When you raise your arms in a Qi Gong class and follow your breath, you are repeating a movement with roughly four millennia of documented history behind it. Few physical practices in the world can claim such a long unbroken line - and none has stayed so faithful to the same tools: breath, posture and attention.
Here is how the practice evolved, and what of that long journey actually lands in a training session in Ljubljana.
The oldest layer: dances against stagnation
The earliest traces are indirect. Chinese chronicles tell of ancient times when floods and damp made people ill through “stagnation” in the body, so great dances were prescribed - movements to restore flow and loosen the joints. Neolithic pottery shows figures in postures strikingly similar to today’s exercises.
From the Warring States period (5th-3rd century BCE) survives an inscription on a jade pendant describing, in twelve short phrases, the circulation of breath through the body - the oldest known “training instruction” in the world.
Mawangdui: gymnastics on silk
In 1973, archaeologists opening a 2nd-century-BCE tomb at Mawangdui found a silk scroll titled Daoyin tu - the “Chart of Guiding and Stretching”. It depicts 44 human figures in exercise postures, many with captions: for knee pain, for deafness, for calm.
It is an extraordinary document: proof that more than two thousand years ago physical exercise in China was already systematised, written down and aimed at the health of ordinary people, not only monks and soldiers. The practice was then called daoyin; the name Qi Gong is far younger.
Flowing water does not stagnate, and door hinges do not rust - because they move. So too the body. - Lüshi Chunqiu, 3rd century BCE
Monks, physicians and alchemists
Over the following centuries three communities developed the practice, each with its own emphasis. Physicians - the famous surgeon Hua Tuo composed the Five Animal Frolics in the 2nd century, imitating the tiger, deer, bear, monkey and bird; it is still practised today. Daoists wove breath and attention into “internal alchemy”, the search for long life through the transformation of energy. Buddhist monks, including those of Shaolin, used physical exercise to support meditation - hence the close bond between Qi Gong and Kung Fu that we keep to this day.
Across the dynasties, forms arose that are still practised now: the Eight Pieces of Brocade (Baduanjin) is documented as early as the 12th century.
The modern era: from near oblivion to hospitals
The name Qi Gong (氣功, “work with energy/breath”) only became the umbrella term in the mid-20th century, when China’s old practices were catalogued and introduced into sanatoria. After the Cultural Revolution nearly extinguished the practice, a great revival followed - today Qi Gong is studied by universities, recommended by cardiology and oncology departments around the world, and practised by millions.
The scientific language has changed: what the ancients described as the flow of qi we now measure as effects on the nervous system, breathing, balance and blood pressure. The exercises themselves are unchanged.
What of this we train in Ljubljana
At Body.Mind we practise Qi Gong in that unbroken line: slow, precise exercises guided by the breath, with no esoterica and no promises of miracles. Every Kung Fu class includes Qi Gong too - just as the two practices were joined for most of their history. To begin you need nothing but comfortable clothes and one hour.
