Xing Yi Nei Gong

It's been my good fortune recently to be given the opportunity to teach qigong at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine. The form I've chosen to teach the students is Xing Yi Nei Gong, sometimes also called the Sixteen Exercises.
My good friend Don Arrup calls these exercises, "Thorough, balancing, and complete." He's right; for an extremely simple set of exercises, Xing Yi Nei Gong is incredibly rejuvenating. A quote from the book, also called Xing Yi Nei Gong, by Wang Ji Wu and translated by Cartmell and Miller perfectly captures the feeling, "One feels as refreshed as if one has taken a bath."
Of course, America is a culture wherein if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. Xing Yi Nei Gong takes the complete opposite track from that, advising not to force anything, not to push anything, but simply to accord oneself with what is natural to begin with. One isn't trying to push the qi through the channels by force, or straining overly much, yet the qi flows strongly and naturally. The reason is simple; exercises where you push hard, go into oxygen debt, build lactic acid, etc. all create their own types of stagnation and can deplete qi. Xing Yi Nei Gong seeks only to gently open the meridians and channels, thus allowing the energy to move naturally. Now, as an avid cyclist, I'm not advocating abandoning your cardio training or stopping spinning classes. A certain amount of fitness is important. However, training in a qigong form like Xing Yi Nei Gong can serve as a perfect complement to the hard training, enabling the body to heal and recover faster than simply lying back.
The benefits of qigong may also extend to treatment of chronic diseases. One example: in one 30-year follow-up study, hypertensive patients were divided into two groups: a control group that didn't practice qigong, and one that did. Both groups took medication for treatment of hypertension. However, the rate of mortality in the qigong group due to stroke or complications of stroke were half that of the control group. Moreover, participants in the qigong group were able to either reduce the medications they needed, or eliminate them. The control group needed more medication as time went on (Sancier, Kenneth M. "Medical Applications of Qigong," 1996).
This winter, when training outdoors is more difficult if not unfeasible, why not try some simple, gentle qigong forms? There are no downsides, plenty of upsides, and hey, who doesn't want to feel as refreshed as if having taken a bath?