Thank you IAM2 for this insight! I am a relatively new practioner of Qigong, and have focused my practice thus far on the active exercises and small universe meditation (I have just ordered level 2).

However, as I'm gaining more experience and learning more by reading posts in this forum, I have more questions. I would specifically like to get a clearer "big picture" view of the use of the various elements of Qigong and how they fit together to address a specific health problem. Qigong is a much different approach that we are used to with our traditional western medicine and it is not intuitive to me how to proceed.

Let me give you analogy of how a typical 'western medicine' approach might be to a problem, and what I'm struggling with in regard to Qigong. Say that I develop carpal tunnel in my wrist from spending too much time working at my computer. Actions that might happen:
1. My workplace ergonomics staff would provide me with guidance in adjusting my workstation, keyboard & my chair position to reduce the stress
2. My physical therapist would likely give me some general exercises to improve my posture or improve my flexibility, etc.
3. She would also give me some specific exercises for the problem area.
4. My physician might give me pain medication and/or even do surgery depending on how severe ("difficult") this injury is.

So, from general to specific, I would have an action plan for treating my injury, and I can track my progress.

I believe that Qigong approaches the body holistically, i.e., the body's energy channels are inter-connected & dependent on each other. Given this, is there a concept, similar to my analogy, of developing an "action plan" for treating a problem? If so, how do you chose the right path, since this seems to be done mostly by individual choice?

- Active exercises
- meditation
- group healing forum
- sword fingers
- yin/yan water
- in-person consultations with Chunyi Lin
- remote group healing sessions
- etc (I'm sure I've missed some)

So my question is, given the above are the techniques I can chose from, how would I put together a action plan to address a serious problem such as a tumor?

Cassie

[This message has been edited by Cassie (edited March 24, 2006).]