Qigong, or chi gung (literally "Life Energy Cultivation") is a practice of aligning breath, movement, and awareness for exercise, healing, and meditation. With roots in Chinese medicine, martial arts, and philosophy, Qigong is traditionally viewed as a practice to cultivate and balance qi (chi) or what has been translated as "intrinsic life energy". Typically a Qigong practice involves rhythmic breathing coordinated with slow stylized repetition of fluid movement, a calm mindful state, and visualization of guiding qi through the body. Qigong is now practiced throughout China and worldwide, and is considered by some to be exercise, and by others to be a type of alternative medicine or meditative practice. From a philosophical perspective, Qigong is believed to help develop human potential, allow access to higher realms of awareness, and awaken one's "true nature". [wikipedia *]

by Drew Hempel, MA

So my relative called up and mentioned, "I heard you healed your Mom with Qigong." I clarified, "Well actually it was the Qigong Master."

"Can you explain how he did it," he asked, "because I'm an engineer so I don't understand?"

This was of course a double-forked tongue comment. I know my brother-in-law is a big fan of the skeptical cable show Mythbusters but at the same time my mom also had previously been a skeptic and now she was promoting qigong to her friends. So what happened?

She said she woke up one morning and suddenly felt better - normal again. In fact she had more energy than normal. Considering she was 77, had a close call with death from viral meningitis and a history of heavy drinking at age 77, and then was put on serious drugs with dangerous side effects, her new energy really was miraculous.

For a long time she was barely able to walk up the stairs and the next day she suddenly felt better and walked a quarter mile! Her overnight recovery was something her friends noticed and commented about. At first I let my mom wonder what had happened but then I told her. Qigong Master, Jim Nance, had called me and we had talked for over 2 hours. During our conversation he informed me he was also having a "conversation" with my Mom. Haha.

My mom had already seen Qigong Master Jim Nance twice for his once a month "Free Friday" sample healings. Every time she got healed she left the Spring Forest Qigong Center feeling stronger and brighter. This time though, after that phone call, her health was dramatically and deeply transformed.

Qi + Gong

So anyway I explained some of that to my brother-in-law but I didn't really get into the science of Qigong or any of the related spiritual healing traditions like yoga meditation or trance dancing shamanism of Africa and the Americas. Qi is translated different ways - "energy" or just "function". Gong means "work".

I mean my brother-in-law knew I was way into this topic but I had tried to explain the science to him before and he just kind of brushed me off. O.K. I admit I went to the opposite extreme to tell my brother all the crazy stuff I could think of - just to make him admit he didn't really want to try it out. He never indicated he was insincere! He said he wanted to call the center to get a healing himself. Of course I gave him the information of the website http://springforestqigong.com but I also said - yeah when qigong master Chunyi Lin was in deep meditation in full lotus yoga position in the mountains in China he even levitated up nine feet! I said - of course most people are not going to believe this. You know - just trying to expose my brother-in-law's skepticism. Haha.

I did say how the skeptics like to claim the science results are just a placebo effect or the lack of a good placebo control but how these skeptics have not gone to personally investigate the Spring Forest Qigong masters. Meanwhile one of the top research hospitals, the Mayo Clinic, has several doctors on record as positively supporting Spring Forest Qigong - doctors like the oncologists Dr. Nisha Manek and Dr. Neil Kay. Of course the Mayo Clinic does not promote nor recommend Spring Forest Qigong but again there are individual doctors who have positively worked with the qigong masters.

Mayo Clinic Dr. Ann Vincent called the results of her "randomized, controlled" aka "gold standard" study of "external qi" healing to be "especially impressive" because the patients had chronic pain for over five years, previously untreatable by Western science. The skeptics claim that because these patients wanted to be healed then it was not really an objective study - well hey if Qigong worked and the western medicine didn't work then why should it be objective? Haha. Medicine is about getting results. But still the scientists want to know how Qigong and all the other nonwestern spiritual healing traditions really work.

Qigong: The Highest Technology of All Technologies

The irony is that to scientifically understand spiritual healing there has to be a deeper understanding of science which, of course, delves into either cutting edge research or the philosophical foundations of science itself.

Skeptics want repeatable, "off the shelf" technology so to speak - a commodity or product that can be purchased and used - made to standards that are replaceable parts, mechanized. Qigong master Yan Xin states that qigong is the "highest technology of all technologies." How is this possible when the nuclear physicist testing Yan Xin and the other scientists, medical doctors at Harvard, etc. - they all get positive mind-blowing results from external qi energy but the results cannot be explained nor replicated to satisfy the demands of the skeptical scientists?

The answer is in a field of science that has just been recognized by the mainstream scientists only in the past five years - the field of "quantum biology." For example in 2006 I was satirically promoting quantum biology and Qigong on the top science blog of University of Minnesota professor P.Z. Myers. Of course Myers, a staunch Neo-Darwin atheist, banned me but only after I had created enough of an impact to cause his followers to repeatedly ask me questions on the topics at hand. Sure most ignored me but a few were intrigued.

OK. To be fair to the subject matter, we have to consider the claims of the Qigong masters, themselves. I finished my master's degree in 2000 by taking the Qigong classes from Spring Forest Qigong master Chunyi Lin through a local community college in Minnesota. My final master's degree credit was a self-directed research in the African Studies department under the topic of non-dual, nonwestern philosophy. I was using the book The Racial Contract as my theoretical foundation, challenging the concept of Platonic Natural Law. Literally a stretch. Haha. Pre-Socratic African Taoist yoga training. So I trained using a traditional manual called Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality.

I received ongoing energy transmissions from Qigong Master Chunyi Lin and also from his assistant who is Qigong Master Jim Nance, the first African-American Qigong Master.

So I was trained in healing which I did successfully. But I also accidentally pulled this old lady's spirit out of the top of her head - without touching her. I forgot not to pull energy blockages out of the top of the center of the skull. I didn't realize how powerful my energy was compared to hers and I had been recently fasting for a week on just half a glass of water.

This is called "bigu" or energy feasting and Chemistry professor Rustom Roy held a conference on Yan Xin qigong students going into bigu - he documented qigong students going without food yet maintaining their nutrition. [*]

One scientist speculated bigu could be some sort of gamma ray energy transmutation as Qigong Master Yan Xin had increased gamma rays as a byproduct of his healing energy. Anyway the old lady's spirit coming out of her skull felt like a heavy electromagnetic blob. She couldn't see what I was doing as I was standing next to her and she was sitting in a chair. But as soon as I felt the heavy electromagnetic blob get pulled out of the top center of her skull she immediately bawled and she kept bawling for at least 15 minutes. Others comforted her and she realized I had just made an honest mistake.

Also at the Level 3 Spring Forest Qigong Retreat Class I saw yellow forms shaped like humans created out of the top of the skull of Qigong master Chunyi Lin when he was in full lotus yoga position, healing people. Qigong Master Chunyi Lin, without me saying anything, said someone had seen these yellow human shaped forms out of his skull and so he explained that they were his "yin spirits" going out to heal people.

Then I saw yellow forms shaped like humans float in from outside the room - and they were hovering around Chunyi Lin while he was in full lotus doing his healing. Again I did not say anything but Chunyi Lin repeated that someone had seen this so he explained that those were dead people who came to him for healing and that this happens to him regularly. I had recently read of this same phenomenon of dead people spirits going to get healed from a spiritual master - only it was happening to the most famous meditation master monk of Thailand - Phra Acharn Mun who has his online.

Anyway I kept practicing Qigong but then there was a spacetime vortex spinning around me when I was in full lotus meditation -- the room was literally spinning around me. I didn't discover until ten years later as detailed in my training book -- a very intense read!

Tai-Chi being practiced in China

So Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality explains that my spirit was leaving my body without enough chi energy enveloping the spirit energy. Not enough electromagnetic energy to power the light energy - and so this causes dizziness. I needed to store my spirit energy in my lower tan tien, below and behind my navel - where I could build up the electromagnetic chi energy stronger.

Then after that meditation I experienced:who I am did not really mean my body nor did it mean my brain and so I came back feeling unattached to my material items. I "recycled" my old journal of 500 pages and I threw out one of my meditation cassettes as it seemed no longer necessary. Qigong Master Chunyi Lin said I had an enlightenment experience but that my mind was confused and that I should have called him and that it's important not to get too excited or too afraid.

Instead I had stopped practicing for a couple months and my energy channels closed up but before they did so fully Qigong Master Chunyi Lin stuck his finger to my forehead to further open up my third eye. You now like when E.T. says "ouch" and there's light from his fingertip? Same thing. It felt like a laser bliss in the center of my brain. After that I had a permanent magnetic bliss in the middle of my brain that did not go away even without practicing.

So that was 13 years ago. I spent ten years reading one scholarly book a day to convert my experiences back into science -- I could do this scholarly reading because I was in full lotus yoga position "flexing" my pineal gland to exorcise out any emotional blockages that would otherwise slow down my mental concentration.

I documented all my research online and then converted it into a free online book with 725 scholarly footnotes. I didn't have any delusions that somehow my experiences could be "converted" into science - only I thought science might provide me a level of "intellectual defense" to justify my further training.

So as I continued my research I was also doing third eye healing - but just lower level emotional blockages. People, strangers, thanked me and described my energy as "orgasmic" and "charming", etc. I was healing deep anger blockages of the liver or deep sadness blockages of the lungs. Anyway the heart energy reproductive bliss - I reported my experiences online and dubbed it the "O at a D" or "orgasm at a distance". It was a psychic mutual climax.

I could only find a few other verifications of this ability - one is a teacher in S.F. called Nitayama, aka the Tantra Mongoose. He has posted videos and testimonials of females thanking him for giving them repeated orgasms - at a distance - each time moving them deeper into a state of loving energy. I realized that this is what it meant to be a "real man" and yet even Aleister Crowley, the most famous sex magician, did not have this ability! Colin Wilson points this out when he describes Gurdjieff's ability of the "orgasm at a distance", as described in Rom Landau's book God is My Adventure.

Anyway finally as I kept researching I realized what I doing was all wrong - I was not purifying my energy. This was a dirty tantra practice. Also I was burning out my energy by constantly healing people - and so I told this to Qigong Master Chunyi Lin.

I "flexed" my pineal gland for him and he said: "It is great that you can give females bliss but your energy transmissions will always be weak until you store up your energy in your lower tan tien."

OK. So anyway, I was blogging on all of this and of course causing quite a stir as the typical male either wanted proof I could do this, preferably a video, or else they got really mad at me if I could read their energy online and I called them a "perv". Haha.

Finally the brother of Qigong Master Jim Nance noticed my blog and so Qigong Master Jim Nance called me up. I said to him, "Oh no. Am I in trouble? Haha. Whatever it is I will delete it."

I had deleted my previous blogs a few times already. So that gets back to how my Mom was actually healed by Qigong Master Jim Nance. When he called me he was driving and I joked that I trusted he could talk and drive since he had 360 degree vision. He said, "Well actually it's 4-D vision: Front, back, right and left at the same time."

I just went, "OK." He goes,"You can learn to do this!" I said, "OK." He goes,"No, really. You can do this!" I said, "Alright!" haha.

You Were Born A Healer: On Quantum Consciousness

So the really exciting message of these Qigong Masters - besides the testimonials of people they have healed who had serious conditions like late-term cancer, M.S., a rare lung disease that would have required a transplant (Esther Trejo) or severe epilepsy with seizures 22 hrs a day - besides all these amazing healings - the Qigong Masters really want people to know that anyone can be a spiritual healer. Chunyi Lin's book is called Born a Healer which means that all of us were born healers. But the question remains - how is this possible? What does it mean, scientifically, to be a spiritual healer?

So first of all science is founded on quantum physics which is the only physics course I've ever taken!

I took quantum physics my first year of college at the experimental Hampshire College. The course is taught by Harvard-trained physicist Herbert Bernstein and he states that everyone should take quantum physics as their first physics course because quantum physics is the foundation of science! So I just googled his name and sure enough his "quantum teleportation" model is being used to potentially improve NASA communications, among other uses.

I know he stated that his research had been declared top secret by the military at one point. But his teaching assistant was, amazingly, reading the same book that I was reading in my spare time - Mind and Nature: A necessary unity by Gregory Bateson. That book is about social systems theory using logical contradictions like the "double bind", a term that now is common parlance - sort of a fancy term for "mind fuck". Haha. It fits quantum consciousness.

So the thing is that quantum consciousness remains a taboo topic in science even though Bernard d'Espagnat, a physicist quantum textbook author, won the Templeton Foundation award for his argument that quantum physics proves non-local consciousness is real - beyond spacetime.

The crucial discovery is that consciousness can only be logically inferred and it can't be reproduced by technology. This is the exact same teaching as non-Western, non-dualism philosophy, a subject of my master's degree. O.K. so this is the fundamental point of quantum physics which has huge implications but of course the skeptics claim quantum consciousness really does not apply to living organisms - unless, of course, you accept the cutting-edge quantum biology research showing otherwise.

Do I really need to go into the details of quantum biology and quantum consciousness?

Not really because it's such a new field but the one thing that everyone can agree on is that the topic of quantum consciousness in biology is now officially acknowledged as being worthy of study. So, for example, Scientific American devoted a cover story to Vlatko Vedral's quantum research. The summary: Macro-quantum behavior is very real and most likely does exist in humans. "These effects are more pervasive than anyone ever suspected. They may operate in the cells of our body." That was May, 2011: Pretty recently.

So then we have a popularizer of physics do a lecture to the Royal Society of London, the founding institution of science: Jim Al-Khalili - Quantum Life: How Physics Can Revolutionise Biology and that was 2013. So these are not fringe scientists but the thing is that they are affirming what previously had been fringe science dismissed by the "skeptics". When we get into quantum biology consciousness, then quantum teleportation and quantum non-local entanglement become real possibilities.

One of the main scientists who have researched quantum biology consciousness is Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, who personally is also a Taoist. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho does think that this field of science also explains seemingly supernatural or paranormal phenomenon. So in her "Quantum Jazz" interview online she states:

I have no doubt that at least some of the more esoteric things people ascribe to quantum effects are real, such as instantaneous communication at a distance, remote healing, etc. But we can push the boundaries from the very conventional toward quantum coherence of the organism, to complete quantum coherence of the universe. I believe the universe is quantum coherent. Quantum coherence is everywhere. And if we know how to tune into it, we see it. If we ignore it, if we're very reductionist and mechanical in our thinking and in what we do, we'll miss it.

OK. So finally we can start to get into the "nuts and bolts" of the secret science of spiritual healing. I say "secret" because consciousness can only be logically inferred but also because this science is still on the fringes of the mainstream.

The subject of quantum biology is accepted and the topic of quantum consciousness is acknowledged but still often dismissed. The thing is, again, that while these phenomena can be documented to exist they cannot be reproduced as technology in a science lab or as a mass mechanized commodity.

For example when I read quantum chaos mathematician Ian Stewart's book Evolving the Alien that he co-wrote with a biologist, I contacted him to give my opinion. In the book it's stated that if an alien does exist then they have to be basically like a Taoist hermit. I said, somewhat jokingly, indeed Taoist hermits can travel into outer space already and so they are the true aliens!

But it is not like how scientists define it - rather the spirit travel is into another dimension and the traveling is done by quantum coherent biophoton energy. Ian Stewart responded to me that he did not believe in natural telepathy but he did think that in the future quantum qubits would enable real telepathy. Soon after, Ian Stewart had his response to me reworded and published in the prestigious science journal Nature. ("Play It Again Psam", 2005):

The adverts play up the advantages of installing a 'telepathic interface', don't they? They tell you that it will endow your mind with ESP, psi, supernatural powers, whatever. So, like everyone else, you had an Extel neurochip implanted in your brain, connecting you to the Espernet ..."

"They don't tell you about the downside, do they, Charlie? What the adverts don't mention is that as soon as you hook your brain up to the Espernet, anyone who can hack the net can hack straight into your mind. Not just to read it; to control it. Like I'm doing.

So as a quantum chaos mathematician, Ian Stewart is well aware of a hazard I had predicted in 2001 - having it published online as the Actual Matrix Plan. The Matrix hazard is inherent to the logarithmic mathematics of science - originally called the "music logarithmic spiral".

The attempt for a unified field theory as techno-spiritual evolution is the secret agenda of the skeptics like Richard Dawkins promoting the selfish gene and even synthetic biology using Buckyfullerene Platonic sacred geometry. If I have lost you, as a reader, that is my point - the singularity is the realm of "spooky-looky land" where military contractors and research labs like Sandia and Los Alamos combine with places like the Santa Fe Institute and the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, etc.

Professor David F. Noble argued that science arose out of Freemasonry and the Neo-Platonic Benedictine monasteries and that science still carries its secret techno-spiritual agenda which is apocalyptic - to replace man with a techno-Adam or atom as AI technology.

Quantum chaos mathematician, Steve Strogatz, states that with the extension of quantum chaos math: "We'll be stuck in an age of authoritarianism, except it'll no longer be coming from politics or religious dogma, but from science itself". (Steven Strogatz, "The End of Insight", The Edge World Question Center 2006, "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?")

So we can use science as a model but we cannot expect to replicate quantum consciousness in a lab, as a gadget, etc. Still science will attempt to do this and the results will be that the Machine takes over - the Metropolis, the Matrix. Automation is the number one cause of job loss, as the Luddites originally knew, but now it's even known in China. Humans have been an incredibly successful species on Earth but at a cost - with exponential population growth and exponential energy use growth has co-evolved exponential growth of technology.

The supercomputer quantum chaos math increasingly questions the very concept of human rational control of Nature and human rational control of society. Maybe human rationality has always been a myth.

The ecological crisis is another area of contention in science just as much as quantum consciousness - a lot of money is backing the idea that global warming is not human induced or not really catastrophic to human society, despite so many scientists stating that the political organizing is too little too late.Nothing is out of question when it comes to quantum consciousness - how mathematics is defined, the future of humanity, the secret of spiritual healing, etc. Everything is connected.