Customer Reviews

Living Qigong: The Chinese Way to Good Health and Long Life

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I am typically leery of books on the subject, but this is one book I highly recommend. Alton's treatment is comprehensive and surprisingly frank and impartial. Rather than deride Western science and praise the virtues of Chinese medicine, he takes an honest, open-minded view of both and applies cold logic to arrive at conclusions. In other words, he does not insult the reader's intelligence. The stress of the book is more on the exposition of the theory, rather than a how-to manual. Persons interested in taichi and qigong will find this book very informative, while practitioners will find it inspiring and enriching.

Unlike other books on Qigong, this one does not strive to provide scientific validation for Qigong, nor is it filled with scholarly references and parallelisms with other systems of excercise a/o health and healing. Neither is it a vast array of different Qigong practices presented as a catalog for the reader to pick and choose from.

Rather, this book chronicles Alton's experinces during the two-year period he spent in China learning Qigong from his teacher. Loosely chronological, Alton's story is freely interspersed with theoretical information on both Qigong and Chinese Medicine, presented the way a good teacher would present it to the student as he/she progresses in his/her learning. There are a couple of details which I've never heard any of my teachers mention, yet they make sense, both in theory and in practice. His Qigong set is presented at the end of the book, and although the author repeatedly emphasizes the need to learn from a good teacher, the set is simple enough to try it out yourself. It is one of the best Qigong routines I've ever practiced!

There are no extensive discussions on the hows and whys, yet all the main tenets and principles of Qigong practice are presented in this book, in a comprehensive, down-to-earth manner. This book, simple, slim, and full of wisdom, is also one of the deepest and most heartfelt discussions I've read on Qigong.