul Weiss believes that good health for the 21st century lies not in wonder drugs or stem cell therapy, but in an ancient Chinese lifestyle with awareness of the body and spirit at its core.

“Most of us are out of touch with our bodies,” Weiss says. “Our attention is scattered everywhere in a very random and distracted way.”

Weiss has joined millions of Chinese in reviving a traditional combination of meditation, deep breathing and slow-motion movements known today as Qigong, to cultivate this life balance.

“It’s about re-establishing the connections between the environment, our minds and our bodies,” Weiss said.

In May, Weiss will lead a group of 20 Mainers to study Qigong with master practitioner Wan Sujian at the Chinese Taoist Medical Institute and Hospital in Beijing.

Qi (pronounced “chee”) is the Chinese term for the energy of life that courses through people, animals, and the natural environment. Gong (pronounced “gung”) is translated as effort or work.

Thus, Qigong is using the body’s energy to do work, Weiss said.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, sickness is caused by congested energy (or qi) that manifests itself in the symptoms – such as pain or tumors – that Western doctors view as diseases.

Balance the energy, and the sickness disappears, Weiss said.

“Chinese medicine, as compared to Western medicine, seems very unscientific. But it comes from a systematic understanding of how energy moves through the body,” Weiss said, describing centuries of empirical study. “Qigong is probably as old as Chinese civilization. It’s such a rich tradition; there are probably millions of different styles and philosophies.”

The marriage of rhythmic exercises and meditation should be done every day to strengthen the qi for optimum health, Weiss said. Strengthening the qi is said to reduce stress and promote mental well-being, as well as keeping the body’s systems in top shape.

“You can’t separate the physical from the meditation side of it,” Weiss said. “All kinds of Qigong are ways of bringing together stillness and movement.”

Weiss demonstrated, taking a relaxed stance and gracefully sweeping his arms from side to side as he spoke.

“The mind gets very open and relaxed. There’s this sense of light. You end up feeling very spacious and energized,” he said.

The effectiveness of holistic medicine like Qigong has been demonstrated in biological studies that increasingly show a relationship between mental and physical function.

“The chemistry of thought is intimately connected to the physical chemistry of the body,” Weiss said.

But physicians in contemporary China disagree about Qigong’s place in modern medicine, Weiss said.

A few doctors have embraced Western medicine and abandoned traditional practices altogether, while others see Qigong as an important form of preventive medicine, or as a tool to be used in conjunction with traditional herbalism and acupuncture, as well as Western therapies like surgery and chemotherapy, Weiss said.

“It’s the fundamental of all other medical practices in China,” he said. “Qi is the one tool that everybody uses – it’s such a people’s kind of health care.”

In the absence of organized religion under Communist rule, Chinese people have embraced the spiritual aspects of holistic practices like Qigong.

Buddhism and Taoism are incorporated by several styles of Qigong. And numerous cults that base their belief systems on the teachings of Qigong have developed in China during the past decade.

Some, such as Falun Gong, have grown so large and influential that they are seen as a threat to the Communist Party. Falun Gong was banned by the national government nearly two years ago, resulting in a slew of protests and suicides by its members, including the five believers who set themselves afire in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in January.

A handful of highly skilled Qigong masters, including a man named He Binhui with whom Weiss has studied, are attempting to fight these negative perceptions and prove the practice’s scientific validity by using intense Qigong as a sole treatment for terminal disease.

“For three weeks, these people who were supposedly on their death beds did Qigong with him every day. In that time, they were just totally healed,” Weiss said. “Potentially, there’s no limit to what Qigong can accomplish.”

Weiss does not promise this sort of miraculous healing at his office, the Whole Health Center in Town Hill. His personal qi is not so strong as the Chinese masters who have trained for decades. Rather, he incorporates Qigong into the variety of services the center offers.

Weiss and his then-wife, Alexandra, founded the Whole Health Center in 1981. Both were trained counselors with experience in the social services field and a desire to introduce holistic health care to Hancock County.

Today, the center provides individual and couples counseling, several types of massage therapy, visualization and meditation instruction, and workshops in Qigong.

Weiss began to explore the fundamentals of Eastern medicine nearly 40 years ago, when he studied tai chi, the martial arts arm of Qigong, as a college student. He serendipitously discovered its medicinal uses when his massage patients at the center responded to energy therapy.

“I found myself more and more working with my hands above the body, with energies – my hand spontaneously moving in certain ways,” Weiss said. “I wondered: Is this all malarkey or am I really feeling something?”

Then Weiss saw a Qigong healer on a public television documentary making the same precise movements above the body of a patient. That show inspired a craving to experience the ancient culture and in May 1994, Weiss made his first nine-day visit to China.

Since, Weiss has returned five times, bringing a handful of his students to study with Wan and other Chinese physicians.

His May trip will offer participants the opportunity to learn basic Qigong and become certified by Wan, while they tour the country’s cultural and historical sites for two weeks.

“I assure you, there will be no more satisfying or spirit-opening way of experiencing China than through the medium of Qigong study,” Weiss writes in his tour brochure. “This trip is designed to nurture you geographically, culturally, spiritually and above all, with days of warm friendship.”

For information, call the Whole Health Center at 288-4128.