A Simple Qigong Exercise to Do Every Day

what is the singular thing you can do to extend your life and be healthier besides the obvious diet and exercise practices that we all know about what is something less well known all the ancient doctors in traditional Chinese medicine talk about how Chi blood and even lymph flow are key to longevity and staying healthy all the years of your life some would even say that circulation is the singular key to Health and Living a long life that is free of major illnesses now within East Asia for thousand of years one practice has been highly prized and that is chiong now chiong has been highly prized because unlike other practices that improve cardiovascular function like physical weightlifting Chong doesn't damage the joints it doesn't exhaust you like the morning after a really really tough workout and it isn't something that really has many cons in terms of how much time you do it some doctors Mystics and monst argued this practice was the singular key to living a long life and that practice is Chong hi guys it's Dr Alex hin board licensed acupuncturist and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine author of the health book master of the day let's jump in here what is the purpose of all the thousands of kinds of chiong one of my mentors said the purpose of the 10,000 kinds of chiong is what's called Tong opening movement circulation and flow and we even know from Modern people in America today the number one cause of death still is cardiovascular disease which one could argue is just blood flow from bad enough exercise and a poor diet so flow on a material Level but even on a mental emotional level is good for the human spirit and therefore good for the body as well chiong is special in the regard that unlike a physical hard gym workout we are sure you sweat and you feel warmed up it is hard on the joints so you look at people who do lots of cycling or lots of high amounts of cardio they often will have joint damage by middle-age and even need knee replacements for example and lots of the people I know who are Runners now that is counter to longevity because joint replacement are a very modern technology that doesn't exist in the old days if you had to limp in severe pain from 50 until death that is a very hard life to have but this interesting research on how chiong can help you now in particular there's one research paper right here and this research paper is called da Yin aka chiong the origin development potential mechanisms and clinical applications now in the article there's a fascinating little diagram that talks about three of the ways that chiong works in terms of mechanisms of action so one of the ways is that it works on the HPA axis so it works on chronic stress hormone secretion and another one is the way it interacts with the immune system and finally a third is the way it regulates inflammation so chiong can influence blood pressure blood sugar your immune system inflammatory markers in all of these ways now this first chiong exercise is a very very simple one that you see in lots of different chiong forms in China and East Asia so remember that what makes something chiong is not just waving around your hands or doing an exercise it's the combination of breathing breathing exercises or sometimes altered forms of breathing the combination of visualization or intention as well as physical movements those three things usually make something into chiong now for this one it's a very simple one you see in lots of forms so you're basically going to hold your hands like this and the external movement is just inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale so what we're going to do first is just do the physical movement right so we'll just go inhale 2 3 4 exhale 2 3 4 inhale 2 3 4 exhale 2 3 4 inhale 2 3 4 exhale 2 3 4 that's the physical movement and one thing you want to work on is just lengthening the breath so for example you're having a rough day at work and there's a lot of work stress and you have 5 minutes on your lunch break and what do you do just go sit down in your car and just begin with this simple practice which is just purely doing you're going to inhale to the count of four is a good one and exhale to a count of four and you can close your eyes and just imagine when you inhale almost imagine like you're sucking in particles from the universe and as you exhale they're just forming this battery charge in your low abdomen right it's like you're sucking in these waves and particles from the universe and you're just condensing it in the abdomen like you're recharging your batteries breathing in I'm sucking in all these things as I breathe it out I push it down into recharging that battery in the low abdomen so this motion of just inhale exhale with a certain breath pattern is is one of the intro ways that you can practice chiong in daily life it's not complex it's not esoteric or mystical but it's simple and it really works now another simple kind of chiong you can do is just really a subtle body awareness we could call it so for a lot of what traditional Chinese medicine focuses on for healing is trying to develop that subtle body in daily life right a little bit of indigestion I'm going to be careful about diet today or I'm feeling a little bit too anxious maybe I'm going to hold off on the coffee but on an even more subtle level is really what's happening on a very very very small point and by practicing this exercise you can become increasingly sensitive to those micro changes before you get sick ancient doctors viewed the free flow of chi and blood movement in the body to be what leads to health and the opposite is what leads to death and illness we should say but there are three functional areas that tend to have issues more than others and we call them the upper jow upper burner middle burner and lower burner and I'm going to break them down into just one simple organ for us to focus on the upper burn is typically the heart that is weak and that symptomatic pattern looks like anxiety heart palpitations an elevated heart rate or actual cardiovascular disease and chest pain the middle jow is issues with digestion very commonly is what we call the spleen or the pancreas having issues bloating food sensitivities maybe a lot of fatigue or even some kinds of indigestion relate to the spleen pancreas in TCM and the lower gel lower burner it's kidney deficiency the kidney relates to issues with urination and Le can also be related to overall Vitality or exhaustion like the adrenals what we're going to do we're just going to close our eyes and we're just going to do a 10-second body scan I'm pretending that you're here on lunch watching this so I'm just feeling the top of my head going to my eyebrows to my eyes to my jaw and my neck muscles are they tight I'm feeling tension at the base of my skull and in my neck and then we're going into the upper burner area here and we may notice wow I'm feeling my heart beating right now in my chest that's a good indicator of what's going on right now with stress so we're saying do I feel pressure do I feel tension do I feel my heart beating do I feel my heart beating fast then we come down to the middle burner right middle burner dealing with digestion am I feeling pretty bloated am I feeling gas or heaviness or pressure or even maybe burning any digestion right now so we're just scanning this area above the belly button below the sternum is there sensation there right now that sensation being the precursor of a problem just like we felt the sensation the upper burner with the heart is there tension do we feel the heart is it beating hard is it beating fast and then we come to the lower burner the area below the belly button then we think do I feel pressure pain distension there right is it bloating pressure and pain is it bladder tension or bladder urgency if you're female an issue with your cycle lower abdominal pain or cramp so going through from the top scanning just the Torso for the time being the upper burner from the neck to the heart sternum then from the top of the stomach the end of the sternum to the belly button what is this Zone feeling like and then below the belly button what is this Zone feeling like and practicing that little subtle body awareness throughout the day you'll notice I do have problems with these organs and I notice there is sensation some something is going on there and that something is that little baby seed of something that could be illness or disease down the line so this body scan is something you can do as part of your chiong before or after or randomly throughout the day so those are some simple chiong practices you can do daily at home or at work and those are just some of the healing practices available within traditional Chinese medicine now I've also put together a free guide which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine it's the first link right below the video and you guys can download that totally free and also and if you'd like to book a visit with me locally in Los Angeles or virtually via tele medicine you can contact my practice and Clinic that way and I put together something brand new which is very exciting called the healing Library it is a series of online courses on how to heal with traditional Chinese medicine and we are slowly rolling out courses on individual health conditions as well as an overall course on an introduction to healing and how to heal with TCM so this is one of the ways we're trying to keep this channel you know sponsor and AD free as much as we can rather than me trying to pitch some supplement or some nonsense that I know you've already bought and probably has not done anything so you can learn more about the healing library and the online courses available there right below this video and then before you guys go there's a related video on chiong and self-healing right there