On practicing Qin Na for health benefits

As a martial art, Qin Na is an extraordinarily powerful set of of roughly 700 techniques -- collectively these techniques represent an artform that takes most of a lifetime to master, but even a few techniques can be especially useful to police and others who must attempt to safely, peacefully deal with potentially violent people in ugly, contentious situations.  The power of the Qin Na artform is based upon disciplined and lengthy practice ... you can read about Qin Na in books and watch DVDs in order to understand what you are doing; but to learn Qin Na, you must practice under the watchful eye of an experienced master ... practice is necessary to develop an accurate, complete [mental and physical] awareness of different situations and then to correctly, rapidly, safely, carefully execute the most appropriate grabbing technique which seizes and controls an opponents joints, muscles and tendons.  In deadly situations [faced by law enforcement officers and military police] Qin Na is also about developing sufficient jin or power to effectively grasp and hold a dangerous oppently and then deliver a powerful blow with neutralizing or even potentially lethal effect.  In other words, Qin Na is all about very precise mental balance, accurate control of the qi and a very detailed and specific understanding of the body's physical structure and qi channels.

I began looking into Qin Na in my effort to learn more about qigong and my desire to develop a personal training regimen to develop power and more fully realize the more profound health benefits of qigong.  At first I shied away from Qin Na.  It is still very difficult for me to even watch Qin Na DVDs.  Even carefully orchestrated demonstrations led by an experienced master like Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming involve putting someone into obvious and real pain.  That's tough for me to watch -- I've been in a couple serious fights and I've broken up other fights, but I have never thrown the first punch -- the people who have seen me in those situations might believe otherwise, but by nature, I am a VERY nonviolent person; I certainly have NO desire to inflict pain on anyone.

I am only starting to learn about Qin Na conceptually ... to read about it, to watch DVDs, to start thinking about the theory.  It is already obvious to me that it will take a lot of courage for me in order to practice and really learn Qin Na [or Aikido, Jujitsu or any other martial art that uses the seizing arts] ... at this stage, I have a lot of respect for anyone who is a serious student of Qin Na and practice it regularly ... of course, I have an immense amount of respect for others, like police officers [both military and civilian], who are confident enough in their practice, that they walk in the direction of trouble to peacefully defuse dangerous situations [even though this means that sometimes they will need to actually use their Qin Na skill in deadly situations, rather than simply drawing their weapon to threaten/kill OR avoiding explosive situations until a squad of heavily armed police officers arrives on the scene].

But I'm not a police officer -- I do not plan to EVER hurt anyone if I can avoid it -- I would like to be able to creatively avoid trouble; I am not all that sure I even want to be able to hurt anyone [therefore, I had better practice diligently and learn Qin Na with enough discipline to use it carefully, in a trustworthy manner, if I need to, to NEVER make any mistakes].   I humbly intend to learn a lot more about Qin Na, to practice and develop the art for a long time.  Someday, I hope to be able to teach others about Qin Na who share my desire to learn the art for the following reasons:  

• To increase mental awareness and agility, 
• to build up mental endurance and strengthen will, 
• to understand qi channels and control qi much better, 
• to train mental balance, stability, centering and root,
• to firm physical balance, stability, centering and root
• to [through practice] stretch the body's joints physically, 
• to understand the structure of the physical body,
• to learn how to heal and recover from injury [because practice inevitably involves injury] and 
• to make friends [because practicing qin na is one way to find out for sure whether someone is really a friend].

I will probably edit this posting later ... for now, I need to try to read and try to finish watching those DVDs before I take in the seminars ...