“If at first an idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” Albert Einstein.
I am happy to be alive today to share with all martial artists around the world an idea that reflects Einstein’s insight. For 55 years, I’ve heard millions of folks languish about a family member, friend, or others they care about having a major health issue and feeling powerless to help them. Though absurd as it sounds, I believe that due to the discipline needed to be a traditional, reality or sports based martial artist, each of you can develop the power to help yourself, family, and friends to fight sickness, injury, pain and disease by learning chi gong (qigong) and chi healing.
Part I of Self Defense describes how I overcame the global, number one genetic lethal killer disease of children in the world, cystic fibrosis (CF) by learning martial arts and chi gong. Part II describes how I proved chi gong’s staying power as with 30% of both my lungs destroyed by CF, in 1986 I speed walked 3000 miles (a marathon/day) across America while a renowned CF doctor concurred that chi gong can be an effective therapy against CF and other lung ailments.
Chi gong is the only way you can train your energy in preparation for learning the two main chi healing skills described toward the end of this article. Before discussing how my wife and I learned chi healing and began defending folks against health complications, below is a sampling of issues we worked on to show what can be done as one’s chi and chi healing abilities grow.
1988: A top pro-bound college baseball player’s ankle suffered third degree ligament tears. In the locker room his ballooned ankle was iced for three hours and turned black from frostbite. He was told that therapy might begin in nine weeks. After 25 sessions and 30 days after the injury, he was back at full strength, hitting homeruns, pain free, no limp and never reinjured the ankle.
1989: The forearm of an old man was paralyzed 13 years ago. His hand permanently clenched in a tight fist; his arm was bent at the elbow frozen at a 90o angle to the forearm. Physical therapy three times a week for 12 years at a hospital barely helped. After a 2-hour session, he reached out his arm with an open hand, and shook our hands. The next day he did something he’s missed for 13 years; he went fishing and did so until he died. His wife said he died the happiest man alive.
1992: Received a phone call from my elderly mum in England who was diagnosed with metastasized colon cancer and had two weeks to live. We flew to England and stayed with her two weeks. While undergoing extreme radiation and heavy chemotherapy, we treated her six-hours a day, the only side effect she had was diarrhea. I taught her a pumping chi gong movement. She lived cancer and pain free until she passed away almost 10 years later.
2002: When a model, who was a kickboxer and actor, had a near fatal car accident, she broke her neck and completely severed her spinal cord. She was a quadriplegic and would be paralyzed from the neck down for life. After three, 2-hour sessions a week for 30 months, she could point her arms in all directions, curl dumbbells and unassisted walk 300 steps with leg braces.
2010: During a chi healing seminar at a San Diego Taiji school, the sensei of a partnered karate dojo, whose some students are military officers, broached us about a nagging pain he had for a while and asked if we could help. My wife read his chi, found the cause of the pain and I got rid the pain in 30 seconds by treating the root and not where it hurt. We’ve been tight friends since.
Chao Yuen Fang, a doctor in the Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581‑618), pointed out that when a man had mastered chi‑gong he could release through his palms and fingers a kind of vital energy to cure diseases in others without touching the individual. In ancient China, it was necessary for doctors to know chi healing since a male stranger was not allowed to touch a woman's body.
Earliest evidence of chi gong practice arose when a 5000-year-old pottery urn was discovered in China's Chinghai province in 1975. (Chang, K.C. 1999. Collected Treatises on Chinese Archaeology: Shenghuo Dushu Xinzhi Press.) Yoga’s Pranic breathing was first described in the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture written circa 500 BC-1 BC.
The character for chi (qi) has been found inscribed on animal bones and bronze items that existed between 1766-1122 B.C. Since Taoism and Confucianism arose around 500 B.C., and Buddhism arrived in China circa A.D. 520, it shows that unlike yoga, chi gong has no religious or traditional Chinese philosophical origins. However, over the years, hundreds of different chi gong forms have emerged due to various individuals creating diversified ways of practicing chi gong and interpreting their chi gong views to fit their varying philosophical ways of life.
How did my wife and I jump from chi gong to chi healing? In 1987, we visited Taiwan to see my in-laws and chi mentor. Upon arrival, my mentor had a friend he wanted us to meet who worked on a mountainside healing temple, which had no affiliation with any religion/philosophy.
While walking up the hill to the temple, we met an old man on a bicycle. When my mentor asked him to read my chi, he pointed his fingers at me, scanned my body and nailed every health issue I’ve ever had. He told me to go see Uncle Zhou in the temple and have him check me out.
Uncle Zhou concurred and said I must come to the temple for 21 days and then I’d be fine. Each day he pointed his fingers at specific points on my body and then I’d feel his chi entering my body like what my chi mentor did to me when I had some rough times.
On Day 12, Zhou began explaining what each point did and tested my memory the next day on how to find each point and explain their functions (~30 points a day). By day 21, with a clean bill of health, Zhou asked my wife and I if we were interested in joining the temple and learning their art of healing. We were giddy as a schoolboy and schoolgirl.
After the far out and interesting initiation (too lengthy to tell here), Zhou fatherly told us that when we returned to America, help as many people as we can, regardless of what they have, noting that if there is no improvement after 21 sessions, then it means chi healing can’t help. We learned light palm and invisible needle, both of which do not require a patient to be touched.
We grinned at each other knowing nobody in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, or the conservative Midwest, would be open to something like this. Yet we knew this would help us forever. Yet as it were, in preparation for the walk, in 1985, the University of Illinois Athletic Association allowed me to workout in the athletes weight room facilities and the head strength coach trained me. After the walk, my wife and I were allowed to use the weight room before the athletes began their workouts.
A week after returning from Taiwan and in the weight room, I saw a female athlete struggling with pain during weight training. My wife and I looked at each other, nodded, then offered to help. We shared that we’d just learned a cool therapy yet had never used it. She said, “Let’s give it a try.” Moments later when her pain was gone, the three of us were in total disbelief. She asked, “Do you do hamstrings?” She had serious leg pain for weeks and due to contractual agreements, was required to race at an upcoming track meet. Ten minutes later, the pain was gone. Days after the treatment, she won the her sprint doing her personal best, pain free.
Turns out she was a silver medalist from the Canadian Olympic team, in town training with her coach, the University of Illinois’ Women’s Track and Field head coach, for the ’88 Olympics.
Long story short. Word spread like wildfire to all the athletic teams on campus. We learned that athletes only care if a treatment works or not. For the next three years, we treated 5-7 athletes every night in our wee, married-student University apartment, from all sports, including athletes from other Big Ten Schools who drove through the night to see us. We eventually ended up working with athletes from three countries’ Olympic teams. It was insane and fun times.
For the first 20 years of healing, including 10 years in LA, when I was a TV/film fight choreographer and an entertainment reporter for Reuters (and Black Belt), no matter the health issue or who they were, we never charged money or asked for favors. When we started doing chi healing for a living in 2009 in San Diego, we continue to never reveal our clients’ names.
There are two main healing abilities used in chi healing, and everyone has the potential to do both. Since I’ve trained my energy with chi gong for 42 years, it’s well developed and I can generate and transfer large amounts of chi into a body, which we call beaming, to eliminate pain, and force bad, blocked, or stagnant chi out of the body, and restore proper chi flow.
The other main ability is my wife’s strong point, she can read someone’s chi and determine if the issue(s) are physical, mental, emotional and/or spiritual and how each of their energies interact within each other and how they relate to your health issue(s).
It’s been established that emotions play an important role in manifesting our health problems and that we are all mirrors of our past inheritances. By asking questions she can narrow down if the emotion belongs to you and what, when and how that occurred in your past or present and who caused it. She is also able to decipher if it’s someone else’s emotion (friend, enemy, someone you work with, someone close to you, someone on the street, etc) and family members, which includes intragenerational ancestors. Learning your family tree, will help your future health.
Back in the 1970s and early ‘80s, my parents were paying ~$25,000.00/year for medication. In 2012, medical treatment for CF costed $600,000.00/year. Since late August 1980 and doing 10 minutes of chi gong every day, that’s an estimated saving of $8 million dollars over my lifetime.
For martial artists or martial arts schools wanting to make the absurd become a reality, find a chi gong teacher to teach once a week at your school. If the teacher knows how to find the body’s major acupuncture points, that’s a plus. If they don’t email me at service@vivalachi.com, and I’ll send the name & author of the acupressure book we used in 1989, and let’s see where fate goes.
Thank you for your openness to the idea of elevating your marital arts training to give Health and Wellness to yourself, family, friends, and the world. May the chi be with you.
