Master Lam's Walking Chi Kung:

by Lam Kam Chuen

Chi Kung builds strength, improves balance and boosts energy levels. It is also a form of meditation and encourages conscious breathing, mental discipline and focus. This title focuses on Chi Kung in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1856752356
• ISBN13: 9781856752350
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Gaia Books
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Unique Chi Kung Manual

This book is quite different in subject than all of Master Lam's other books that have focused on introducing students in the West to the various aspects of standing qigong practices. You will be pleased to note however that he still has a teacher's command of images and verbal explanations of processes that are postural and internal (difficult to convey with words). In this text as you can see from the example on the cover, he uses stop action multi-image pictures to convey the techniques in walking qigong. Through this methodology he does what I think is the best that any teacher could possibly hope for when teaching a dynamic movement qigong technique through the vehicle of a book. Even teaching stationary standing postures without having face-to-face contact is difficult, throw in movement and the task is daunting. The most challenging task in these exercises is that the posture and internal alignment is quite precise. It can take hours of internal monitoring and the experienced hand of a teacher to get these positions correct when just standing. These walking exercises are moving sequences of postures and while you can stand in some of the individual postures to get the inner feel of them, only the moving sequence contains their unique qigong. Master Lam gives sufficient internal imagery, points to notice and explanations of the target energy that you can actually become your own teacher. You memorize the sequence, automate the movements, repeat with awareness, and constantly adjust until all of the corners of the movement are smoothed out. I feel that this text has a number of overlapping audiences. First and largest, Master Lam points out that the Chinese think that you are as old as your legs! They view them as the true barometer of your health and I can tell you from my personal experience that my great grand teacher in Hong Kong who has played taiji push hands for 60 years, has the legs of a twenty year old at 94! He argues, and Western heart science supports this, that regular contraction of the leg muscles, pumps the blood, supports, strengthens and when needed assits the heart. So if you want to age more gracefully, try this practice. Young qigong practitioners of standing qigong may think that standing still is boring, so try walking qigong. Finally, I was especially interested in this book looking for instructions for moving meditation. Except the walking practice taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, which is an moving awareness there is little about how a more active form of moving meditation would be done. In this book I found what could make a curricula of a moving qigong meditation, closed enough to be focused while open enough to be engaged. I would recommend anyone getting this book also try one of Master Lam's other book for the mental imagery that goes with these exercises, The Way of Power is the text that I think would compliment this text best.