Hello friends!
Today I would like to discuss a subject that is near and dear to my heart. The practice of Wai Qi Liao Fa, translated into English as “Healing with External Qi”, played a pivotal role in my own recovery back in 2009 when I was suffering from severe depression. I was disappointed at the way my life had gone up until that point, particularly regarding my ability to interact with and form relationships with others. Much of it stemmed from difficulties I experienced due to Asperger Syndrome (high functioning autism).
While I craved genuine connection and friendship with others, along with a clearer goal and motivation in my college classes, it felt as if my current state utterly blocked me having the experiences needed to grow and shake off my weaknesses. There was a sense of isolation and being cut off from the greater universe, and from my very soul.
Even attempts at staying busy and socially breaking out of my shell failed to shake that inner sense of depression, of never quite being “good enough”. Realizing that I couldn’t continue in such a state indefinitely, I decided to take an online Qigong course.
While my own practice of Qigong was vital, the real breakthrough came for me when our teacher did a custom tailored Qi projection for each of us. The fact he was over a thousand miles away from me did not weaken the therapeutic results in the slightest. While we were told that we would receive Qi, we did not know the exact time. Several days after we were told that we would be receiving distance work, I was walking down a corridor at my job…when everything suddenly changed.
There was a sudden sense of time slowing and “folding” inward. Rather than being located far off in linear time, I felt the echoes of positive memories from earlier years surround me as if happening at that very moment. Said echoes created a sense of expansion around my body and mind, akin to the unfurling of a lotus flower. When the unfurling was completed, feelings of grace and bliss poured down through the crown of my head, descending along the centerline of the body. I felt it suffuse and expand through my heart and navel centers. The curse of disconnection and depression that had plagued me for years was swept away. Fear gave way to confidence. Sadness gave way to joy. In the place of that former rut was an assurance that I mattered, that I was not unwanted or separate. There was a sense of coming home, of being “myself” again. Along with the heightened positive emotions and lightening of spirit, there was also a pleasant body buzz that lingered for weeks on end. Stiffness and pain faded from back and shoulders. I was notified later that day that my teacher had been sending Qi around the time that I experienced my profound shift.
Even when the extreme joy and bliss from the experience faded somewhat, it was never really “gone”. As a I continued practicing Qigong and mindfulness, I found it easier ever since then to return to that state.
Now, when reading over this, a question that may come to mind is how this is any different from having someone work on you when physically present? To that I would say that a similar healing experience can certainly be gained whether a session is in person or at a distance. However, there is something that I feel is particularly poignant about receiving projected Qi in this manner, and it relates to common aspects of what we experience as humans in physical bodies.
As we grow, we become acutely aware of the limitations of the physical world regarding time and distance. Even if growing up with good relationships, a sense of separation from others will inevitably set in depending on personality and culture. The awareness of “self” and “other” is necessary to function in the conventional world, but given time and events the sense of separation can become deeper and more chronic. Even when one seeks out interaction and experiences in the outer world to bridge the gap, a lingering sense of fear and limitation may remain.
I would say that on a deeper level, our souls long to go home, to return to a space of deeper connection where distance and time hold less meaning. Typically, when receiving therapy and healing work from another, the type of the technique and intent behind it heavily influences the level of our being that is affected. A massage technique done with the intent of loosening stiff muscles may primarily influence the physical and Wei Qi layer (a subject for further discussion). Wai Qi Liao Fa, however, by its very nature, bridges those temporal and spatial limitations and affects our soul at the HIGHEST level.
And it is really this level where we often crave healing the most. Physical pain and emotional pain are certainly horrible in their own right, but they are especially bad when they create a sense of being cut off from our essential selves. When reconnecting with our souls, we are taken to a place where temporal experiences like pain and sadness are at least reframed within a wider context, at best done away with entirely.
In both my experience, and the experiences of many of my clients, receiving Wai Qi Liao Fa from someone who is many miles away can be more potent and effective than when done in person. The reason for this, I believe, is that for distance work the practitioner must set their Intent to jump past temporal and spatial limitations, reaching someone at the highest level of the soul.
A common explanation for this is that it works at the level of Quantum Physics. Our thoughts and experiences are carried by electrical impulses in the brain, which connect to the quantum realm at the subatomic level. The Wai Qi Liao Fa practitioner shifts their own neural impulses in their brain and creates a resonance that shifts the neural electrical impulses in another person.
While I do think there is some value to the above explanation and reference it at times, my personal thought is that it still limits us to the idea that our consciousness and experiences are an epiphenomenon of the physical nervous system. Much of our pain and distress in this life comes from feeling locked into the physical level of separation. Another explanation that harkens back to earlier esoteric models of the universe regards all existence as occurring at differing levels of conjoined “space”. These differing levels of space are created by limitations of perception. In reality they all blend into and grow out of each other in an organic manner. At the level of soul, we both transcend and embrace all these levels of space!
If one wants to not only overcome physical and emotional pain, but also return to their soul at the level that goes beyond temporal limitation, Wai Qi Liao Fa is an excellent solution.