Pregnant woman Martial Arts photo by dizznbonn

This blog is in response to someone asking about practicing Dragon & Tiger qigong during pregnancy.

Some pregnant women get stagnant Chi at various points during their pregnancy as a natural effect of having a child.  It’s different with some women than others.  There are many things that Dragon and Tiger can be helpful for  in terms of stagnant Chi and in actually delivering the baby.

First, the edema, the swelling, the liquidized swelling that tends to happen in many women is very often caused by a build up of stagnant Chi in the kidneys.  The flicking action within the whole of dragon and tiger which releases stagnant Chi on a large level will help this.

The flicks that are done in movements  Two, five, six and seven as well as the heart action helps to specifically circulate the Chi in the body and release stagnant Chi.  The next thing that happens is many women start finding that besides Edema that their legs and limbs start having problems.

This is very often caused by the burden of poor circulation of having a baby inside your womb.  Having to actually feed that life inside of you with your own life force.  The flicking action in Dragon and Tiger and all the flicking and piercing actions tend to push the blood of the body to it’s extremities.  The toes, the fingertips, and the head.  This tends to help the general overall circulation of the body.

The next thing is that the general ability to breathe and every way in which dragon and tiger fosters better breathing both in regular even inhale and exhales and it’s ones with different releases of breath with different pressures inside them enables a woman’s breathing capacity to remain in good shape.  Very commonly during pregnancy because of the way the baby is pushing on the diaphragm, this doesn’t happen and it is one reason why many women run out of puff when it comes time to actually push the baby out.

The fourth and last point besides everything dragon and tiger does in general, is that the explosive breaths that are happening in movement two, five, six and seven.  Especially in six and seven when you have a push out and then a very long strong push after that.  It’s very, very helpful in pushing the baby out in those moments where it just  becomes a problem to exhale; to be able to create the pressure to actually push the baby down the canal (this is helpful even for women who’ve had lamaze training).  These are some useful points.

If you’ve never done Dragon and Tiger qigong then this wont make much sense to you. If you are interested, you can learn more about it through my book and upcoming DVD.

There were many other points to mention, but for this  Blog, I believe that’s a good starting point.

One of the most important qigong sets that I teach is called Dragon and Tiger Qigong (chi gung or chi king).

The subject of Dragon and Tiger Qigong is appropriate for many reasons, but primarily because I see it having tremendous value in terms of the looming healthcare tsunami. It is one of the best qigong sets to learn to work with your etheric body and while in China I was taught it by an extraordinary woman…

There are several important benefits to this relatively easy qigong (chi gung) set, but it is known for its potency in fighting cancer in China, and all the gunk that comes with it.  You may know that Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. I imagine the numbers are mimicked in Europe and other developed countries – so this is no small matter. I have students who’ve used Dragon and Tiger Qigong to get well.

Bill Ryan, one of my senior Energy Arts instructors actively teaches Dragon and Tiger Qigong in 5 to 6-day retreats in Northhampton, Massachusetts, which are described on his website www.MovingTiger.com. He is a highly qualified instructor and has helped many people to understand benefits of these simple yet powerful practices. There are currently 129 active Dragon and Tiger Qigong Instructors and you can search the Energy Arts instructor directory here to find an instructors near you.

Now…recently, the question keeps being brought up about how exactly I came to study Dragon and Tiger Qigong and I wanted to share that story with you here.

I had been a qigong tui na doctor for many years in the 1980’s in China and after I was studying in Beijing for about a year and completely socked in with Liu Hung Chieh, I thought that it might be good for me to do some other things.

Liu’s other disciple, Bai Hua, had a friend in Beijing who I also became good friends with. This guy came from a fairly famous family in Beijing, so I told him that I’d really like to see if there was any more training I could get to finish up my training in medical qigong (chi gung).

This friend went around and around trying to find out for me. You have to realize, this was only a few years after the Cultural Revolution. So he starts looking around and I believe he also had a relative who was in the field, so he knew who was who. The one name that came up that-possibly-I could talk to was Jiang Jia Hua. There were other people, but the odds were low simply because of the political situation.

Eventually, I met with the “old lady” as my wife and I dubbed her, and I had one stroke of luck that helped the situation. Her husband, who was an engineer in a major firm in Beijing, had received his education in the States, somewhere in the Midwest. He only had great things to say about the people, so she found it somewhat amusing to meet me.

Later she saw that I could do qigong and that I wasn’t blowing smoke. Seeing that I was really skilled was one thing, but then for some reason the subject of the came up.

She said she was interested in it and then she had her mind blown because I really knew about the I Ching. She started on a line of questioning: “How come you know so much about the I Ching?” etc. I said I learned it in Taiwan and Hong Kong and when I mentioned who my teacher was, she replied, “Your teacher is…who?” Liu-in the real community-was pretty famous. He didn’t consent to teaching just anybody.

We went back and forth and although I was studying with her, she was indecisive about what to do with me because she had put away Dragon and Tiger Qigong three or four years before I met her. After her husband died, she just didn’t want to engage the masses any more.

She trained 20,000 teachers by about ‘81 or ‘82. She had been Vice President of the All-China Scientific Qigong/Chi Gung Association. Her political ties were what allowed her to run a cancer clinic and teach. Bear in mind, Mao Tse Tung was really down on qigong as one of the “Four Olds” during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1974).

She thought my level of skill was equivalent to that of her better students, but she was still on the fence as to what to do with me. This went on for a couple of weeks. Then Liu caught a flu of some sort and I happened to mention the old lady to him.

He said if I wanted to bring her over, maybe she would give him some herbal meds. Liu wouldn’t go out and see anybody because he was an absolute hermit. I got the two of them together and then, you know the way it is with a child, “Look son, go out and play while the adults have a talk.”  Basically, I was told to leave! I came back once or twice and they sent me away each time.

When I saw her the next time, she said, “If he’ll teach you, I’ll teach you.” And that was it. She then made me her formal disciple and taught me the whole bit including Dragon and Tiger Qigong. I got to work in cancer clinics even though it was very dangerous for me to be working in those clinics. At that time, it was the equivalent of a subversive act against the State.

I ended up studying Dragon and Tiger Qigong with the old lady for about a year and a half. She was a little fireball. This woman was in her late sixties, early seventies and she was a little dynamo, running all over the place and what not.

She was also one of the main students of a person called Guo Lin, who was known as one of the big qigong/chi gung cancer doctors. So, she was also teaching me on that level. Dragon and Tiger Qigong was just one piece of the puzzle. Most of what I learned was folded inside of it, which is why I wanted it to be a part of my core program even though it didn’t come from Liu’s material.

So that’s how I learned Dragon and Tiger Qigong. Now for years people have asked me to do a DVD for this set and we are in the final stages of production now…If you are interested in this DVD and have not already signuped for the prelist you may do so here:

Signup now for the launch of the new Dragon and Tiger Qigong DVD and to download two free chapters of the Dragon and Tiger Qigong Instruction Manual please click here.