I put Qi-Gong between Snake Oil and Stone Soup.
 
There’s a therapeutic effect of snake oil, whether or not it comes from snakes, so I’d like to preface my observations with the following disclaimer: If Chi-Gong works for you, if it gives you energy, or zaps your stress, cellulite, or carcinogens, please read no further. Chi-gong along. This article is about the “Qi Revolution,” trademark of an enterprise called Supreme Science, whose shamanist interpretation of the ancient energy-moving masters bears the rich aroma of Stone Soup.

If I remember the folk tale correctly, Stone Soup was not without nutritional value either. It got its substance from what others brought to it, but started from a premise of nothing.

I’m writing from Albuquerque, on the last of a 4-day Qigong seminar conducted by the Supreme Science Qigong Foundation. I’ve retreated behind the conference room curtain this morning because I cannot move any more Qi with a straight face. Not to worry, the other 300 earnest participants, progressing from level two to three, have it well in hand. If you’ve studied their Qigong, and remember the conclusion of the Level One form, rubbing that belly full of air in concentric circles of contentment, smiling at your tingling of well being, you know the Stone Soup imagery rings true.

QI
I’ll offend curious Qi defenders with a complaint to show my negativity is not even worthy of their time. To begin with, as you can see, I take exception to “Qi” being someone’s respelling of “chee.” Was www.chigong.com already taken? In Qi, there’s the Latin “i,” but where in the universal phonetic alphabet does a “ch” sound emit from the Western letter Q? Are we pretending the spelling is Chinese, a language which doesn’t have analog symbols for sounds? Admittedly, Western spellings of Chinese words and cities have been upgraded as English-speakers became more patient listeners. Tao became Dao, Peking became Beijing, but from whence a Q? We don’t spell it Qai Tea, for all of it in Qina.

I have a suspicion that Q appeals to energy ball handlers because the letter Q is an O with maybe a vector pushing through it. Letter forms may sometimes resemble the sounds they make, like Ms or Ss, but leave it to the New Age to conform a letter to what it spells.

(As I write, a legion of wayward Wuji wanderers have led themselves to behind the main curtain toward me, arms forward like zombie sleepwalkers. I hesitate to look up lest one or two have their eyes open, spying me beneath their unfocused horizon. I’m obviously self-conscious about typing Qi-blasphemies among such earnest seekers of truth-abundance.)

QI-GONG
The more affable among the instructors for Supreme Science, let’s call him K, concedes that traditional Qigong is taught in slow measures. K’s own preliminary training included weeks of only hugging a tree, preceded by weeks of being permitted only to watch. Qigong for an American audience is not only speeded up, but made convoluted, lest American attention deficit stall on monotony.

As a result, Supreme Science presents five traditional forms at Level One, interspersed with some homegrown abbreviations. I’ve no idea if these same levels are demarcated by the Chinese, but if you are inclined to meditations on awareness, focus and intention, the early forms offer clarity.

The SS Qigong describes them: Empty Force, Cloud Hands, Earth Hands, Around the World, and Push Hands. (They’ve trademarked Press on Qi, and Press On The Edge of the Energy Field.)

I’m inexpert to assess the authenticity of what Supreme Science advances as the second and third levels: Drawing the Bow, and Wuji Dancing. But I’ll wager the Warrior Breath Super Breathing Exercise, the Nine Breaths in its A-D variances, and the Discreet Qigong Walking, are contrivances of some 21st millennium Qarlatans.

THE ANCIENT CHINESE
I’ll admit to a further annoyance at Western cultures trying to glean from Eastern wisdoms, in particular the several millennia-old civilizations of India and China. These were societies stratified by ages of adaptation to repression. Small sized peoples, divided into functional castes, their individualism washed into the Ganges, or voided in Tiananmen Squares. The last time the Chinese praised an independent thinker was Confucius. What is a social climbing culture like America seeking from a fabric of cogs set in terra cotta?

The preliminary position in Qigong is a silent scream of submission. Limbs bent, tailbone tucked in, chin tucked in, tongue on upper palate whence you will not speak. Our instructors’ patter spoke of arms poised to carry bags of rice, hands straight as if balancing a tray of hot tea for the emperor. Your divinity lies in service.

Think of it, a poor man’s only natural comforts are knees that lock, a straight back and a head to hold high. But self respect projects a physical assertiveness that offends those who want to be shown subservience. I see this in myself when I witness stupid people take the stage. I don’t want to see stupid people onstage. The leisure class does not want to see workers at leisure, Blacks at their water fountains, that sort of thing. When I assumed the Qigong position, it was as if I was posing for a cast of a tiny pyramid laborer with somewhere to go, bracing himself for the inevitable crack of the whip across his back. If you had to extemporize a disciplined monkey, you’d have Qigong down.

Satisfied not just to control their workers’ free-time movements, the Qigong masters devised exercises to tone the working muscles. I imagine this had less to do with worrying that worker skills atrophied overnight, than hastening those of pre-working age into working age. I’ll bet the Qigong of old was full-bodied, as befitting agricultural laborers. Curiously like urban non-farm labor, Qigong is virtually all upper body. “Around the World” looks like an assembly line of UPS package handlers. “Pushing hands” is more for grocery clerks at checkout conveyors. Both Supreme Science versions, by the way, are courting vocational lower-back twisting injuries, unless more attention is paid to the placement of the feet.

Now the American culture, the great working class with finally too much free time, aspires to make work of its leisure, to recreate in harmony with its roots. To the unimaginative, stopping to smell the roses becomes: remember, focus, concentrate as hard as you can, to smell that rose with every pore of your essence, lest the forest cloud your seeing of the tree.

I recognize of course the evolution of Western mass culture is hitting the Peter Principle hard, the too many unproductive members were eventually going to offend its fittest. Actually, we’re seeing the cyclic evolution of the affluent, who can again own whatever they want. Once again, the ultra-rich heart’s content is to own people.

Let them eat Qi.
The visceral impression I get from Qigong, as I raise my peasant arms to gather the nourishing and abundant Qi, is bupkus. Our arms are not stretched toward the heavens, but form large zeros, rounded at the elbows and wrists to encircle giant bubbles of our own personal Qi, netted from the mist of Qi around us. We draw giant circles of Qi, between our hands, elastic spaces of ether, as broad as our need. Big spheres of, of, look at it, new fabric for a vain emperor, bupkus.

I can hear the overseer laughing. You want more rice? Millet’s not good enough for you? What ungrateful buggers. You’ve got Qi, it’s all around you. Gather it, feel its weight, revere it. Merely breathing it in will nourish you. Take it with my complements. All you can eat. So great is the generosity of your master.

SUPREME SCIENCE
You’ll never meet a more friendly, more positive team. They’re spreading joy and empowerment, and who am I to balk at the price. $100 for the seminar, $200 for continuing education, $400 for the literature, and another $400 for the blender.

Blender? The first two days, I was certain the Qigong was just filler material in between the food program sales spots. Everyone who might have come to the seminar to cure a loved one of cancer learns, that salvation will only come from the food energy. And not just the certain foods, but particular phyto-nutrients unleashed only by a 3-horsepower blender.

Would you attend a $99 conference if you thought it was a juicing infomercial? The Supreme Science soft sell is ingenious.

They don’t sell the food, because you get that from the grocery store. They don’t sell the blender either, but I assure you, they’re selling blenders. “The” 3-horsepower blender to micronize both edibles and inedibles, to shortcut their cavalry rescue ride into your bloodstream, is made by Blendtec, at first they don’t even mention it by name, instead asking, have you seen willitblend.com? During a later session you hear more. Oh, Vitamix now makes a model 3, we’re told, in response to the success of the original Blendtec. And Waring makes one too now, but both cost hundreds more, and are larger and more cumbersome. I can guarantee you nobody is thinking about Vitamix or Waring as we hear about phyto-nutrient science pioneer Blendtec, their 3 year warranty, etc, etc. I wouldn’t put it past the marketing wizard behind Will It Blend, to have sought out a niche health consumer market for his industrial blenders. No doubt Supreme Science is responsible for 100% of its non-laboratory sales.

Supreme Science’s Qigong classes qualify for Continuing Education credits for massage therapists. Against that scale, the $99/ 4-day price tag provides a regular refrain that the classes are affordable. The take-home materials, entirely elective, total something around $500. On the fourth day the 300 attendees are told by a team member we can now see is entrusted to be the closer, that the $99 admission doesn’t cover the cost of conducting the conference. I’ve no doubt that’s absolutely true. This team is sharing well more that the $30,000 cover.

Why begrudge modern mystics a comfortable profit margin? What about when it’s coming from the pocketbooks of massage therapists and people driven by illness to alternative medicine, to alternatives to the futile solutions which their insurance may or may not cover.

THE FOOD
It might be interesting to note that common produce is dismissed as virtually free, when in actuality, the ingredients for an average curative shake exceed $25, depending on what’s in season. Fresh strawberries, goji berries, ginger root, mint, rosemary, sage, cilantro, add it up.

And it’s not just the price. Imagine nutrients to feed an entire village, gone up the blender to supplement your diet of “real food.”

Law of Attraction, Infinite Abundance, Prosperity Theology are American Dream boom town economics. Only ugly Americans can justify curing themselves at the expense of everyone else’s food resources. Not sustainable.