Qigong Grandmasters

[richard sloan]

I have been noticing lately a lot of 'grandmasters' making rather extra-ordinary claims, not the least of which are reading minds, chi blasts, and of course healing incurable diseases.

What is the worst, most blatant shenanigan you've ever seen pulled by a Qigong 'Grandmaster?'

I've seen some beauties.

Gene, ever think about exposing some of these guys' chi kung tricks in an article? I think you would be doing your readers a MASSIVE service, and you'd be saving people lots of money.

The guy who brought us Falun Dafa is a real winner, for example. Many try and tie in somewhere with Shaolin as well.

There are heaps of these people bilking unsuspecting victims out of fortunes.

-rs

[Tainan Mantis]

What is wrong with Falun Dafa?
Or did you mean it really IS a winner?
...It is hard to read sarcasm on the screen.

[GeneChing]

... but I love Qigong tricks. It's one of my favorite aspects of martial arts. It's so out there. Sometimes you get some serious goods. Other times, it's more Penn & Teller. In either case, it's entertaining.

My fav Shaolin Qigong trick is by this guy called the Flameboyant Chef. He's a chef that sets himself on fire as a publicity stunt. Claims it's shaolin kungfu. He's sent me a video, recipes, and some xmas cards. A really nice guy. I wanted to run it back when we were doing recipes, but everyone felt it was too silly (unlike recipes...) I still may run it if I can figure out how - he's got some great pics.

Seriously, the tradition of qigong tricks is as old as dirt - a tradition in the martial arts as well as in religion and spirituality. FWIW, I'm just about to publish a piece on the physics of breaking, which is sort of the converse of your request. But if I spent my energy exposing fakes, well, that would take up a lot of time and be ultimately negative. I'd much rather shine light on the real and let the fakes fade in the shadows...

[richard sloan]

This reminds me of an idea my brother and I had, after watching this guy who had a cooking show. He was all teeth, jacked, and amped. He turned everything into a smoothie, dumping it into what he called 'the liquid vortex' of his blender.

We thought it would be hilarious to do a public access TV cooking show, and have all these different MA masters come in and cook their fav training dish while in the background of the kitchen there'd be all this MA stuff going on...then dump the dish into the liquid vortex, without telling them that that is what we were going to do to their prepared dish...to make a gong fu smoothie...

What got me about all the trickery is that some of it is, like you say, good stuff and not really trickery at all. The BBC just filmed an experiment on Pain over the summer that had some really amazing results, and it was performed to the scientific method. But some of the trickery is used to make fortunes and I'm not sure how informed the general public is. That, I guess, is not so bad...people have a right to make money attheir business and all business takes advantage of someone some way... Sucker born every minute and what not, but then...well, I've noticed some very disturbing trends manifesting themselves with the healing angle.

There's something called the pragmatic fallacy. Recently I saw several people giving medical advice who have no business doing so. I mean, they are not doctors, but they are advising like they are. Cancer is nothing to mess with. Basically all Qigong healing claims I have seen are anecdotal or testimonial in basis. So, nobody really knows for sure what is going on, and what is going on can easily be covered by pragmatic fallacy and placebo. None of the Qigong "Grandmasters" -where do they all come from?- seem to care about the qigong beyond that they think it works. What I saw that really set me off was, these students- They basically warned someone who admitted to having cancer and who was asking some questions, that if they went with a different qigong master - who was cheaper- they could die, and coupled this with admonishing the person that if they could not afford the course, then they had no self worth, or were undeserving of the teaching. I mean, this is some scary stuff.

About 2 years ago, in Baltimore there was a wushu comp. Gene, you may have been there. There was a Qigong demo by Grandmaster Qi Fei Long. I felt like I was at a Bar Mitzvah. But the crowd swallowed it hook line and sinker.

He even won an award, Qigong Grandmaster of the Year. He's a charlatan. I looked into the awarding body and the head of the organization got an award two times from the same org!!

I dunno, I think in the past, maybe it was better to just let people hang themselves with their own rope, but now it seems the stakes are a little higher. It's evolved.

[GeneChing]

The qigong/cancer issue is very tricky. Let me ask you this - do you beleive that some people can cure cancer with qigong?

[richard sloan]

...because it hasn't been adequately tested...nobody has done any rigorous testing to eliminate pragmatic fallacy or placebo...and I'll be the first to admit they are difficult to test for, and 'grandmasters' who have built economic empires refuse to submit to such testing...it's amazing how they squirm out of it...if someone has info of such testing, please let me know because I would love to review the material.

Is it strictly a question of conscious faith? Clinical placebo tests show this is not the case. The results analyzed in placebo tests are stunning. They practically mirror what is happening in qigong.

My honest opinion is that the human mind/body is very powerful and the effects of this are not fully understood, and where there is some confusion or cloud we should endeavour to discover what we can.

It's poor science to rely solely on testimonial evidence to claim effective results, but that seems to be all we have as far as qigong curing cancer. No qigong grandmaster ever states that some studies show that up to 70 per cent of reviewed cases in which there was placebo effect had positive results!! In some cases much higher!! So how can I believe that qigong cures cancer- I've noticed that it supposedly cures everything from cancer to irregular bowel movements to skin rash. Many ailments, for example, are cyclical. They naturally go into remission or advance...a qigong practitioner who has such an ailment might attribute recessions to proper practice when it has little to do with that at all.

One master I have looked into rests heavily on such testimonial. He actually came out and said all he is concerned about is that it 'works.' He is not concerned with how it works, nor is he concerned with finding out if it *really* works, only with the perception that it works. Okay, fine...but I have an issue when we get to the realms of life and death, or people with long term illness, or people with cancer who seek out such healing because they are being told it works when the person telling can't really say that. Dealing with long term illness, it creates a psychological profile easily exploitable. This 'grandmaster' states he is all about healing people. But then he says he is not ready to test his abilities, although he also says it is understandable for someone paying large sums of money for a seminar to have reasonable proof of ability...this flip flopping points to a clever weasel manipulating the perception of ability. If this grandmaster is not ready to test under the rigorous hand of the scientific method, then why is he ready to field test on real lives, who incidentally spend prodigious amounts of money for this teaching?

This sounds like I am coming down hard on those who practise chikung. I'd just like to say that nobody I have ever come across who is looking at chikung with scrutiny dismisses it wholesale or does not recognize certain benefits to training.

[GeneChing]

Science always sells the placebo efffect short and durgs long and expensive. Western medicine has gone to great efforts to squelch the progress of qigong because if it did work, imagine what that would do the the high price of medicine? The emiprie of western medicine far outweighs the empire of all the qigong masters combined. Just compare viagra and iron crotch qigong. (http://store.yahoo.com/martialartsmart/prjt001.html)

But let's take it from a more rudimentary point of view - the western paradigm discounts the placebo effect even though it's measurable and easily replicatable. Suppose qigong is all just placebo - if the patient shows progress, is that so bad? The key here is the very nature of the placebo effect - it's a term that science has coined for the power of suggestion. Perhaps qigong is just a suggestion. In these dark times, I'll take a positive suggestion over a negative result.

Surely there are snake oil salesman thorughout martial arts, but I dont' think you can throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to qigong healing. Within China, it is a healthy part of their therapeutic paradigm. It will be so here too, no matter if we harbor western scientific prejudices against its progress. Qigong is rising where western medicine is failing.

[richard sloan]

I know a little latin too, heh heh heh...

"The root word of placebo is the same as in 'please'"

Yup. I think it means, I will please, or something similar...

"Science always sells the placebo efffect short and durgs long and expensive. Western medicine has gone to great efforts to squelch the progress of qigong because if it did work, imagine what that would do the the high price of medicine? The emiprie of western medicine far outweighs the empire of all the qigong masters combined. Just compare viagra and iron crotch qigong."

I'm not sure what you mean, Gene...I think there are lots of factors in all of this, and I hate to sound like I was generalizing by lumping things into broad catagories, but hey, we're having a conversation and not composing doctoral thesis statements, so...imagine if Chi Kung DID work, and it was testable, and the research was clinical and sound, don't you think these massive pharmaceutical companies you mention would be dumping tons of money into it so as to own it as their own? Do you know of any companies actually trying to squelch qigong practice? I mean, if you look at pharmacology, it continually mines traditional medical systems for the means of fighting disease and ailments. Look how many natural products that are prominent in TM that find their way into pharmacology. It's a lot. So the paradigm is there. They're already involved and using traditional knowledge. Some of it is quite good and useful, but much of it is bunk. Like drinking ground up turtle ***** in chamomile tea to give me an iron rod when I'm 95 with no teeth, heh heh heh...

"But let's take it from a more rudimentary point of view - the western paradigm discounts the placebo effect even though it's measurable and easily replicatable. Suppose qigong is all just placebo - if the patient shows progress, is that so bad?"

I agree that some aspects of western medecine just don't care to think about placebo...and that they need a warmer approach which is inviting about more traditional systems- but there has been study after study regarding placebo so it is something that is entering the mind stream, so to speak...there's lots of info out there. Is it so bad? That is the question. In many cases, I don't think so...but now you are getting into Pragmatic Fallacy, and that's a real moral trip. When a potential student (mark) is told they might die if they go to a cheaper master to cure their cancer, and that master really can't state for an ABSOLUTE FACT, that his qigong can cure cancer any better than another (because it's placebo effect mostly) then I think that is wrong. Now you couple this with some newspaper lighting up, some chop stick chopping or some incredible chi leg exercise (where someone holds up three people on a bent leg- it's funny, my mom can do it and this shot is pictured prominently on on e Qigong Grandmaster of the Year's website) and you can probably see why I am a little upset. Because I DO believe in chi conceptually...I've seen my own teacher do some pretty freakin amazing things, and he's subjected himself to the scientific method and come out shining...but his claims seem more in line with what I think chi is. I mean, looking at it logically, what other medecine takes care of all the symptoms and conditions chi can heal? And HOW does it heal? By correcting imbalance? By directing the body to heal itself? Then why aren't these guys immortal? The term chi itself is so loaded, how anyone can keep track of what people actually mean when they say it I have no idea. Sometimes it's acupuncture, sometimes it's NTKOs, sometimes it's reading minds or dispersing clouds or all of the above. Most of that is probably harmless and maybe even some good is done- except to pocket books- but this cancer person, this person may spend valuable time that could be spent on known, effective treatments, on something that may work if his mind tricks himself, or not...

You see, most of the people who go for the eastern stuff are those who are psychologically predisposed to be taken advantage of because they have tried everything, or they are attracted to the mystical east. I have tinitis, for example, from being a DJ. Man, there were times, let me tell you, I thought I was going insane from it. That's when you have a constant ringing in your ears. I'd love for chi to heal me, but I know why I have it- it's not because of an energy imbalance- it's because my eardrums are damaged. I've since been able to train my mind to deal with it, and I have to thank Shi Yan Ming for hooking that up. If the vast majojrity of these qigong grandmasters were poor itinerants, or used their vast sums of money to set up cancer wards, maybe it would lend credence to their abilities and claims. But they charge an arm and a leg, and then go back to Asia. In Thailand you can live like a KING for like, 300-500 bucks a month. BIG property, live in cook and servants. Now figure most of these guys are getting a grand or so a head, and there's 10-15 in an 'intensive' seminar, and man...we're in the wrong line of work. And the tell you if you don't or can't pay for the course, you're undeserving of the teaching! What kind of logic is that? It's the logic of the scam.

"The key here is the very nature of the placebo effect - it's a term that science has coined for the power of suggestion. Perhaps qigong is just a suggestion. In these dark times, I'll take a positive suggestion over a negative result."

Me too. But at what financial cost? Some of these "intensive" qigong courses will run you like 2 large, easy! The way it is all set up, it's so easy to see through if you have just a little bit of knowledge as to how people run scams. And again, when you got some guy eating glass or lighting newspaper on fire, and he gets a Qigong Grandmaster of the Year Award, what does that do for the integrity of the field? It undermines it dramatically. If I were a western Dr. and I saw someone do that, I would dismiss qigong as a whole because there's no consistency to it.

"Surely there are snake oil salesman thorughout martial arts, but I dont' think you can throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to qigong healing. Within China, it is a healthy part of their therapeutic paradigm. It will be so here too, no matter if we harbor western scientific prejudices against its progress. Qigong is rising where western medicine is failing."

I agree with most of this too...there are obvious benefits to training, both psychological and physical. I don't think, and don't know, anyone who casts a critical eye on qigong who would say it was totally worthless, or without great benefits. And like I've said, I;ve seen the results of a scientific test the results of which I am totally comfortable labeling as being involved with chi. But I think that we can get and understand those benefits without some guy in fancy silk pajamas and tennis shoes chopping chopsticks in half with 20s...that would be the bathwater...

To the other poster- forgive me I forgot your name- I don't think you need to be a "commie" to see Falun Gong for what it is.

[dezhen2001]

hi richard,

hope your tinitis gets better :)

dave

[richard sloan]

...now about that make up, heh heh heh...

Just so you would know who it was...

The tinitis is something I've learned to live with. Not much choice really, it's always there!! It was a little worrisome because I know it's driven more than a few people nuckin futs, I mean, think about it, your ears constantly ringing, never any silence...it's weird because I can remember silence...but I never hear it anymore.

That's life though, bitter, sour, spicy, and sweet...

[dezhen2001]

i already knew who it was thats why i signed off with dave instead of dawood which is the arabic version of david :)

well all relatively peaceful in these parts huh? :D

dawood

[GeneChing]

Too bad I don't eat reptiles...

Funny you should mention tinnitus, I sufer from that too. Mine is unilateral though, the result of a wicked viral infection several years ago. I wish I could blame it on my concert work, but no, mine was random illness. Ironically I found my salvation through Shaolin practice too. None of that qigong stuff really worked for me - in truth I'm pretty skeptical about it all myself and am just playing devil's advocate here. This is where it gets really tricky, since much of qigong is faith-based. By being a skeptic, it removes us from the possiblity of being cured by these methods. It's mind over matter unless you don't beleive in your mind.

Actually I don't think pharmaceutical companies like the idea of qigong at all. It goes back to the old Taoist quest for the 'dan' or shamanic medicine, if you will. They used internal and external alchemy, specifically herbs and qigong. Most of the internal methods were abandoned since they had toxic side effects - of course, in the west we made them into phamacueticals. At the last International Qigong conference, the subject of western science squelching qigong was a hot topic. Qigong is against the dominant western paradigm so any research is subject to riducule.

But my point about placebo was different, although perhaps a little muddled. What if qigong was just a formalised placebo? Since science affirms the placebo effect, and that effect can be used positively, then it may well have a significant place in modern medicine. Ultimately, the goal is to heal the patient, and if you can do that with placebo qigong, all the better.

The cheaper master vs. expensive master is quite a moral/economic problem, but sounds more like an individual case, not to sully qigong as a whole. You do get what you pay for. On the flip side, caveat emptor.

Personally, I think you get past Qi Feilong. Sounds like he's harshing your buzz.

[richard sloan]

...that's an interesting take on the placebo, I'll have to think about it for a bit...you are placing placebo like, say Aspirin...

But again, does pragmatic fallacy rear it's head?...if a medecine comes down the pipe whose usage achieves a specific result, like Motrin eases PMS, it goes through clinical trials (one would hope double blind) and builds a case for effectiveness.

I guess it is time for qigong. If the west won't do it, the Chinese can, but they are plagued by a history of faulty research there, like Dr. Yan Xin's.

From a cursory review of the qigong landscape there are too many Qi Fei Longs. Don't people ever wonder...the story is like a carbon copy...train under mutliple masters, achieving the highest skills of each one, then they become self appointed grandmasters...I mean, let's open a business selling bridges. Apparently we will make a fortune...

My father always wanted to start his own religion. He's said time and time again he should have been a Televangelist...some of this faith healing stuff I've been watching recently reminds me very much of the No Touch KO's I've seen being pulled off. A study performed on the healed subjects was very revealing. Most symptoms quickly returned and most worsened. Perhaps a similar study of qigong practitioners would be equally revealing- except that as I see it qigong has one thing going for it- faith healing is not ongoing, it's a one shot deal.

[GeneChing]

Now you see, I can't take aspirin because it exacerbates my tinnitus, but I think your spot on with that point. Is it a pragmatic fallacy? Perhaps to a western logician, but what would the taoist shaman say? When traversing the grey areas of east vs. west, many of the rules of paradigm cease to apply. To do so becomes ethnocentric. In the taoist paradigm, all healing is ongoing. All living is ongoing. To divorce health into sporadic moments of illness requiring medical attention is contrary to the notion of the constant flow of tao.

Sure there are a lot of qigong grandmaster 'fakes' but probably not many more than all the shaolin grandmaster 'fakes.' Masters like Qi Feilong and the no-touch knockout proponents are very controversial. But so are many shaolin masters. I would ventrue to say that your master Richard is the most controversial shaolin monk of them all. Personally, that's what I like most about him. He challenges the status quo. I admire Qi Feilong for the same reasons. I even admire the outright fakes (which I'm not ready to categorise Qi Feilong as yet.) I like to rattle cages myself, so far be it from me to criticize others for doing so.