The CHI Revolution: Harnessing the Healing Power of Your Life Force - Softcover

Frantzis, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583941932 ISBN 13: 9781583941935

Publisher: Blue Snake Books, 2008

Synopsis

Revolution is generally considered something external, explosive. In this book, Bruce Frantzis, renowned chi master and author, challenges readers to embark on an inner revolution to reclaim joy and happiness in life, reverse the effects of aging and release their stress and negative emotions.

Chi adepts can consciously feel and work with all the acupuncture meridians, internal organs and other structures in their own bodies. Yet these are skills that most Westerners would consider to be something out of science fiction and absolutely impossible to achieve in real life. Drawing on forty years of training in ancient Chinese practices, Frantzis provides readers with new and startling insights about how life-force energy—chi—can help them achieve enduring health and wellbeing. “The smooth, balanced flow of your life-force energy is the single most important determinant to your health, vitality and happiness,” he says.

Instead of the “no pain, no gain,” mantra of our over-caffeinated, stressed out culture, Frantzis gives readers energetic fitness exercises that comprise the unique Chi Rev Workout™. These transformative exercises teach readers to activate and strengthen their chi and to relax their nervous systems. “The more you relax, the more health, stamina and strength you will have,” says Frantzis.

Frantzis reveals how once closely guarded and ancient secrets of chi are the power behind:
—Spirituality, prayer and meditation.
—Acupuncture and the potent self-healing methods of chi gung (qigong) and Taoist yoga.
—Enhanced sexual vitality and intimate relationships.
—Internal martial arts, such as tai chi.
—Divination methods of the I Ching.

About this title

About the Author

Bruce Frantzis is reputed to be the first Westerner to hold authentic lineages in Taoist energy arts. He studied healing, martial arts and meditation with renowned teachers in Asia for 16 years—including training in China for more than a decade.

Since 1987, Frantzis has taught chi gung, martial arts, TAO yoga, TAO meditation, and energetic-healing therapies to over 15,000 students in the United States and Europe. His teaching methods are spread by a growing number of certified instructors that he has trained in the United States and Europe.

Frantzis is the author of several widely praised books about the power of chi including: Tai Chi: Health for Life; the chi gung books, Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body and the Dragon and Tiger Medical Chi Gung Instruction Manual; and two volumes on the water method of TAO meditation, Relaxing Into Your Being and The Great Stillness. Two CDs, The Tao of Letting Go and Ancient Songs of the Tao, shed valuable insights into the power of TAO Meditation in helping people let go of their deepest emotional blockages and move closer to becoming truly alive, balanced and joyful.

When Frantzis moved to China to follow the Taoist path of warrior/healer/priest, he was extensively trained in the chi principles and practices that are the basis of Chinese medicine. From 1974 to 1979, he trained with high-level chi gung tui na (therapeutic energy work) doctors and apprenticed under their tutelage in Chinese medical clinics. He learned to use chi to help heal a wide range of conditions including broken bones, nerve and organ damage and cancer. He also gained an advanced acupuncture degree.

Frantzis used these chi principles and practices to dramatically heal himself: first from a life-threatening form of hepatitis in India and more dramatically from massive spine injuries that he received in a car accident in 1981.

Frantzis’ experiences have made him a teacher with a mission: teaching people how the ancient and proven self-healing chi practices can help them achieve health, relaxation, inner peace and longevity. He aims to help avert a major health crisis that threatens to engulf the Western world.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chi flows like a river through you, following the path of least resistance. When the flow of chi is free, open and unbound, it flows toward positive, life-nurturing forces.... much the same way as a free-flowing river nourishes all life within it and the plants and animals that are fed by it.... When your energy is blocked or trapped, however, it acts much like a river where water backs up and stops flowing, accumulating sludge and gunk.... Its location in the body then becomes susceptible to stress, illness and disease, both physical and mental...Practicing the art of letting go and releasing any buildup of stuck chi, is the principle taught by Taoists for thousands of years and....is the enduring principle behind traditional Chinese medicine. (Chapter 2, Creating Your Own Inner Revolution)

The Chi Revolution asks you to get out of your head and into your body. In many people, the capacity to go from an external orientation of life to an internal one is severely blocked. Others...are waking up to the fact that no amount of external validation–material assets, status, affirmation of others–has ever done much to foster inner peace for more than a few fleeting moments. Tuning in to your inner world will not necessary give you the instant gratification that the external world constantly promises. It is a process of becoming whole again, rather than a jumble of disconnected parts without any rhythm or harmony in relation to ourselves and those around us. (Chapter 2, Creating Your Own Inner Revolution)

* * * *

Myth # 8: Relaxation is about zoning out and escaping
Fact: Relaxation is about tuning into your body and letting go

Few Westerners have ever experienced deep relaxation. Because they feel stressed most of the time, they are psychologically unprepared for the fact that relaxation can become a norm in life rather than an aberration. It is even more difficult for people to realize that the more relaxed they are, the more energy, stamina, awareness, clarity and strength they will have.
Energetic fitness enables the progressive release of tension and anxiety so that it becomes a living reality. It involves turning in to your body and letting go of all your physical, emotional, mental, karmic, psychic and spiritual tension. Letting go means releasing chi blockages. Ultimately it means relaxing the nervous system so chi can strongly flow. Relaxation allows love, happiness and compassion to flourish.
(Chapter 6: Twelve Myths of Health and Fitness)

Edition details

• Publisher: Blue Snake Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1583941932
• ISBN 13: 9781583941935
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248