Waysun Liao - Restoring Your Life Energy: Simple Chi Gung Practices to Reduce Stress and Enhance Well-Being

ABOUT THE BOOK

Poor diet, pollution, and the stresses of daily life all have a negative impact on our health and well-being; this program of simple movements and meditations taught by Master Waysun Liao, a renowned teacher of the Chinese movement arts of tai chi and chi gung, will restore both your body and mind.

In our busy lives we are bombarded by physical and emotional stressors that tax us and deplete our vital life energyknown as chi. According to traditional Chinese medicine, chi is the fuel and essence that connects body, mind, and spirit, and without it we fall apart physically, mentally, and spiritually. Master Liao explains why protecting our chi is so important, how it gets taxed and damaged in our lives, andmost importantlyhow to restore it. He demonstrates exercises and meditations to be done on a daily basis that are easy-to-learn, low-impact, and suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels.

The healthful benefits of the practices are now recognized in mainstream medical circles where tai chi and chi gung classes are increasingly offered as complementary medicine. Master Waysun Liaos selected exercises provide the essentials for a restorative, revitalizing practice.

Master WAYSUN LIAO studied tai chi in a Taoist temple in his native Taiwan from the age of twelve. He is the founder and master of the Taichi Tao Center in Oak Park, Illinois, where he has taught for nearly forty years.

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RESTORING YOUR

LIFE ENERGY

Simple Chi Gung Practices to
Reduce Stress and Enhance Well-Being

Master Waysun Liao

SHAMBHALA

Boston & London

2012

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2012 by Waysun Liao

Cover design by Jim Zaccaria

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Liao, Waysun, 1948

Restoring your life energy: simple chi gung practices to reduce stress and enhance well-being / Waysun Liao.First Edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2815-5

ISBN 978-1-59030-996-4 (pbk.)

1. Qi gong. 2. Exercise therapy. 3. Stress management. I. Title.

RA781.8.L54 2012

613.71489dc23

2012005548

CONTENTS

In todays busy life, full of sorrow and exhilaration, demands and challenges, noise and toxins, information overload and nonstop activity, its easy to feel drained, scattered, stressed, or run-down. Over time, the assault of modern living can even take its toll on our physical health and inner well-being. A quiet desire inside many people whispers, How can I recharge myself? How can I feel as energetic, clear, and vibrant as I remember feeling in my youth?

Its hard to find the real answers to those questions. One reason is because so many fake answers flash at us from every television, magazine, billboard, radio, and Internet ad. Since everyone is looking for more energy, more youth, and more vitality, businesses and advertisers parade out countless products and services claiming to deliver some sort of recharging power. How about an island vacation? Cosmetic surgery? A new sports car? Energy drinks? Maybe you just need a new prescription drug to make you feel more alive.

However, many people find that these answers dont deliver the real vitality and sense of aliveness they really seekat least not over the long term. If such products did work, word would have leaked out to everyone else, and wed all be vivacious, centered, healthy, and happy.

Do you know what that unfulfilled longing is? That push to find a way to recharge yourself? It is actually your life energy crying out for help!

We keep looking for modern-day answers to a long-standing dilemma: How can we restore our life energy? The irony is that we will most likely find the answer to that question in a centuries-old path hidden among the brambles of time.

That hidden path was trod by ancient pioneers we now call Taoists. Long ago, Taoists searched for answers to some of the same questions that overwhelm us today. Without television or self-help seminars, they were forced to practice deep meditation as a way to find those answers. Through that deep meditation, they gradually understood the secrets of life energy, or what they called chi (pronounced chee). They learned the secrets of chi directly from their own experience. They gained firsthand understanding by using themselvestheir bodies, their minds, their breathing, their lifestylesas objects of practice. Through trial and error over the centuries, they evolved the full range of Taoist knowledge: acupuncture, healing, herbal medicine, martial arts, spiritual reading, feng shui, chi gung, tai chi, Tao gung, and more.

Some of these ancient internal energy explorers went even deeper and discovered that within and underlying their chi was a spark of higher-level, more refined power. They called this even more rarefied form of original life energy yuan chi, or one chi. They realized that this spark of energy held even greater potential for personal transformation than normal chi. By reaching it, they could go beyond simply feeling more energetic and enjoying better health. They sensed that this spark gave each person infinite potential.

When they realized that everyone has a bit of this yuan chi, they knew they had discovered a profound truth: human beings have a spark of what might be termed God right inside us. They called this spark of original energy deep within each person the Te (pronounced day). They came to understand that this Te served as each persons inner connection to the One Universal Energy. Through deeper meditation and lifetimes of practice, they came to experience their Te as a gateway they could use to travel back to God. Their word for the ever-present, all-intelligent, infinite power of God or Source is Tao.

Part of the practice they did to reach their Te was to clean and strengthen their life energy. They called this type of practice chi gung, which literally means chis work. They did chi gung so they could bring their life energy to its ultimate and purest state. That state of ultimate chi is tai chi. In fact, an advanced application of chi gung moving meditation is what we now know as tai chi practice. When the ancient practitioners reached the state of tai chi, they could use the energy to drill down inside themselves to their Te and connect to the Tao. They had a series of special meditation practices called Tao gung, literally Taos work, to reach this state.

Usually, the early Taoists practiced chi gung, tai chi, and Tao gung. They devoted their entire lives to accommodating their practice so they could make better progress. Only those with very strong, pure life energyenergy refined and trained through the three practicescould contact the internal Te and hope to reach their ultimate goal.

What was that goal? Originally, the Taoists sought to reach eternity. They wanted to fuse themselves to the Tao through their life energy so they could live forever. However, they did not want to live forever in this dimension. Their true goal was to find a way to travel through the gateway of Te inside and enter the eternal dimension. They believed this gateway could transport them beyond the restrictions of our own dimensionthe realm of birth and death, space and timeand they would be able to immerse themselves in the highest dimension of original universal energy.