Why Qigong Feels So Different From Exercise: Muscles, Fascia and Whole-Body Movement
One of the funny things about Qigong is that it can look like you're doing almost nothing.
You're standing there.
Your arms are floating around.
Maybe you're gently turning from side to side.
No burpees. No sweat.
And yet you finish and think:
WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO MY BODY?
Students constantly tell me that they’re surprised to find it’s a bit of a workout.
You can feel warm.
Tingly.
Loose.
Heavy.
Light.
Grounded.
Energised.
Sometimes parts of your body seem to have joined the party that you weren't consciously moving at all.
This is one of the reasons I love Qigong.
It gives us a completely different way to experience movement.
Exercise usually gives us something to DO
Most of us have learned to approach movement through goals.
Go faster.
Lift heavier.
Stretch MORE.
Burn calories.
Build muscle.
Get your steps in.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things.
I love all of them too.
But Qigong gives us range, by asking something different.
Rather than:
How much can I do?
it’s more…
What can I experience?
That distinction is a big deal.
Your body isn't a collection of separate muscles
Our modern understanding of exercise often encourages us to think in individual body parts.
Leg day.
Arms.
Glutes.
Core.
We learn stretches for individual muscles and exercises designed to target particular areas.
Useful? 100%
But anatomically, we’re interconnected. Fascia, bones, joints, muscle... it’s all interconnected. Fascia forms a continuous connective tissue network throughout the body.
Movement in one place = movement elsewhere.
Your body is a system.
as is Qigong.
Qigong is whole-body movement
Watch someone practising Qigong closely and you'll often see that what appears to be an arm movement isn't really an arm movement.
The feet are involved.
The legs are involved.
The pelvis shifts.
The waist turns.
The spine responds.
The shoulders remain relatively relaxed.
There’s a whole body flow.
That's very different from deliberately contracting a muscle to move a weight from A to B.
In Qigong, we're often learning to use less unnecessary effort, not more.
Try easier, as my teacher says.
This is where fascia gets interesting
I've studied anatomy in the dissection lab, and one of the things that becomes extraordinarily apparent when you're looking at an actual human body rather than an anatomy diagram is how interconnected everything is.
Textbooks need to simplify things I guess.
They need to colour one muscle red and another muscle pink so we can learn their names.
Real bodies are considerably more complex.
Connective tissue surrounds and connects structures throughout the body.
Which makes what you experience in Qigong interesting.
You rotate through your waist and feel something change through your shoulder.
You soften your knees and your lower back feels different.
You shift your weight through your feet and somehow your arms move more freely.
Rather than immediately needing to explain every sensation, Qigong lets us explore it and our interconnectivity.
We're also working with spirals
Qigong contains a lot of circular movement.
We twist.
Coil.
Unfurl.
Open.
Close.
Shift.
Turn.
These aren't aesthetic flourishes.
The body moves beautifully in multiple planes, and our connective tissues transmit forces through complex three-dimensional relationships.
Spiralling movements allow us to explore the body beyond the straight-line movements that dominate many exercise programmes.
And they often feel so damn good.
Then we slow everything down
This is perhaps the biggest difference.
Qigong gives you time to notice... everything… differently…
Try lifting your arm quickly.
Now lift it as slowly as you possibly can.
Suddenly there's an load more information available.
Where did the movement begin?
Did your shoulder tense?
Did you stop breathing?
What are your ribs doing?
Could you use less effort?
What happens if you allow your waist to participate?
What can you feel through your fingers?
Slow movement transforms something incredibly ordinary into an exploration.
Qigong isn't just slow exercise
Qigong comes from an entirely different understanding of the human body.
Qi, vital energy or life force, is central to the practice. Traditional Qigong works with concepts such as meridians, organs, Yin and Yang, the Dantian and the cultivation and circulation of Qi.
Fascia is not simply a modern scientific word for Qi.
Nor do we need to pretend ancient Chinese practitioners were secretly describing connective tissue using different vocabulary.
They're different frameworks.
But I find the conversation between them fascinating.
Because both invite me, in different ways, to start thinking of the unity of the body.
From exercising your body to inhabiting it
Perhaps this is why Qigong feels so different.
I'm not standing outside my body issuing instructions to it.
Stay strong!
Push.
More.
I'm inside it.
Listening.
Experimenting.
Feeling.
Moving.
And after years of studying bodies, working with bodies and occasionally being extremely pissed off with my own body, that’s really important to me.
Exercise can show us what our bodies are capable of doing.
Qigong can give us another experience alongside that:
the experience of actually inhabiting them.
And once you start paying attention from the inside, even the simplest movement can become incredibly rewarding.