In recent years the curative properties of Qigong have attracted increasing interest among medical personnel and patients of cancer and chronic diseases. Since the establishment of the Beijing Qigong Institute in December 1979, about a dozen coaching stations have been set up in parks and many more in factories and government orgams. These stations have some 300 instructors teaching thousands of patients qigong exercises for preventative and curative purposes. According to an investigation made by the Insititute, out of a total 3,100 patients with chronic diseases who have practised qigong for 3-5 years, 25% have recovered completely, 44% have improved remarkably and 22% have improved slightly , while the remaining 9% have made no progress.

One of Beijing's most well know qigong masters is Guo Lin, who learned the art from her grandfather, a famous qigong master. After developing cancer of the uterus at the age of forty, Guo found herself too weak to do conventional qigong exercises and so worked out a new routine for her own use. She has continued to practise qigong for over twenty years and her cancer has never recurred.

Guo Lin as summarized her intensive studies of qigong theories and her own therapeutical experience in her book Qigong: A New Method for combating Cancer, the first treatise ever written on this subject in China. Since 1973, she has given many lectures on qigong therapy and developed four courses: primary, secondary and advanced classes for ordinary chronic diseases, and a class for cancer therapy. The exercises she teaches fall into three main categories:

1. Natural Walking Exercises: These involve slow steps and armswinging coordinated with breathing.
2. Stick-rolling Exercises: The patient holds a 30-cm-long stick of rue ( Zanthoxylum bungeanum ) in his hands , rolling it gently between his palms while squatting and turning his trunk to right and left . The movements are synchronized with respiration.
3. Utterance Exercises: The patient utters long-drawn-out sounds, such as "ah", "yl" and "hi" , which vary according to the parts of the body affected by the tumor.

Although the benefits of qigong exercises in curing chronic diseases including cancer have been proved, no satisfactory explanation of the ehole process has been put forward. Form the view point of traditional Chinese medicine, it is presumed that by doing Guo's " walking exercises" which combine physical and mental activites through movement, meditation and regulated breathing, a patient can summon up his " internal vital energy" to bring about a balance between the "positve and negative elements" in his body. This clears his internal organs of obstructions and promotes circulation, thereby aiding recovery.

Indial investigations indicate that those cancer patients who practise the walking qigong exercises regularly develop a greater ability in their phagocyte to destroy canceeer cells; at the same time thet find it easier to withstand the side-effects of radio-and chemo-terapies.

Another fascinating new development of qigong is waiqi or "outflowing energy" which some qigong masters can release through their finger tips either as a form of therapy or as an anaesthetic. One such master is Ma chun.

While waving or pushing his palms from a distance of about one foot from the patient's diseased part, Ma emits waiqi from laogongxue, anacupuncture point in the palm. The patient feels a current coursing through his body, a feeling of numbness, cold and heat similar to that felt when a needle is insterted into an acupuncture point.

One patient Ma chun cured suffered from compression fracture of the lumbar vertebrae and had long been confined to his hospital bed. When Ma released his waiqi in the direction of the patient's waist from a distance of 40cm, the patient felt a current of heat throughout his body, and there was sweat on the tip of his nose and a rhythmic beat in some of his muscles. After only 20 days of treatment, he was cured and left the hospital.

Since mid 1980, the Shanghai No.8 People's Hospital has been using waiqiin some operations to partially or completely replace the use of anaesthetics. Of ten thyroidectomies performed in May and June of 1980 using qigong anaesthesia administered by Lin Housheng from the Shanghai Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Institute, the result of the nine were rated"excellent " according to the standards set for acupuncture anaesthesia , and the tenth was classified " grade 3" because 10 ml of local anaesthetic was used. Eight of the nine " excellent" operations were aided wit the use of 50 mg of dolantin (the dosage permissible in acupuncture anaesthesia) while the ninth was performed without any drugs.

Using the waiqi released from his palm or fingers, Lin has developed various new treatment methods. One of these, called qizhen(air needles"), consists of inserting a tiny needle into an acupuncture point and applying waiqi to the needle. Under the impact of waiqi the needle and the patient's muscles twitch as currents of heat penetrate into them.

Waiqi has been identified by Chinese nuclear scientists as a kind of low frequency modulated infraredddd radiation. A highly concentrated form of energy, it has been shown through clinical experiments to both kill cancer cells which are later disharged from the body, and to raise the degree of cancer immunity.Though its therapeutic effect in the treatment of cancer ov the thyroid gland, esophagus, stomach and rectum has been ascertained, much still remains to be explored in this unique new branch of medicine.