The Benefits of Qigong After Concussion

Qigong is an ancient practice of Mind-Body training originating in China. It has a long history of therapeutic use, and is considered one of the five branches of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), along with acupuncture, herbal medicine, bodywork, and dietetics. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) affects different people in many different ways. It can lead to changes in mood, personality, memory, executive function, physical ability, and more. Concussion and TBI affect a diverse array of structures and networks in the brain. A Mind-Body practice with a wide range of benefits such as Qigong is beneficial in rehabilitating the injured brain. This essay will cover the basics of what Qigong is, the history of Qigong, the current research on the benefits of Qigong, and my personal experience using Qigong for TBI recovery.

While other Mind-Body practices such as yoga, taichi, and meditation have become well-known in the United States, Qigong has remained obscure. The word Qigong is made up of two characters in Chinese: 气Qi and 功Gong. Qi literally means “breath,” but has much deeper connotations. Similar to the ancient Greek Pneuma or the Sanskrit Prana, Qi is more than just the air entering and exiting our lungs. It is the energy that animates life. Also akin to Pneuma and Prana, it circulates through the body in special channels. A person’s Qi manifests in many ways: in the health of their organs, their mindset and emotional state, and also in how they grow and develop over their lifespan. An acupuncturist accesses these channels with needles to restore health and vitality. A Qigong practitioner accesses these channels using only their mind.

Gong is a slightly harder word to translate. It means both “achievement” and also “work.” I find it helpful to think of it as the achievement or result of working on something (incidentally, this is the same character as “kung” in “kungfu”). If we put these two words together, we get something like the following: Qigong is the practice of working with one’s internal energy. Put another way, Qigong is the practice of learning to control one’s own nervous systems more effectively. There is, of course, always more nuance and context than a single sentence can encapsulate.

There are thousands of different Qigong exercises, forms, and sets. They serve diverse functions including improving and maintaining health, promoting longevity, boosting martial arts performance, preventing injury, and aiding in spiritual enlightenment. They all contain three key elements, however. All Qigong exercises include a prescription for the body, the breath, and the mind. In terms of bodily prescriptions, there is a huge amount of variation. Some Qigong forms look like plyometrics exercises, some are similar to the slow, fluid motions of Taichi, and still others resemble a seated meditation. Breathing is one of the few functions of the human body that is controlled both automatically by the nervous system (which is why you don’t need to think about it all the time, thank goodness), and voluntarily by the conscious mind. This duality of control allows us to use the breath as a doorway inside to influence the state of our nervous system. Within the repertoire of Qigong, there is a vast array of different breathing exercises. Many breathing patterns used in Qigong are similar to Indian Pranayama exercises commonly practiced in yoga classes. Because the breath is a direct route for affecting the nervous system, breathwork is an obvious component of Qigong practice.

The mind prescriptions of Qigong are equally as diverse. Many involve creating a ball of Qi and using your mind’s eye to move it around the body, following acupuncture channels. Others involve visualizing certain colors associated with the Chinese Five Elements and the TCM organ systems. It should be clear by now that Qigong is an expression of holistic self care: it is an embodied mindfulness and mindful embodiment practice that goes back millenia.

Qigong has been a part of Chinese culture for literally thousands of years. It hasn’t always been called “Qigong,” however. It has gone by many names over the years, but the two most notable are Dao Yin (Guiding the Energy) and Nei Gong (Internal Work/Achievement). The earliest origins of Qigong go back to about 1000 BCE, in the form of shamanistic animal dances and animal-based military drills.

By the sixth century BCE, Dao Yin were being used for cultivation of health, instead of as ritual dances. The oldest textbook of TCM, the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine), was written sometime around 300-100 BCE and contains prescriptions for specific Dao Yin exercises for different health conditions, including the common cold. The use of the term “Qigong” goes back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE) but only referred to martial arts applications, and not to health cultivation. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that Qigong came to have its current broad definition spanning health cultivation, martial arts application, and spiritual development (Cohen).

In modern times, Qigong has become the subject of scientific research and the results show promise. Qigong research is still in its infancy and requires more work to truly become a body of scientific literature. One study from 2009 found that practicing Taichi Qigong (the Qigong form that I will be teaching in my next Concussion Resource Center Qigong series) improved mood in patients with TBI (Blake & Batson). A meta-analysis from 2022 found that Qigong and Tai Chi improved cognitive function in patients with a range of neurological conditions: TBI, stroke, Parkinson’s, and others (Wang et al). A review from 2020 found that Qigong reduces stress, anxiety and depression, and fatigue (Van Dam). My own experience with TBI showed me that these are all symptoms that can easily crop up after a brain injury and can be addressed with Qigong.

In 2022, I was working as an acupuncturist. I had just gotten certified in a system of neuroscience-based acupuncture and was studying acupuncture treatments for TBI. I was even thinking about pursuing a doctorate with a thesis on TBI treatment. Instead, I broke my nose. I had to have surgery on my nose, and I did not recover from the surgery the way anyone expected. After about a month, we realized that I had somehow sustained a traumatic brain injury as a result of the surgery.

I had incredible dizziness that made it impossible for me to continue treating patients, and even to drive a car. I would not have had the energy to continue working anyway. I was exhausted by just getting up to use the bathroom or take a shower. My memory and executive functioning were also impaired: my wife would tell me that we had already had a conversation, decision making became almost impossible, and I couldn’t plan anything even a single day out. Finally, I experienced the deepest, darkest depression of my life. I sought treatment with a laundry list of providers: two physical therapists, two speech therapists, an occupational therapist, an acupuncturist, two counselors, a vision therapist, and a cranio-sacral therapist. Each was incredibly helpful in their own way, but I turned a dramatic corner in the trajectory of my recovery when I returned to practicing Qigong.

I have been a lifelong martial artist and learned many Qigong forms as a part of my martial arts training. After my injury, I continued to meet with my teacher (who is also an acupuncturist) via Zoom every week. One day, I was telling my teacher about all the symptoms I was experiencing. He said to me, “You know, Noah, all the symptoms you are describing are the kinds of things that we treat with Qigong.” It was a lightbulb moment for me.

I had practiced a lot of Qigong, particularly while I was in school for acupuncture, but I had put my Qigong practice on the back burner for a while to focus on other things. I started practicing again the very next day, and every day thereafter (with some missed days because I am still human, and also have a brain injury). Within only a few days, I started to notice some wonderful things: Qigong couldn’t take me back to being the person I was before the injury, but it could take me from having a bad day to having a mediocre one. I found particular forms within my repertoire that could abate my dizziness, decrease my depression, and increase my energy.

As I look back now, approximately eighteen months after my injury, I see my return to Qigong as a turning point. My rate of recovery picked up noticeably when I combined conventional treatments with Qigong practice. Qigong is also one of the few things that gave me a sense of control over my recovery in a bleak landscape of powerlessness. If ever there was doubt in my mind about the efficacy of Qigong, it has evaporated.

My personal experience mirrors the lived experiences of thousands of people across millenia and the modern research into this ancient practice. I owe a great deal to my practice of Qigong and I hope that I can pay some small part of that debt by passing on my knowledge to others who have suffered similar injuries.

References and Works Cited

Blake, H., & Batson, M. (2009). Exercise intervention in brain injury: A pilot randomized study

of Tai Chi Qigong. Clinical Rehabilitation, 23(7), 589–598.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0269215508101736

Cohen, K. S. (1997). Way of qigong: The art and science of chinese energy healing. Random

House Publishing Group.

Lee, S. H., Jeon, Y., Huang, C.-W., Cheon, C., & Ko, S.-G. (2022). Qigong and Tai Chi on

human health: An overview of Systematic Reviews. The American Journal of Chinese Medicine,

50(08), 1995–2010. https://doi.org/10.1142/s0192415x22500859

van Dam, K. (2020). Individual stress prevention through qigong. International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(19), 7342.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17197342

Wang, Y., Zhang, Q., Li, F., Li, Q., & Jin, Y. (2022). Effects of Tai Chi and qigong on cognition

in neurological disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Geriatric Nursing, 46,

166–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gerinurse.2022.05.014

Yeung, A., Chan, J. S., Cheung, J. C., & Zou, L. (2018). Qigong and Tai-Chi for mood

regulation. FOCUS, 16(1), 40–47. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.focus.20170042