Qigong for Insomnia
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Do you find this happens to you often: You’re in bed again, mind going a mile a minute, body tossing and turning, with no hope of sleep happening anytime soon?

If you’ve ruled out sleep apnea and if you’ve already tried every other method there is for a good night’s sleep with limited success, you might just want to try a Chinese Medical Qigong method for getting your zzzz’s.

Chinese Medical Qigong (also spelled Chi Kung) is a powerful system of healing that predates and was the basis for the development of acupuncture. Medical Qigong uses body, breath, sound, mind exercises, visualizations, and meditations to help move and balance the energy of the body.

The following version of a famous Prescription for Insomnia comes from Professor Jerry Alan Johnson’s textbook Chinese Medical Qigong Therapy Vol. 4.

The best way to use this effective Medical Qigong exercise, is to go through it a few times to get used to the process, then make a practice of doing the full prescription each night before going to bed.

However, if you’re already in bed, unable to sleep, and you want to give it a try, start with the simplest aspect of this exercise first. Focus your attention on your feet, specifically the Bubbling Well Point, an acupuncture point on the indent on the underside of your foot just before the ball of the foot. Place your entire focus and awareness here for 5 to 15 minutes as you breathe slowly and deeply. This basic technique helps the mind to settle, relax, and calm, so that sleep can occur.

If this simplest aspect doesn’t quite do the trick, proceed to the full exercise below:

Prescription for Insomnia

1. Sit on the edge of the bed, rub your hands together briskly to warm them, close your eyes, then place your hands over your back at waist level. Focus on the kidneys, massaging in a circular motion, going up on the outside, in towards the spine, down, and around to your sides. Massage both kidneys simultaneously, 24 times. Then change direction and massage the kidneys 24 times, circling in the other direction.

2. Keep your hands over your back at waist level, covering the kidneys. As you inhale lift the hands away slightly from the back and imagine divine healing light coming down from the heavens and filling the kidneys completely. As you exhale and press your hands gently over the kidney area, imagine the kidneys absorbing the light. Do 36 breath cycles (one inhalation and exhalation is one cycle).

3. After completing 3 sets of the previous steps, place the right hand on the navel and the left hand on your back at the same height as the front hand. Focus on gathering chi into your lower dantien, which is in the belly area. In Traditional Chinese Medicine the lower dantien is considered to be an energy storage centre of the body.

4. Next, women place the left foot on the right knee and the left hand on the belly area. Men place the right foot on the left knee with the right hand on the belly area. With your other hand gently massage the Bubbling Well Point on the bottom of your foot 100 times clockwise and then 100 times counterclockwise.

5. Do this slowly. Allow the mind to connect the lower dantien in the belly to the bottom of the foot, and then to move energy from the lower dantien to the bottom of the foot.

As the mind relaxes, close the eyes, lie back, and fall asleep. Zzzzz…


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