“Imagery lets you know that a certain skill or learning with which you are already familiar can be usefully applied to an unfamiliar situation, similarly to the way in which computer developers ‘re-use’ code that is known to reliably perform a certain function. You can think of ‘imagery’ in this context as the software of the body – that which enables us to coordinate all our different muscles and bones without having to consciously ‘think’ about coordinating them, which is neither necessary nor possible.”

“Reader, you probably have yourself felt those precious moments of quiet in your life, no? …The genius of the Chinese sages was that they found a method, a technique akin to Indian Yoga, by which this experience could be cultivated, taught and developed. Of course, all this is now being verified by modern research, brain imaging and such like, and work on neuro-transmitters; the benefits of regular pratice of qigong are at last being recognised.”

In this interview, Gordon Faulkner – Principal Instructor at the Chanquanshu School of Daoist Arts in Scotland – answers some questions about his new book, Managing Stress with Qigong. How did this book come about? The first input to lead to the book was at International Daoyin Qigong Symposium in Portugal in 2005 when European…

“Qigong encourages a way of moving which is very stable and integrated, and the mind ‘enters’ the body in a fuller way. The subsequent improvement in balance goes on to help people regain their confidence in movement and thus improves confidence generally.”

“Western Science will no doubt eventually explain much of what Qi Gong is and what it can do. But we don’t have to wait for explanations, we can cultivate the experience now. We can rediscover our innate ability to restore and heal ourselves and rest in mental dimensions that will always remain beyond science. In a world where we are sensorially overloaded and so many of our experiences are tailored, limiting and manipulative we can discover an internal freedom and strength and a sense of real liberation and empowerment and perhaps even spirituality. The methods for this were cultivated thousands of years ago. It has taken a long time for the West to notice them.”