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More from
Anna Less
My Meeting with a Qi Gong Master
Appeared in "Natural Awakenings", August 2000
This spring, I brought a group of acupuncturists and acupuncture students to study
Traditional Chinese Medicine and have a holiday in China. Usually, I take people on tour
to visit sites of spiritual significance and to meet the people who live there. I do
this because I believe that this type of travel can offer deep self-transformation and
spiritual awakening. On this trip, the goal was to mix self-transformation with hands-on
experience in Chinese healing at hospital clinics. On the weekends, we headed for special
sites.
Our first visit was to Huang Shan (the Yellow Mountain), which has long inspired poets,
artists and philosophers. Westerners know Huang Shan in Chinese paintings of persimmon
colored sunrises, illuminating rocky needle-like peaks with twisting pines, piercing thick
clouds. We planned to take a cable car to the top and hike for an hour to our hotel.
April is reputed to be the most beautiful month at Huang Shan, and we weren't
disappointed. Wild dogwoods, azalea, rhododendron and wisteria clung to rocks, amidst the
conifers. The air was crisp and scented with pine, the colors brilliant in the thin air
of the high altitude.
Like us, Chinese tourists had come to Huang Shan to admire the beauty and now became,
themselves, part of the color. Tourists in bright baseball hats were herded into groups
by guides using megaphones and pennants. The men had come dressed for the climb in
three-piece suits with ties and business shoes. We marveled at their attire. Hawkers
squatted next to buckets of roasted corn and tea-soaked tofu on lollipop sticks. Women in
straw hats tried to convince us to buy picture books and post cards.
Our guide, Charles, broke the bad news. The cable car was out of order. Our
reservation was set, he said. We simply had to climb nine miles to get there. As I
looked up, the clouds parted and I glimpsed the tower of the hotel on the peak high above.
I asked my group (eight women) if they could make the climb. The answer was unanimous -
let's go for it.
As we began to trudge up the steep stairs that lead to the top, the intrepid Chinese
laughed. Women carried small children piggyback. Sons in three-piece suits supported old
grandfathers with canes. Old women with permed hair and boxy mismatched calico pant suits
carried plastic shopping bags of snacks as they waddled skyward. A sea of people flowed
up the steep stairs. We were using our hands and feet to climb stairs that sometimes were
nearly as steep as a ladder.
After nearly seven hours of steady climbing, we were at the top. Trembling and
exhausted, I needed a massage. Charles told me that one was available for four hundred
yuan (about 50 US dollars, too expensive for China.) My legs spoke for me. "OK."
An Electric Massage
Shortly, a tall, gentle, man in yellow, rayon pajamas appeared at my door. "Pain?" he
asked. I showed him my clothed legs and he went to work. Relentlessly drilling his
thumbs through my pants into acupressure points, I writhed and cried out, but somehow the
pain began to dissolve under his thumbs and the most intense and extraordinary massage I
had ever received unfolded.
My awareness floated as his fingers began to penetrate the points like nails crucifying
me to the bed. He seemed to be transferring life force though the points and my trembling
legs relaxed and became filled with energy. In fact he seemed to fill me with so much
energy that it was overflowing. His hands flowed over the aura that he was building, and
seemed to erase pain wherever they passed. He no longer touched me. It felt as though he
was using an electric wand. All the hair on my body was erect and waving in motion with
his hands. Even my blood seemed to flow in rhythm with his movements. I thought of Jesus
travelling to Asia and learning to miraculously heal the blind with his touch, and in my
reverie I knew that it was true. I had experienced amazing massages in America. I had
watched Qi Gong movies. Heck, I am an acupuncturist and I have dedicated my life to
healing with energy. But I wasn't prepared for this extraordinary level of energy. He
kept working and asking, "Pain?" Only when h
e could find no more pain did he take my hands and pull me towards him to give me a
hug.
Next, he went to my bathroom and came back with a wet towel and placed it on the floor.
He took my hands and pulled me to stand on the wet towel. He tapped his chest and said
"Me, Qi Gong massage." We stood together with my hand and forearm clasped between his.
He held my hand sandwiched in prayer position between his, bowing his forehead to hold his
third eye to our praying hands. Stepping back and releasing my hand, he indicated that I
should keep it raised with my palm facing him, like my childhood image of an Indian saying
"How." He backed away and began to weave his body through some force around him gathering
and concentrating it. The force began to collect around and through him and pull at his
features, as if a great wind was blowing into and through him. His face became distorted
from its force. His arms and hands seemed to swell, his teeth were clenched and a deep
visceral sound like a woman giving birth erupted from him as he clasped my hand in his. I
was thrown screaming from the wet t
owel.
I stood in amazement shaking my hand as if I just been electrocuted. The sensation was
definitely stronger than my memory of grabbing an electric cattle fence as a child. He
indicated that I should step back on the towel so he could repeat the electrocution on my
left side. I was beginning to feel alarmed. My right arm was already sizzling with
energy. Doing it again would be like volunteering to stick a screwdriver into an electric
socket.
This time I prayed too as I bowed my forehead to our hands. He stepped back and
electrocuted me again. Again, I screamed and was thrown involuntarily. Now my two halves
sizzled in stereo and I was filled with energy and joy. "Wait here" I said patting a
chair. I nearly flew down the stairs to find Charles so he could interpret for me. I had
to talk to this man. Who was he? How did he learn to do this? Could I learn from him?
We talked an hour, the Qi Gong master describing his childhood with his Shoalin spiritual
teacher. An atmosphere of devotion began to weave itself between the three of us. We
began to feel a sense of kismet. Had the cable car operated, I would never have agreed to
such an expensive massage. Charles had longed to find a spiritual master and a friend in
America. Now he had found both.
The Qi Gong master said he sensed I had problem with my back. He would like to help me,
but he wanted other people to watch what he would do. I quickly gathered my group; the
women perched on one twin bed with cameras while I lay face down on the other bed. The Qi
Gong master pulled my shirt up over my shoulders and began to pack towels around my body.
I couldn't see what he was doing but it felt as though he had cupped his hands and was
beating on my back like a drum. It felt as though he was holding small needles between
his fingers as he went on pounding. I even thought I could hear the beating sound as it
continued. Later, the women told me he wasn't touching me, he was beating the air about
six inches above my body. He was compressing Qi into my body and that was why I felt as
though fine needles were piercing me. As he worked, I watch the faces of the women fill
with a combination of amazement and horror.
"Look she's bleeding."
"Blood is coming out of her back."
"Look at his hands. There's no blood on his hands!" They were crouched on the bed
pressed against the wall in terror.
"I'm getting this on video"
The Qi Gong master appeared transfigured and distorted by the energy he was
manipulating. I wasn't surprised that the women looked so frightened, but I felt so
filled with peace that to me he appeared transcendent and dancing with pure light. He
used paper towels to wipe off my back. No marks remained and I felt as though I was
sparkling. He took two teacups from the hotel desk and threw a burning cotton ball into
each one before clapping them down on my back. Immediately a vacuum formed sucking my
skin into two mounds within the cups. He removed the cups and once again he began
manipulating Qi to heal my back. I could see by the women's faces that something amazing
was taking place again.
"Oh my God! Look at the blood now."
"Look it's so dark."
"Two blood snakes are coming out of your back. They're about six inches long and about
as big around as your thumb. He's scraping them in to the cups."
I turned and looked at two globs of blood folded over in the cups. The master had made
a fire in an ashtray to heat a square of red paper with sticky stuff smeared on it. He
took packets of herbs from his pockets and began sprinkling them on the sticky patch.
Charles translated, "He is making a gao (plaster) with herbs that he has gathered. He
will also give you two packets of powdered herbs to take orally."
The master finished making two gaos and pasted them over the two spots where the blood
snakes had wriggled from my back. I stood up. He brought more powdered herbs from his
pockets and mixed them together into two small paper packets. One he dumped in my mouth
and one he told me to take with breakfast. I recognized the tastes. Blood tonifying
and blood-moving herbs mixed with Qi herbs. He went to the bathroom and got another wet
towel and spread it on the floor. I stepped obediently on to it and waited as he clasped
my hand in preparation for my electrocution. He zapped both hands and I was hurled
yelping several feet across the room from the impact.
"How do you feel?" the women asked at once.
"In an altered state."
"How's your back?"
"Full of energy." I felt as if the herbs on the gao were plugged into two electrical
sockets that had formed in my back where the "blood snakes" had wriggled out."
The next morning a different me rose to watch the sunrise. I took my herbs with
breakfast. My body felt strong enough for whatever I had to make it do - though the cable
car was working. I said goodbye to the Qi Gong Master and a different me took the cable
car back into a different world. It has been about two months now since the blood snakes
crawled out of my back. The experience changed me and my back. I can bend to do things
now that I haven't done in years. I have been corresponding regularly with Charles and
the Qi Gong master. Next year, I will be taking another group to China to see him, this
time by conscious intention.
– Anna Less, (Tour guide and Licensed Acupuncture Physician who teaches at the Academy of Chinese Healing Arts in Sarasota, Sarasota, FL, U.S.A., traveled to the Yellow Mountain Center twice in 2000 and four times in 2001). Contact: AnnaLess@aol.com
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