• "Chi Kung" is the accepted English equivalent of the Chinese word "Qigong", where "Qi" ("Chi" or "Ki") means "breath" (as a conceptual term, this refers to the energy in the human body, and, by extension, life force, dynamic energy or even cosmic breath) and "gong" ("Kung") means "achievement", "skill", work applied to a discipline or the resultant level of skill. Qigong refers to a wide variety of traditional meditative cultivation practices that involve methods of accumulating, circulating, and working with Qi or energy within the body. Qigong is sometimes mistakenly said to be something that always involves movement and/or regulated breathing. In fact, use of other special methods focusing on particular energy centers in and around the body are common in the higher levels or evolved forms of Qigong. Qigong is practiced for health maintenance purposes, as a therapeutic intervention, as a medical profession, a spiritual path and/or a component of Chinese Martial Arts.
  
  Kung Fu and Qigong
  
  All great Kung Fu makes use of energy training (chi kung) to develop internal force, without which it remains at the external, mechanical level, considered by Chinese martial artists as rather rough and inferior. Kungfu training with Chi Kung enhances harmonious chi flow, thus promoting health, vitality and longevity.
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  Qigong and Zen
  
  There are three aspects in all types of chi kung, namely: form (xing), energy (qi) and mind. If you practice only the form, without the energy and mind dimensions, you are merely performing physical exercise; strictly speaking not chi kung, for there is no training of energy. For an effective control of energy, you have to enter what is called in modern terms a Zen state of mind. In the past, this was called "entering Zen"(ru chan) or "entering silence"(ru ding).
  
  When you are in Zen or a meditative state of mind, you can, among other things, tap energy from the cosmos and direct that energy to flow into wherever you want in your body. It is this mind aspect of chi kung, even more than its energy aspect, that enables chi kung masters to perform what lay people would think of as miraculous, or, depending on their attitude, fakery.

Benefits of Qigong

According to Chinese medical thought, practising chi kung can cure as well as prevent all kinds of illness, including diseases like asthma, diabetes, hypertension and cancer which are generally considered "incurable" by conventional medicine. Practising chi kung is also very effective for overcoming psychological problems.
There are many wonderful benefits derived from practising Shaolin Cosmos Chi Kung:
1. Curing illness and promoting health.
2. Enhancing vitality and developing internal force.
3. Promoting youthfulness and longevity.
4. Expanding the mind and the intellect.
5. Spiritual cultivation.

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Qigong styles

Dynamic chi kung, static chi kung, dynamic and static chi kung.
Dynamic chi kung means to combine the body's moves with mind and to breath to achieve a peaceful mind through a moving body. The usually practised forms in the Shaolin Temple are ba duan jin, yi jin jing and xi sui jing.
Static chi kung is a kind of chi kung that uses standing, sitting and posing postures to combine the practising mind, and high speed breath. The mind practises to gain, calculate, and control qi. This form of qigong can be practised through meditating standing still, in the sitting lotus position or through a meditation in pose.
Dynamic and static chi kung is based on static chi kung, to use qi and blood to drive the body to move or even jump high and fly.

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Hard chi kung, soft chi kung and health-care qigong.

Hard chi kung is to control the qi that has been accumulated, drive it to part of your body and make your body as tough as iron. To break bricks, staffs, steel bars, big marble boards, spear piercing through a throat all belong to this category.

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Soft chi kung has a more subtle focusing of qi. It aims to gain and collect chi in the Dantian (an energy core around the lower belly) to try to control and use it.
Health care chi kung includes forms such as Ba duan jin and iron coat etc.