Customer Reviews

The Qigong Year

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Check out the fittest people in any gym, and you will usually note that flexibility is a key component of their program. Check any truly spiritually centered person, and notice the glow of serenity than surrounds them. Combine both, and you understand why Western thinking is scurrying to latch onto QiGong.
Combining gentle, flexible movement with breathing and visual meditation, Qi Gong is difficult to learn by book alone. Having said that, I found "The QiGong Year" to be the most helpful of texts in introducing this method of movement which promotes positive qi (energy), healing, and a healthy mind. Mr, Bruney breaks his introduction to the phases of QiGong down on a month-by-month basis, and writes in easy to follow prose, focusing on the Ba Duan Jin (8 Fine exercises). Some poems, meditations and Taoist traditions help explain the value of the program. And the illustrations,paper and colors used in publishing this book were very carefully chosen to maintain harmony with the theme of the writing, something rarely promoted in Western literature.
Obviously, the best way to learn QiGong is through work with an expert. Barring that, The qiGong Year makes for a very acceptable substitute.

Well written book with good illustrations. The author does a good job of describing the techniques. But more importantly, he communicates the philosophy and way of the Tao in a way that a beginner can start to grasp.

I have a few books on qigong and this one is the one I rec'd to others, both beginners and experienced. Excellent with the basic and more advanced forms.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the way it is organized. It attempts to guide the reader through a full year of qigong practice, starting in spring. While this idea is, in itself, not a bad one, the increased intensity of the exercises inhibits the ability to begin practice at any other time. In other words, if your bought this book in January, as I did, you'd be starting at "month 11," which is almost at the end of the book and assumes knowledge of the previous 10 months. So, unless you begin practice in March of April, the book is nearly useless until then.

Even if the qigong exercises in this book were accurate and beneficial, you'd never know it. The sparse illustrations only show one of the three to eight steps in each exercise and the written descriptions of each step is often unclear. An introduction to qigong should be more accessible to the beginner.