Stuff on my Mind

Here is a woman in Australia who, like me, understands that "core strength" is a big mistake:  Edgecliff Physiotherapy.

I learned about her from Josh Leeger who also turned me on to Exuberant Animal.

Also from Josh I got to Philip Beach's site describing Meridians as Emergent Lines of Shape Control.  Here is a pdf of a paper which explains the theory.  This made me think that meridians don't really "exist" they are trained reactions which disappear the better your internal practice gets.  Which explains why Medical Qigong is the lowest level of qigong, the meridians are most apparent in sick or dying people.  It also corresponds well with the Daoist notion that the meridians are lines of fate, lines (and points) which provide a window into either freedom, or robot-zombie-like predictability.

Speaking of fate, here is a rationalist approach to Astrological Horoscopes!  I think the author nails it in his own quirky way.  My own experience following a Daoist Auspices Calendar for several years taught me a whole bunch of unexpected lessons.  Like that their is a lot of freedom in letting an external force (in this case words on a page) decide for me whether to go out and party or to stay home and study.  When you're free, you can waste a lot of time and brain power trying to pick a day and time to get a hair cut, or buy new shoes, or work in the garden.  Just looking at the Daoist Calender externalized all that strategizing and weighing of options--which freed up a lot of time and energy.

I've been reading Gustavo Thomas' blog and watching his videos, great stuff!

Look at all the stuff canceled in Tokyo.  We have found lots of stuff to do here anyway and people are happy to see us.  I had very fresh raw pork liver the other night, with beer, yum.  I'm happy to report that Tokyo is still full of great deals on delicious food, especially lunch.  For example at a sushi boat restaurant, if I eat as much as I possibly can it only costs about 8 dollars US.

We went to a Kabuki show.  My main comment is that the actors have to practice a whole lot of stillness!  How anyone could miss the connection between stillness in the theater and stillness in martial arts I do not know.  Oh, and the costumes are amazing.

Check out Akira Hino, Jazz Drummer, martial arts teacher, dancer.  Here is his Video Channel.

Japan is so fashion conscious, it is impossible to be here and not think a lot about clothes and shoes.  I hope I can find some time to work on making my own because that seems like the only really satisfying way to stick my head down that well.

Daniel Mroz published a book on martial arts and theater, check it out!  Now I really have to work on getting mine in to print.

I got the book Impro to Rory Miller at Chiron and he loved it.  We are still awaiting a review.

Check out Tokyo Probe. Beer.

Does Yoga Mean "To Yoke?"

Side stepping the debate about where modern yoga came from and what it is, I'd like to dig into the history of the basic concept-- yoga.

Wikipedia offers a nice overview.  Here are the important quotes:

The Sanskrit word yoga has many meanings, and is derived from the Sanskrit root "yuj," meaning "to control," "to yoke" or "to unite." Translations include "joining," "uniting," "union," "conjunction," and "means." The word yoga may also derive from the root "yujir samadhau," which means "contemplation" or "absorption."
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[Patanjali gives this terse definition] "Yoga is the inhibition (nirodha?) of the modifications (vrtti) of the mind (citta)".
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Hatha Yoga is a particular system of Yoga described by Yogi Swatmarama compiler of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika in 15th century India. Hatha Yoga differs substantially from the Raja Yoga of Patanjali in that it focuses on shatkarma," the purification of the physical body as leading to the purification of the mind ("ha"), and "prana," or vital energy.

If this is accurate, there is a strong possibility that Yoga and the Daoyin--Tai Chi--Shaolin matrix have a common origin, or that at least they all stem from a common notion of what a human being is.  I would summarize the method of Daoyin as--- "yoking" a purified physical body to "that stuff which animates us" (qi or prana) and then "yoking" that to a larger active spacial mind.  ---The use of the word purification here could also mean distillation or total differentiation.

The jing and qi must be purified or distinguished, they can not be mixed.  If the physical body (jing) is mixed with prana/qi the result will be gross motor or fine motor movement.  All three types of movement are controlled by the spacial mind, however in the case of "yoking" or Daoyin the spacial mind does not effect the body directly it must first unify with the qi/prana which then acts as an intermediary pulling (or pushing) the whole physical body along.  So fine motor movement, like typing, is almost impossible to do because it requires direct mental control of the fingers.

Pantanjali's "inhibition of the modifications of the mind," may simply be describing the discarding of all fine and gross motor control.   Perhaps it also includes the discarding of artifice, effort, and the maintenance of fantasies.  That would put it pretty close to an early definition of Laozi's  key concept: wuwei (not doing, or non-aggressive intentionality).

A quick scan of blogs dealing with the question of "yoking" turned up this:

Importantly, yoga did not mean “yoke” or “union” in its classical usage, despite what most yoga teachers and popular writers on yoga say today. But, as many contemporary scholars of Indian philosophy will point out, it would indeed be odd for yoga to mean something like “yoke” or “union” since the objective of Patanjali’s yoga, as it is laid out in the Yoga-Sutra, is for the yogi to recognize and realize the true nature of the universe – i.e. that pure consciousness (purusa) is distinct from mere matter (prakrti), which includes our minds and our thoughts. In other words, the yogi does not seek union or oneness with the world; rather, he seeks to liberate himself from his attachment to the worldly.

And I would respond that to distinguish consciousness (spacial mind and qi) from matter (body mass and ideas) is simply a returning to our original nature.  I would tend to describe our original nature as a functional order rather than a "union" since "union" is really a matter of perspective--whether we call it one, two (one 'yoked' to one) or three (one yoked to two) really depends where "we" are standing.  Does "our" original nature really have any fixed limits?  Sounds like liberation to me!

Defeat All Dirty Power!

Below is the text of the flyer for George Xu's latest public offerings in San Francisco.  It's poetry, of a sort.  The first time I met George was around 1990.  My first teacher, Bing Gong was making a formal introduction on my behalf.  George was briefly delighted and then went into a wild rant about how everyone was doing Tofu Tai Chi.  He proceeded to define and contrast Tofu Tai Chi with the other cosmological possibilities and then began demonstrating maximum spring shaking power as the antidote to all this squishy food practice.  I was hooked.

In case you are wondering, "dirty power" is anything generated from a body which does not conform to the principle of "Dead physical body"  --Also known as XU, which was the topic of my last post.


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2011 Seminar with Master George Xu

Seminar 1: Master George Xu will teach Chen Style Tai Ji , secret of max gravity, 3rd level of internal power, pure and large internal power, form and Tai Ji push hand principles, and Wu Tang Qi Kung. Unit empty pure force will defeat all dirty power force and weak force.

Seminar 2: Master George Xu will teach Xing-Yi Six Harmony - Ten Animals, Xing-Yi 10 principles, 10 different circles, Seventh Harmony to the enemy and Eighth Harmony to the universe, 3 level of 10 Dan Tian training (small internal, large internal, space spiritual Dan Tian), and Qi Kung training.

Seminar 3: Master George Xu will teach Ba Gua basics and dragon eagle form, Ba Gua snake, dragon, tornado, three different power, Ba Gua principles and usage. Dead physical body follow intelligence internal power and pure internal power follow space spiritual power.

Seminar 4: Master George Xu will teach new secret from Europe, Tai Chi form and principles, two men training, test your internal power perfection, intelligence and purity. Tai Ho of Tai Chi, Natural style secrets. Teach you to be as powerful and wild as tiger, fast as lighting, large like ocean, spiral as tornado, heavy as mountain, light as feather at the same time.

Fee:  $120 one day, $180 both days

Please register in advance.

When:

1. Feb. 12-13 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

2. March 5-6 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

3. March 26-27 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

4. April 30 - May 1 Sat & Sun 9-5pm

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Also: Rory Miller will be in the San Francisco Bay Area again Feb. 18th-20th.  Check it out!



Me & friends at Rory's workshop in last September

Chi Kung for Making Babies

Year after year, day after day, I hear people expressing enthusiasm for qigong.  I suppose we could say I share their enthusiasm, after all, I've spent many, many years practicing qigong every single day.  The problem is that qigong is not an enthusiastic tradition.

After something on the order of 30,000 hours of practice  all I can say is, I don't know anything.  (According to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours theory, I have accumulated enough experience to have mastered qigong three times!)

To me, the practice of qigong is about becoming a baby.  It is about returning to innocence.  It is about discarding knowledge for the simple reason that babies have it all, already.

Healing?  No one knows what causes healing.  If your life is causing you stress or pain, return to simplicity.  Start from the beginning.  Qigong is a series of movement strategies to coax you back, back to the beginning of the process, or the project, or the job, back to the movement, back to the original inspiration which started to take shape in your body.  Qigong is a process of unraveling, it is a type of forgetting.  Is it medicine?  I dare say it is not.  Can it result in healing? I think it can.

Discovery?  Yes, you will make discoveries along the way, but then you must discard them.  If you build them up into a system of levels and achievements, treat those levels the way any 2 year old would treat a castle made of wood blocks.  Cast them asunder.  Because orthodoxy must have a way to renew itself or its qi will become stale.

Forms?  Forms take you back to before you were born.  They are a way to dance in your ancestor's body.  They collect the width, and breadth, the boundaries of movement knowledge.  They are empty.  Honor that emptiness.

If you write about your discoveries, have the child-like humility to memorize them, and then eat them.

In two years of writing this blog I have not recommended a single book about how to do qigong.  This is not because I'm an asshole.  It's because by the time these books are printed the qi is already stale.  Babies like to chew on books.  I've yet to find one that tasted the way a book should taste.

Five Levels of Muscle Training

This is a description of internal martial arts from the point of view of muscles.  These five levels apply to taijiquan, baguazhang, xingyiquan and (applied) qigong:

1. Moving and Coordinating; running, jumping, rolling, lifting, stretching, etc.


2. Static Structure; The ability to hold a static shape for a long period of time, and transfer force applied on any part of the body to the feet, the back or another limb.


3. Continuous Structure with Movement;  All muscles must move in twists and spirals following the flow of the bones and ligaments.  Muscles weaken and become sensitive.  Force can be applied in motion at any angle from any part of the body.  Force can be avoided without losing whole body integration.


4. Empty and Full at the Same Time;  All muscle tension must be discarded along with all intention to move.   Any solid concept of body structure must be discarded or melted away.  Muscles function like liquid and air.  (Power becomes unstoppable but unfocused and difficult to direct.)


5. Whole Body Becomes a Ball.  Resistance training for big muscles only.  Small muscles are used mainly for sensitivity and force transfer (ligament support).  Muscles move only by "ten directions breathing," they move in all directions using expansion and condensation, not lengthening and shortening.

Notes:

The separation of jing and qi, which happens automatically in stillness, needs to be available in motion to enter level 4.

In order to act through a body, that body must be felt as a dream.  Dreaming is not like the conscious mind.  If you think about running, you are likely to stumble.  In order to run, speak, or do any of these types of muscle training, you must first dream it.  In order to reach level 5, levels 1 through 4 must be felt as dream.  In other words, they can be done spontaneously by feeling, without thinking, or willing.

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Thoughts:

From my experience, this order is essential.  Each level takes a minimum of two years training.  Some internal traditions attempt to start their training at level 4 and then go back and fill in gaps in levels 1 and 2 through diligent forms practice.  The attempt to fill gaps in level 3 through push-hands training.  That seems like a mistake.

The quickest way to get level one skills is through rough play or dance (forms with speed and rhythm).

Level 2 can only be learned through a teacher/partner who tests your structure.

Levels 3 and 4 will be inhibited by strength training.

The key to transitioning from level 3 to level 4 is non-aggression, wuwei.  Aggression is refined to perfection and then discarded.  This transition probably requires working with emotionally mature partners.

Applications do not work at level 4.  Period. But paradoxically, the ability to use weight and momentum improves.

The good news! Yes, it takes at least ten years (two years for each level, and a minimum of three hours everyday), but levels 2 through 5 can be practiced at any age.  Levels 2 through 5 actually get easier with age because muscles become weaker and skin becomes looser!

Should You Have Sex With Your Qigong Teacher?

September being Yoga Month, I happened on an article yesterday in Common Ground called, "Should You Sleep With Your Yoga Teacher."  It's hardly worth linking too...and sorry it's not on-line yet.  In a few words; it was wishy-washy.  The majority of Yoga teachers quoted the precept, "Do no harm."  Which is of course a fantasy, not a precept.  But it makes an interesting contrast with the Martial Arts precept, "Do maximum harm."

Neither precept gives us much to go on.   The article retreated to the standard American office protocol; people in positions of power should not abuse their power.  Do not coerce your students to have sex with you.  Duh.

I was disappointed.  Had I been writing the article I might have said something about how Yoga classes generally have a hypnotic quality.  All the Yoga teachers they posed the question to talked about the importance of creating something elusive called "Sacred Space."  In a Yoga class the teacher will go through a series of requests.  Do this, now do that, now relax, now take a breath (as if you would forget) now do this progressively more difficult thing, now relax, now do this, now do abracadabra-vinyasa (half the class doesn't know what this means but they all pretend they do and just follow someone else).  In short suggestions followed by compliance followed by more difficult or unusual requests.  Hypnoses.

Until recently, perhaps because of  my contrary nature, I have had an aversion to thinking about hypnosis.   But no more.  I'm into it (more blog posts coming up!), and I think it's an important tool for learning.

In the context of Yoga as hypnosis, the question comes up, do Yoga students have conscious will?  If they have given over their conscious will to their teacher, then how can they consent?  Notice I didn't say "free will," I said "conscious will."  Hypnosis probably requires that the person being hypnotized freely give over control of their conscious will to the hypnotizer.

This is possible because conscious will is probably an illusion.  You can wiggle you foot four different ways--

1.  you can plan to wiggle it and then wiggle it,

2.  you can think "I'm wiggling my foot" while you are wiggling it,

3.  you can think, "wow, I just noticed that I was wiggling my foot unconsciously,"

4.  or you can wiggle your foot and not even know you wiggled it (but a machine can measure it).

We usually prefer to believe we are having sex because of a conscious decision, certainly that is the legal requirement, but in reality we may be acting on mostly unconscious "factors," like hormones and smells and conditioning.  We may be just telling ourselves that we are entirely free agents.  I don't know.

Daoism is clear about this.  Sex is OK if you are trying to have a baby.  Otherwise it's a really inefficient use of jing and qi.

Most martial arts classes are not too hypnotic, but there is a continuum on the one hand between;

•  classes where students independently run most of their own workout and come together to do two person routines or competitive activities and...

•  classes where a teacher guides the students through a slow series of suggestions, many of them about illusive qi flow and the visualization of colored clouds.

So my, my dear readers, I leave it in your hands to answer the question:  Should You Have Sex With Your Qigong Teacher?

UPDATE:  (I've decided I'm going to start teaching Taoist Yoga sometime this Fall.)

UPDATE:  Here is a weird blog on Sexy Yoga from China.

What Are All the Different Styles of Chi Kung?

I'm working on a web page that will be a clear and thorough explanation of Qigong.  It will include links to articles which explore various details in greater depth.  The following is a short section I have been working on:

Below is a list of all the styles of qigong.  Nearly all qigong practices are named after a cosmological principle (like hunyuan, which means original chaos) or a metaphor which is specific to Chinese culture like Wild-goose, (which means lots of weird movements stuck together in one form).  I haven't included every single name because the same type of qigong sometimes goes by different names, this is a list of qigong by characteristics and type.

I first started studying qigong in 1977 when I was 10 years old because it was considered a basic requirement of Northern Shaolin training.  I first heard the term qigong when I was about 20 in the late 1980's as qigong fever was sweaping Mainland China.  By 1995 I had seen every type of qigong on this list.  Every year I hear someone claim to have discovered a new, yet ancient, type of qigong that is more special that all the rest.  Inevitably what they are practicing is just one the following repackaged.  While I find the claims a little pretentious, the trend itself is positive.  All forms of qigong become very personal over time because all dedicated practitioners will naturally combine and integrate the following types of qigong to suit their needs, values and in accordance with their temperament.  I myself have created two "new" types of qigong; Tiger Skin Qigong and Chicken Toe Qigong.  Here is the list:

Zhangzuan (Standing Meditation, done in various postures)

Wu Xing-Five Organs (While the movements themselves may differ from school to school, the basic idea that each organ generates, and is tonified or depleted by, a particular quality of movement is the same.)

3 Dantians (the use of swinging movement generated from, and integrated with, the three centers of the body, abdomen, chest and head) (Note: Swinging the arms from the lower dantian while shifting weight from foot to foot is the most widespread form of qigong.  Variations are used in almost all martial arts schools.)

Cloud Hands (a simple asymmetrical movement of the arms which can be use as a base for integrating other types of qigong)

Muscle Tendon Lengthening (The art of stretching)

Golden Ball (Moving qi around the dantian)

8 Extraordinary Meridians (Exploring how qi moves around the surface of the body at the moment of birth)

Heaven & Earth (Micro/macro cosmic orbit, three dimensional pulsing & elasticity, usually symmetrical movement)

Spine training (Bend the Bow and Shoot the Arrow; drawing qi into the spine for healing, power, and for connecting the movement of the limbs to the spine )

Chan Su Jing, (Silk Spinning --joint releasing & spiraling movements) go

Immortals Dancing in the Clouds (Bone Marrow Washing, Sinew integration, and development of spherical movement)

Daoyin (Orthodox Daoist Lineage Hermit Practice which uses extensive stretching, with rolling slapping jumping, pounding, scraping and self massage.  Sometimes broken into pieces, sometimes combined with circus training or monkey kungfu.)

Hunyuan (Prenatal movement rediscovered with an emphasis on the movement of fluids and the development of the qualities of empty and full.  Often asymmetrical.)

8 Silken Brocade (8 Sinew lengthening and integrating movements)

Wild Goose (A particular teacher's 'list of favorates' put together into a form linking them together.)  (Geese in the wild do lots of different types of movement.  They run, hop, swim, fly, flap, squawk, root, gargle, preen, stretch, stand on one leg, etc...)

Tai Chi--(Taijiquan, the martial art, can be practiced purely to get the benefits of improved balance, mobility, flexibility, and circulation.  In this case it is often simplified and/or made symmetrical. )

Conditioning Techniques  (Iron shirt, Gold Bell, iron palm--toughening exercise for forearms,shins, and torso)

Taoist (Daoist meditation is sometimes taught as stillness qigong.  Particularly jindan, the golden elixir, and various tension dissolving techniques).  (Sometimes the deity visualization intermediary practices are taught without explicit naming of the deities-- only their attributes as visualized.)

Now that I've released the comprehensive list I encourage people to challenge it!  Have you seen or practiced a type of qigong not on the list?  Can you describe it's attributes?

Note: Obviously I've discarded the standard Communist Government organization.  I've never seen Buddhist, Confucian, or Neo-Confucian qigong.

Update: We had a discussion on Facebook, where my blog now appears (search for Scott P Phillips if you want to be my friend).  I decided that the last category "Taoist" is an identity, and therefore not suitable as a category because it opens up the possibility of naming techniques after identity groups of regions.  Therefore, I am changing the "Taoist" Category to "Inner Alchemy."

Having a Ball Performing Martial Arts

I couldn't help but comment on this little tiff.  Chris started it over here on Martial Development.  I think it relates to Chiron's comments on commitment.

Basically they are excited about a guy who chopped his arm during a martial arts ritual.  I've been blogging about this stuff all year.  Here are a few back posts:

The Real History of Martial Arts and Trance

The Origins of the Boxer Uprising

More Spirit

What David Mamet Understands

Basically it's all performance, even if sometime in the future it might be the thing that saves your life.  But even if it does save your life you won't know for sure that some other factor didn't intervene.  Perhaps your attacker slipped, or better yet he had a flashback to a Flintstones Episode he saw when he was nine and forgot to keep killing you.

Here is a real video!  One that demonstrates why the greatest performers are also the greatest predators! (Watch the whole thing, it keeps getting better.)

Tangki

In Tainan I saw a Tangki (Mandarin: Jitong) at the Tian Tan Gong (Alter to Heaven Temple).  He was wearing shoes, and all yellow cotton clothing.  He was doing a treatment/exorcism on a man in a wheel chair whose legs looked a little swollen, they both looked to be in their late 40’s.  They were directly in front of the gods, in the center of the temple in a small space between a giant incense burning and an altar table.  For the Tangki to dance around the man he had to wheel himself forward and backwards about a foot, which kept him involved while he sat there.

I don’t know what God was possessing the Tangki, or even if he was possessed, perhaps not, or only a little bit (I did not see him “fall” out of trance at the end).  He did a martial arts like dance holding a bunch of incense in one hand.  It was already going when I entered the temple and continued for about 10 minutes.  Using the incense, at times he appeared to be writing Chinese characters in the air around the body of the guy in the wheelchair while making sword fingers with the other hand.  Sometimes he held a posture while pointing his sword fingers at his own abdomen.  Sometimes he touched the man, at one point he pushed vigorously on the back of his head.  He shook and did fajing (explosive power release) a lot.  His breathing was somewhat erratic and audible.

Toward the end, the Tangki had someone bring him a paper cup of something, probably water, and he pointed  at it (concentrating his qi into it?) and danced with it for a while before giving it to the guy and having him spill it and spread it around on his legs.

When he was done he went over to the side and sat down on a bench, he was pouring sweat.  Then the guy in the wheelchair jumped up and started dancing.  Just kidding.  During the ritual I talked to one of several people who were watching, a young man who seemed upset and said the man in the wheelchair was his uncle.

There are many similarities between the Qigong master I saw the other night and the Tangki.  Both are self taught.  Both are called.  Both discover their gift.  Both poke and prod.  Both are doing mysterious healing on someone else.  I believe Tangki’s will accept trivial donations of money, but they essentially, accept a life of poverty along with the job/role of being Tangki, they both express the importance of keeping money out of the ritual.

Frankly, the gongfu performance I saw in the park the morning in between the two had some similarities to the Tangki exorcism too.  The dancing around in martial postures, the importance given to breathing, and the fajing.

The blended ritual I saw is not in these two videos, but a lot of other Tangki stuff is, and Youtube is amazing:





Also, to continue with my stating the obvious jag; There is an enormous wealth of video about Chinese ritual on youtube or google video search if you use Chinese Characters. ?? (Tangki)

Between Theorizing and Storytelling

I've got 45 Million blogs to write and only a limited amount of time.

I'm in Tainan, which is the old capital of Taiwan, meaning it was a place of early settlement. I get the sense that governance was not universal until about halfway into the Japanese occupation, say 1920.

My first night here I met up with a friend of Professor Hsieh named Sharon Lee, who generously offered to translate for me.  We went to Luzhu to meet a Qigong master who was treating people for free at a steel bolt factory.  Sharon is getting regular treatments from him.  I watched him treat several people with a minute long vigorous painful massage which was heavy on the vibratory poking side of things.  We then sat in an office and drank tea for over an hour.  The tea was good.  I got to ask a lot of questions, but there were about 10 people in the room and most of them were asking questions too.

If I got the story right, he did begin studying with a Daoist teacher in the forest but he then went on to do his own practice which is a sitting still practice of some sort.  At a certain point he realized he could heal people and so naturally he started studying Buddhism as that is the biggest cult here which has a doctrine of compassion that involves fixing/curing people.

However, he side stepped Buddhism too, after realized that he found it impossible to memorize Sutras.  At some point after he had been treating people he looked into Chinese Herbal medicine and found it easy to understand.  He soon began writing long herbal prescriptions.  Interestingly he doesn't actually write the prescriptions himself, he channels Yao Wang (Medicine King) a Tang Dynasty God who does the prescriptions for him.

A Standard "Nuggie"

But besides this, he said no gods are involved in his healing ceremonies.  He is a vegetarian and encourages others to be also, he often tells people to skip dinner, and he does not allow payment for healings.  He does drive a fancy German car however, so he has some big donors.  While he says he can not teach what he does, he holds ceremonies for an inner circle at his home, which has some sort of altar.  At these ceremonies he has other people read the Heart Sutra.

He said I have a kidney problem which is manifesting in my chest.  He is clearly from what I would call the "Structure School" of Chinese medicine.  I don't know if he thought my problem was acute or chronic, but that's how he operates.  The heat in Southern Taiwan undoubtedly has given me an acute kidney problem, but I recover instantly in the presence of air conditioning, which by the way he says is bad for everyone's health.  He didn't give me a full one minute treatment, I got only the 15 second version on my sternum, but that was three days ago and I can still feel it.  Last time I had a treatment like this I think I was 13.  Back then we called in a chest "nuggie."

My long time readers know that I call this kind of guy a Qi Jock, and I'm generally not impressed.  But as a student of religion I think he has an interesting take on what a body is.  He refused to be pinned down on any definitions of things like jing, qi and shen.  He does have the idea that in stillness jing and qi differentiate and that leads to an extraordinary type of freedom.  I think he is fulfilling a real need in people's lives.

The orthodox Daoist in me says don't get in the way of other people subordinating themselves with the idea that they need extraordinary powers of healing.  I can make this point very simple.  At the end of the day, after violating the most basic of Daoist precepts--"don't waste jing and qi"--a person wants to give in to something.  Some people rent "Die Hard 3" and fantasize about being Bruce Willis, others go and get a Qigong treatment.  Which is more effective is a question of perspective and circumstance.

UPDATE: I must have temporarily blocked this out. In addition to saying I had a kidney problem he said, "Ni shi tai peng." (You're too fat.)