Qigong (pronounced chee gung, and sometimes written Chi-Kung) has been around for a while. Well, thousands of years in one form or another. One branch  became Tai Chi, a martial art. However, Shibashi qigong is relatively new, and its origin in this form is ascribed to two Chinese doctors in the 1970′s. Shibashi qigong is a series of 18 slow and gentle movements and it isn’t about fighting.

There are wild claims that qigong can do just about anything for you, from treating diseases to making you smarter. I’ve been practicing the 18 slow and gentle movements daily for the past 11 years, and I’m no smarter today than I was when I started.  But I do feel these exercises have kept me flexible, calm, and balanced. I taught these expercises to my wife and she in turn took this into the workplace and started teaching during a lunch break.  Her classes are popular.

As educational guru Sir Ken Robinson says, we are educated from the neck up and slightly to one side. Our culture is left-brained to the extent we think of our bodies as a way of getting our heads to meetings.

Our culture has an uncomfortable relationship to the body. Because America is such a wonderfully diverse place, it might be that this anti-body attitude is changing.  There’s a large Chinese community in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. It’s not unusual to see the early-morning  parks populated with older Chinese people doing slow and gentle exercises. I first learned qigong from Juliet Lee in Oakland. The series of 18 movements is not difficult to learn and they do promote a sense of wellbeing.

Workplace Wellness managers would do well to look at bringing Shibashi qigong into the workplace. It’s a potential low-cost employee benefit that is also likely to boost productivity, and who knows, it might make you smarter.