Qi Gong exercises and Feldenkrais method from the perspective of Gestalt concept and humanistic psychology

Bodywork as systemic and inter-enactive competence: participatory process management in Feldenkrais® Method and Zen Shiatsu

Feldenkrais and Shiatsu enable somatic learning through continuous tactile coupling, a real-time interpersonal dynamic unfolding in a safe dyadic sphere. The first part of our micro-ethnographic study draws on process vignettes and subjective theories to demonstrate how bodywork is infused with systemic sensitivities and awareness for non-linear process management. Expressed in dynamic systems parlance, both disciplines foster metastability, adaptivity, and self-organization in the client's somato-personal system by progressively reconfiguring systemic dispositions, i.e., an attractor landscape. Doing so requires a keen embodied apperception of hierarchies of somato-systemic order. Bodyworkers learn to explore these in their eigenfunction (joints, muscles, fascia), discriminate coordinative organization in small ensembles, and monitor large-scale dynamic interplay. The practitioner's "extended body" reaching forth into the client's through a resonance loop eventually becomes part of this. Within a bodywork session, practitioners modulate this hierarchical functional architecture. Their ability for sensorially staying apace of systemic emergence allows them to respond to minute changes and customize reactions in a zone of proximal development (dynamic immediacy). They stimulate the client's system with a mix of perturbing and stabilizing interventions that oscillate between eigenfunctions and their coordinative integration. Practical knowledge for "soft-assembling" non-linear synergies is crucial for this (cumulative local effects, high-level functions "slaving" the system, etc.). The paper's second part inventorizes the bodyworker's operative tool-box-micro-skills providing the wherewithal for context-intelligent intervention. Practitioners deploy "educated senses" and a repertoire of hands-on techniques (grips, stretches, etc.) against a backdrop of somatic habits (proper posture, muscle activation, gaze patterns, etc.). At this level, our study addresses a host of micro-skills through the lens of enactive cognitive science.

The qigong of 18 Luohan Hands and yoga for prevention of low back pain: A conceptual synthesis

The practice of hathayoga is based on the following assumptions: complexity and multidimensionality of various positive influences on an individual's wholeness through the mind, body and their conscious control. On the other hand, the practice of the qigong of 18 Luohan Hands is based on slow movements designed to mobilise qi within the body. This article presents a conceptual integration of yoga and qigong when considering the congruence of beneficial effects for various systems of the body and prevention of low back pain (LBP). The author emphasizes the usefulness of qigong and yoga practice in clinical units and explains how the essence of these practices relates to each other. The justification of this fusion as well as differences between these two modalities are also described and explained. Within the scope of this article the existence of several similarities between these two practices has been suggested for both practitioners and researchers. They can obtain valuable and additional arguments through cross-fertilization of ideas across presented studies united by shared, underlying biomechanical concepts and physiological effects. Such conceptual enrichment may be a useful source of inspiration for qigong and yoga practitioners who tend to prevent LBP and therapists (physiotherapists, occupational therapists, rehabilitants, nurses, bodywork and movement therapists or massage therapists) intended to manage their patients' back pains and overall health on a daily basis.