Published in Qi Journal, Spring, 2001

Qinway Qigong

Sigrid McLauglin    Tel: (831)426.1597

When I heard for the first time of a powerful Qigong Master from China who turneed out to be Master Qinyin, I had been doing medical Qigong at the Land of the Medicine Buddha in Soquel, Santa Cruz County, for two years. I had decided to resort to Qigong for healing a chronic cough that had plagued me for nine years at that point. I had tried everything I could think of to deal with this nagging problem without success. I had tried Western medicine, oriental medicine, and different diets without any improvement. So now it is Qigong.

In March of this year, I coincidentally heard about Qigong master Qinyin and her Qinway Qigong's approach to healing through energized fasting. I didn't know what this meant then, but I resolved that I would try to achieve healing through bodily cleansing. I had done short fasts before and noticed, that if I fasted I coughed very little. Meanwhile I had also begun to feel signs of incontinence and pain where I had an operation for an inguinal hernia, due to all the coughing; and another problem had arisen: as a result of a sports injury in 1991, I had hardly any cartilage left in my left hip joint, had bone spurs in my groin, and suffered from bad pain and increasingly restricted motion. The allopathic doctor advised me to schedule a hip joint replacement. With a wish to heal these ailments I did an eleven-day fast in March with Qigong master Qinyin. The experience of that Qigong fast was, as I noted in my diary, "like an initiation, like a rite of passage, an opening to a new reality. I'll never be the same. Life changing. Mind-boggling". Unusual things happened at the beginning of the fast which signified to me that this was an important event in my life.

On the same first day at home after starting the fast at Qigong Master Qinyin's home I looked at picture, and suddenly saw a halo forming around her head that fluctuated down to her torso. I was in shock. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. I checked my vision, looking at other pictures: no halo. Also, when I looked at her picture, I began to sway. I was sensing energy entering me. This was outright uncanny. I was in awe.

Part of the energized fast is the reception of energy that Qigong Master Qinyin sent twice daily. When I sat down to receive the energy, I started swaying again. Later in the Qigong fast during which I felt normal, except for occasional feelings of weakness, cold, or light-headedness, I noticed that I received different kinds of energy from Qigong master Qinyin, sometimes it would be light yang, sometimes heavier yin energy that would bend me backward, as if trying to slow me down and push me toward the earth.

As the days of Qigong fasting continued, I still coughed, but less; my hip still hurt, but less. And I felt an increasing lightness; at times I thought I would float up the stairs outside of my house. I felt very calm, very slow, very kind, somewhat detached, and very benevolent to everything and everyone around. I lived my normal life, but at a reduced speed. I realized that my increasing energetic sensitivity and my growing detachment to what was happening on the physical plane were part of Qigong master Qinyin's detoxification, namely the mental and spiritual part. Maybe this was the area where most of my work was needed.

When I began the Qigong fast, I had no idea that it involved purifying mind and spirit, and that her underlying motto was that a body can only be healthy if mind and spirit are balanced and pure, as the ancient Greeks knew already, too. In her practice, Qigong master Qinyin not only teaches physical Qigong movements that affect the body, but also adds words and music that guide the mind and the spirit toward mental harmony and spiritual purity in the Taoist-Buddhist tradition, which, in my view, the other major religious traditions in essence share. Her message is: Emotional equanimity symbolized by unruffled lake water, and ethical purity rendered visual in the image of the lotus flower that is rooted in mud, yet retains its immaculate whiteness, are the essential prerequisites for physical health.

I finished the Qigong fast well. I know my healing will proceed on all three levels and take a long time, given the chronic nature of the cough and the long-term deterioration of the joint. I will continue the daily practice of her two Qigong tapes. Meanwhile, I have noticed changes in my Qigong practice. I've become more sensitive to the movement of energy. I can generate that movement often through my awareness and intention, that is, I can transport qi to areas of my choice. And I am utterly grateful for these discoveries, this opening to forces around me and in me that I didn't think or know about before. Who would have thought that I would come to believe that I could eat the Sun and the Moon? Now I do.

Last update 08/19/07.