Product Review

Daoism celebrates and cultivates the art of living in accord with the cyclical play of natural energies, maintaining an easy, humorous, yet commonsense approach to everyday life. Daoism cultivates our capacity to spiral from the serene and tranquil to the energetic and dynamic. In this spirit, the Daoists created refined qigong systems of meditative movement to induce harmony with nature, generate energy, and at the highest levels, to achieve spiritual illumination.

Qigong teaches us to harmonize body, mind and breath while using scientifically choreographed movements to stimulate or relax our energy. Qigong bolsters the primal, reproductive vitality, or "jing"; it potentiates the daily bioelectrical energy, or "qi"; and it refines the light of our radiant spirit, or "shen". Imagine yourself as a candle: the candle body is your jing, the flame is your qi, and the candle light your shen. These three treasures are interdependent. Cultivation of the one leads to cultivation of the others, just as neglect or dissipation of the one will adversely affect the others.

Qigong divides into two main categories-the tranquil and the dynamic. But, typically of Daoist practice, tranquil qigong will have a dynamic component-motionless on the surface, yet moving the qi internally. Dynamic qigong will also cultivate tranquility, learning to move vigorously from a still core. Skillful practitioners learn to be aware of and incorporate the full spectrum of internal and external activity, equally comfortable with the tranquil or the dynamic, always cultivating the seed of one within the soil of the other.

One of the most delightful and accessible of the dynamic qigongs has to be the Five Animal Frolics. The exercises combine the internal with the external, invigorating the organs and soothing the nervous system, while strengthening and toning the external musculature.