Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, Energy Medicine…and the Holy Spirit

What do yoga, tai chi/qigong, and energy medicine all have in common?

They all rely on what some call “life-breath” or “life-force.” Yoga may call it prana, tai chi and qigong may call it “qi” or “chi,” and energy medicine may call it, well, energy, but I believe these are all different names for the same thing.

Some people may think the concept of life-breath is “woo-woo,” but I believe firmly in its existence and that deep, lasting healing must incorporate it. When I encourage a therapy client to slow down, breathe deeply, and come back into their body, I believe something much deeper than just the physical is taking place. What they’re doing has cognitive, emotional, and even spiritual effects. Just like I believe the frantic, hectic, typical American lifestyle is doing much more harm than just to our physical bodies.

Yoga

In yoga, the breath is called “prana.” For all the other systems—the senses, organs, tissues, muscles, etc.—to be in balance, the prana must be healthy, flowing, and in balance. This is why I believe the most crucial part of yoga is the breath, not the fancy postures. If you never learn anything else in yoga, please learn to breathe. Deeply. Fully. Learn how to send the breath into your stomach, into your back, into your hips, into whichever parts of your body are in pain. That breath will then awaken digestive organs, muscles, and other parts of your body, causing a healing chain reaction. In fact, focusing too much on achieving a certain posture can distract us from the real benefits yoga has to offer, and it can continue the very dysfunction, perfectionism, and performance-anxiety we’re trying to get away from.

It greatly saddens me that in the West, we’ve taken yoga and infected it with the very things we need to be freed from. We’ve found a way to make it a performance, to make it about cardio and muscle-building and sweat. Yoga has all these benefits and more, but we rob ourselves when we strip it of the spiritual and make the breath only a physical, mechanical thing. I’ve been in yoga classes before that did not relax me or help ease depression or anxiety, and it’s because the spirit behind them was competitive, performative, un-conscious, and un-spiritual. I’m grateful that I got such a good, healthy introduction to yoga partly because I started with tai chi rather than yoga.

Tai Chi & Qigong

When I lived in China, I would often witness people, especially the elderly, practicing tai chi or qigong in parks. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. But then I came down with chronic immune system issues and went to multiple practitioners of conventional Western allopathic medicine in multiple different countries, and nothing helped. They just kept throwing medicines at the symptoms while never addressing the root causes.

It wasn’t until I moved back to the United States that I actually started taking a tai chi class, and it was a last resort. I was at the end of my rope. I had exhausted all the treatments that “made sense” according to the worldview I’d been trained in, and now here I was “going off the deep end.” But in my chronic physical illness and the accompanying depression, anxiety, and despair that came with it, I found an ability to enjoy being in my body and being present. To slow down, breathe, and actually become aware of the miracle that is my body, as all the tiny muscles sprang into action. Slowing down enough to actually analyze which muscles are turning on and asking myself how I’m feeling in my body (rather than being appraised from the outside by an exercise instructor and told to “push” and “try harder”) was a foreign concept to me, and it brought me a whole new appreciation of the wonder of my body and the qi/chi moving through it. I believe this awareness and appreciation was the beginning of deep healing for me.

When you try tai chi or qigong, you’ll be amazed at the energy you feel around your hands. It is very similar to the feeling I get when I lay hands on someone to pray for healing. Which is why I believe the Holy Spirit is the Author of all this life-force or energy that these systems speak of. Personally, I notice how my rumination and anxious thoughts slow down. I feel serenity and Shalom peace. Our achievement- and action-oriented society is so opposed to just accepting and trusting the flow of life, and tai chi and qigong help energy get unstuck and unlocked, bringing peace and healing in my body.

Energy Medicine

Energy medicine overlaps yoga, qigong, tai chi, and Ayurveda but doesn’t completely encompass them, because yoga, qigong, tai chi, and Ayurvedic medicine have verifiable physical benefits. Energy medicine (Reiki is probably one of the better-known examples) doesn’t necessarily involve physical movement or nutrition (although most energy medicine practitioners also incorporate these elements), making it more difficult to empirically study. For something to qualify as “energy medicine,” it simply has to involve circulating energy/prana/chi/qi in a way that has purported healing benefits.

I find it interesting that Reiki is all about transferring energy from the healer’s hands to the person in need of healing. Remind anyone of the New Testament and the laying on of hands? I have never tried Reiki, but if I ever did, I would be mindful who I was receiving it from. Because I do believe so strongly in the Holy Spirit (and other spirits as well), I would personally want a Holy Spirit-filled practitioner.

I have an “energy routine” I sometimes practice, but it incorporates breathwork, shoulder tension release, self-massage, and other body movements that might also be recommended at a chiropractor’s office.

But Is All This Stuff…OK?

I always encourage everyone to talk to the Lord about what is “okay” for them. Ultimately, this decision is between us and the Lord. Personally, I am so grateful for the healing God has brought to me through these various systems and philosophies, and I believe all Truth within them is ultimately God’s Truth.

As an apprentice of Jesus the Messiah, I believe what is unseen is often much more powerful than what is seen (2 Corinthians 4:18). I believe the physical is the echo, but the spiritual is the substance. Similarly, when I look at the terms “Ruach” (breath/wind in Hebrew) in the Old Testament and “Pneuma” (life-giving breath) in the New Testament (both words for the Holy Spirit), I connect what the Bible is saying with the truth these other systems are also pointing toward. Not that I believe the Holy Spirit is a “force”; I believe He is very much a Person. And I also believe that the life-breath of the Creator God, the after-effects of the “Spirit hovering over the face of the waters,” lives inside every one of us. The echoes of creation— “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” “Let there be…,” and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—still resound inside our bones and in the ground beneath our feet. The same breath He breathed into Adam still vibrates within all people. I think words like “prana” and “chi/qi” are just other names for the echoes of our Creator’s breath.