Qigong as a Positive Vegetative Biofeedback Therapy for Reducing Anxiety
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July 20, 2015 -
A contemporary understanding of
Chinese Medicine (CM) regards CM diagnosis as a functional vegetative state that
may be treated by vegetative reflex therapies such as acupuncture. Within this
context, traditional mind-body exercises such as Qigong can be understood as an attempt to enhance
physiological proprioception, by combining a special state of "awareness" with
posture, movement, and breath control. Researchers in Portugal have formerly
trained young auditing flutists in "White Ball" Qigong to
minimize anxiety-induced cold hands and lower anxiety-induced heart rate.
Functional changes occurred
2-5?min after training and were observed over the whole training program,
allowing the children to control their symptoms. In the current work, the
researchers report that warm fingers and calm hearts could be induced by the
children even without Qigong exercises.
Thus, these positive changes once induced and "conditioned" vegetatively were
stable after weeks of training.
This may show the mechanism by which Qigong acts as a
therapeutic measure in disease: positive vegetative pathways may be activated
instead of dysfunctional functional patterns. The positive vegetative patterns
then may be available in critical stressful situations. Qigong exercise programs may therefore be understood as an ancient vegetative
biofeedback exercise inducing positive vegetative functions which are added to
the individual reactive repertoire.
Their study is published in the latest issue of
Journal of biomedicine and biotechnology.
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