Qigong Meditation

Scientific research is enormously positive on Qigong. A great website to peruse is the Qigong Institute. This free resource was the brainchild of a scientific researcher who took up the practice of Qigong. You can scroll down the home page to find interesting research portals, such as Harvard Medical School. Or click the research tab and find nuggets to motivate a practice.

Research on meditation, Qigong, Taiji and Yoga continues to evolve. Effects of basic, 20-minute sitting meditation have significant effects on brain scans in 3 weeks, as the researcher Dawson Church illuminates. Harvard Medical School has a department of Taiji research because the results excel outcomes in my chosen field of acupuncture.

Science can be ambiguous on many things, but there is strong and growing consensus that meditation provides striking and unique benefits that are increasingly needed in the general population for stress, burnout and general health conditions such as chronic pain, immune support, endocrine balance, and mental health.

The research model ‘gold standard’ of randomized controlled trials was developed for drug research. This compares a red pill to a blue pill, while factoring in the power of placebo–which is growing. This model assumes a purely material reality. It is inadequate for a material intervention like acupuncture that is aiming to influence a non-material, invisible ‘thing’ like Qi. Acupuncture researchers struggled to conjure up fake or ‘sham’ acupuncture as a comparison to the real thing.

• Using stage dagger needles with retractable handles was one research folly I participated in: Those ‘fake’ treatments in the 16th floor of the Mark Hatfield Medical Center were the most powerful I’ve given to patients desperate for a cure, surrounded by high-tec machinery and expecting the world from me in my white lab coat.
• Research standards were eventually established by Richard Hammerschlag, among others, to weed out the hack research. When this was done, acupuncture results shined even when compared to ‘sham’ treatments in quality studies.

Tai Chi and Qigong research did not enter the RCT rabbit hole so completely, as researchers found it hard to conjure fake Qigong and the like. As a result, Harvard opened a department for Tai Chi research, but not acupuncture.

I’ve seen Qigong benefit people with a history of a cancer diagnosis. I was not surprised to find the Natural Standard Database to validate Qigong for cancer-related fatigue. You will see that some of these studies compare Qigong to other forms of exercise like walking, or other group processes. Some do not. What is becoming clearer to more is that the ‘gold standard’ of research developed for drugs, while it can encourage and inspire a Qigong practice, is incomplete. We need something else to scientifically investigate energetic, less material, non-material and perhaps spiritual processes. Until that occurs, practitioners need to rely on their experience and common sense. This needs to be blended with the scientific habit of mind: questioning assumptions, hunting for biases, and staying open to new findings.

If conventional science contradicts any part of Qigong, science should win. Parts of Qigong can still be subject to superstition, turf wars, and blind faith. The beauty of science is that it recognizes its own need to change and grow. There is certainly room for that.

I have enjoyed all my conversations with scientific researchers, some of whom I’ve known well as acupuncture patients. My Chinese qigong teachers were all entirely open to scientific inquiry and discussions. Some westerners can be close-minded to science. In Chinese medicine, an open mind is an open heart. A healthy heart is light and open.