This book is about the healing, as well as killing, power of qi, the life-giving energy that we all have, but that many don't recognize possibilities of.
While being able to heal yourself can be empowering and liberating, energy generated by a person with a strong qi and applied in a martial art form, can easily inflict lethal injuries. Martial artists know that it is the mind that strikes, not the fist, and their well-known maxim is "where intention goes, qi follows". When strong, concentrated desire goes to the hands, they become extremely powerful, but whether you'll use them to kill or to heal, is up to you.
Before I got involved with energy work, about fifteen years ago, I knew very little about qi and thought that its main purpose was to help practitioners of kung fu and similar fighting styles increase their energy. It was only after suffering a stroke and being written off by mainstream medicine, who assured me that my condition was such that I could only get worse, not better, but still managing to heal myself with a combination of acupuncture treatments and qi gong exercises, that I became fascinated with the concept of energy balance and the healing power of qi.
While in the West we study the phenomenon of qi, write books about it, create websites and on-line forums to discuss it, run schools to learn how to activate it, etc. in China people simply live qi. For them, nurturing one's qi is as basic as breathing. No qi - no life. As simple as that.
In Asia, everything revolves around the idea of balance - health is achieved by restoring balance within the body, fortune in life is achieved if good and bad luck are kept in balance, peace and prosperity of a nation are realized by maintaining balance between order and freedom, etc.
We now know that our outlook on life can boost, or undermine, the healing process. Life moves at such a fast pace, it's becoming obvious that without a more stable and "grounding" mind-set, people will find it more and more difficult to cope. We need something to "anchor" us, lest we be swept away by the rising tide of pressure, stress and uncertainty.
And very few things could be more "grounding" than a 5000-year-old tradition of achieving harmony in life.
In this book I'd like to share with you my experience of the miracle of qi.
