Qi Gong Impacts Energy Flow For Better Health
By Jennifer Garner
Reprinted from Business Strategies, July 1998

Life is about balance. But when health problems or even the stress of everyday life begin to weigh too heavily, it is easy for that balance to be lost. When this happens many individuals start searching for help. That is where Nina Livingstone comes in. A Qi (pronounced “chee”) Gong Therapist at the recently opened Equipoise Center at 29 Goodway Drive, Livingstone helps her patients regain their equilibrium to lead to healthier, happier lives.

Qi Gong means literally “energy practice”. And seated comfortably in her therapy room at Equipoise, Livingstone explains that it is an “ancient Chinese healing art which unifies body, mind and spirit so there can be healing.” Her literature further explains that “Qi Gong helps the body to regain its equilibrium and to heal itself by using universal energy to correct imbalances in the body.”

As a Qi Gong therapist, Livingstone will work over her clients- there is occasionally physical contact- to feel disturbances, or blocks, in a person’s energy flow. When a block is discovered, she will concentrate the Qi, or universal energy, on that area to help restore equilibrium. Livingstone likens Qi Gong to a kinked hose, which will not let water flow until it is unkinked. In the same way, if there is a block in a person’s energy flow due to illness or stress, the body will not be able to begin healing itself until it is released.

When asked why people choose Qi Gong rather than other therapies, Livingstone says, ”It comes down to the relationship with the practitioner. We end up with people we want to have in our lives.”

Most of her clients learn about her through word of mouth advertising. The majority try Qi Gong for the first time in relation to an illness. However, many feel so much better after a therapy session that even once their disease is gone, they will continue coming back. Livingstone has worked on patients with stress, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, wounds and fractures.

One of her clients, Nikki Pogorzelski, heard about Qi Gong through her fibromyalgia support group. According to Pogorzelski, fibromyalgia is a “disease that doctors don’t know much about. The muscles hurt severely all over.”

“I was willing to try anything,” says Pogorzelski, “but it was hard to believe this would do anything.” After a few treatments she remembers, ”I was able to feel more relaxed, then other things started to open up for me.”

Another client, Helen Ramos, also began seeing Livingstone out of a feeling of desperation. About two years ago, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis after waking up one day to find she had lost vision in one eye. “When you get to a point where you’re blind and you’re 41 years old, you’ll try whatever,” she says. Ramos believes that adding Qi Gong and herbal remedies to treatments prescribed by her doctor, helped her vision return in just three weeks, when her doctor had predicted a three to six months recovery period.

“When I come back from a session with her (Livingstone) I am totally relaxed,” Ramos says. Today, she uses Qi Gong as “preventative maintenance” and “something fun I can do for myself.”

In addition to Qi Gong , Livingstone has also been practicing awareness meditation for more than 20 years. “Qi Gong helped me become more aware of how directly affected our bodies are by what we think,” she explains. “Meditation helps us become more aware of what we’re thinking.”

Livingstone’s vocation as a Qi Gong therapist comes after a long road of self-discovery. She was practicing meditation and “doing different kinds of energy healing” when, about two years ago, she saw a pamphlet on a Qi Gong class and her intuition told her to enroll. After learning about Qi Gong, Livingstone remembers thinking, “All the work I’ve done in my life has a name now.”

A couple of months after she completed her initial class in Qi Gong, Livingstone had a chance to bring her knowledge to a higher level. A local acupuncturist was bringing Qi Gong Master Liu to Rochester, where Livingstone was able to spend and intense 10-15 hours with her. She then followed Master Liu back to New York City for additional training. According to Livingstone, during that visit, the two women made a deep connection and the experience made a “tremendous” difference in her work. She feels that Master Liu was able to help her “pull pieces of the puzzle together.”

What does Livingstone say to those who question alternative therapies like Qi Gong? “I just smile and send them as much love as I can. I don’t need to sell it. When people are ready for change, they change.”