Lian Gong Shi Ba Fa or Lian Gong 18 Form (練功十八法) is a comprehensive system of Chinese health exercises. It is a set of stretching, breathing, and self-massaging exercises designed to prevent and relieve stress and acute pains around the neck, shoulders, back, hips, legs, joints, and connective tissues. Even though it is relatively new (became popularized only about 40 years ago), it is based on many old Chinese stretching, breathing, and warm-up exercises dating back more than 1,000 years, including the well-known Eight Silk Brocade (八段錦). Since its introduction about 40 years ago, it has spread rapidly from China to other countries (especially to Japan and Brazil), and millions of people are now practicing it. It is fairly easy to learn and practice. The time it takes to do the exercise depends on the number of repetitions, but can be as little as 15 minutes.
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An Introduction to Lian Gong Shi Ba Fa (練功十八法)
View from the Balcony: Tale of Two Cultures and Two Countries – Part III
When my parents and their five children first moved from Canton, China to Hong Kong in mid 1949, we moved into a second floor of an old, two-story house that was rented by my second maternal uncle whose family had been living in Hong Kong for some time. There were many people living in this house, with about twenty people after we moved in. There were eight in my uncle’s family, my maternal grandmother, the widow of my oldest maternal uncle, one or two step-brothers of my uncle, my uncle’s house-helper to help take care of the old, the young, and his large family, plus seven members of my family.
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A Comprehensive Review of Health Benefits of Qigong and Tai Chi
On and off I have written about the health benefits of Taiji [1] and Qigong. Recently an article “A Comprehensive Review of Health Benefits of Qigong and Tai Chi” was published in the American Journal of Health Promotion. [2] The authors are Roger Jahnke – OMD, LInda Larkey – Ph.D., Carol Rogers – Ph.D., J. Etnier, Ph.D., and F. Lin – MS. They have reviewed a vast amount of clinical trials whose results were published in peer-reviewed English-language journals between 1993 and December 2007, and found that there is substantial evidence indicating that there is a variety of health benefits associated with Qigong or Tai Chi. We provide a short summary of the findings of their review article.
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A Most Unique Diplomat: Anson Burlingame
Those of us who are familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area have all heard of and drove by the city of Burlingame just a few miles south of the San Francisco International Airport. However, most of us do not know that more than 100 years ago the city was named after a most unique diplomat Anson Burlingame. [1] In 1861 Burlingame was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as the Minister to China. Six years later in 1867 when he was contemplating retirement from that position and returning to the U.S., China appointed him as the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to head a Chinese diplomatic mission to the United States and other principal European nations. This article describes this extraordinary and unique diplomat.
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