Can Qigong Practice Reduce Chronic Pain and Stress? | Qigong Podcast with Citlalli Alvarez

In today’s Qigong podcast, we explore the connection between pain relief, stress reduction, and happiness, highlighting how this powerful mind-body practice offers natural tools for healing and wellbeing. Through her research, Citlalli Alvarez explains how chronic pain and acute pain are approached differently, with techniques like La Qi, wall squats, and organ sound healing helping participants manage both physical and emotional challenges. By addressing qi blockages, practitioners experience improved energy flow, which supports not only emotional healing but also greater focus, vitality, and even vision improvement. This episode shows how a healing retreat can reduce discomfort, increase happiness, and demonstrate the power of self-healing rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and Qigong.

Join Citlalli Alvarez as she answers the key question: Can Qigong practice reduce chronic pain and stress?

Blog Post Mentioned in the Episode: https://www.zhineng-qigong-students-hub.com/research-papers/

Mindful Moments: 

• Qigong can help manage and eliminate pain.
• Qigong practitioners are encouraged to acknowledge it rather than ignore it.
• Qigong technique to reduce or eliminate pain.
• Qigong practice can reduce both stress and pain levels in participants.
• Qigong has been conducted with human practitioners and for external applications, such as with plants and coral.
• Qigong methods share the same goal: to gather Qi and open meridians, allowing the intelligent Qi to flow where it's needed.
• Qigong can also increase happiness levels.

🌐 Episode page: 

Links and Resources:

📧 Email Citlalli Alvarez: yesca1967@yahoo.com

🎥 Citlalli’s previous episode: https://youtu.be/HcxmeptKGXg?si=xNvvbfsLGbTKmAl4

🎥 Proving The Power of Qi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_LTjM0c8sE

🎮 Discover Qigong Game: https://www.zhineng-qigong-students-hub.com/discover-qigong/

🎁 Discover the power of Qigong with this easy-to-follow Starter Kit: https://qigong-starter-kit.com/

🎙️🌟Explore more podcasts, events, and resources visit:
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Transcript

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In her recent research, Citlalli Alvarez looked into pain, stress, and happiness. How can zhineng qigong help to manage or eliminate pain, and isn't pain a message from the body trying to communicate an underlying disorder? This episode introduces the concept and provides links to the ACTU research papers that we have provided for you on our website. My name is to Torsten Lüddecke, and this is the Wisdom Qigong podcast. Hello everyone. Uh, welcome to the Wisdom Qigong Podcast. My guest today is Citlalli Alvarez. And, uh, Ali is a very well known, uh, teacher from Mexico. Who is, uh, famous actually for the research that she's doing next to obviously the wonderful trainings that, that she's giving. Uh, Ali, we met, uh, recently and you spoke about three new projects, three new research projects, uh, that you have undertaken. Uh, one is in the field of. Pain. One is in the field of happiness, and the other one is for, for vision. So eyesight. Uh, and, uh, so welcome to the show first of all, and I thought we start today with, uh, understanding a little bit of what exactly have you done when it comes to pain. What did you do with your students and what are the results that you've created? Maybe you can explore a little bit about that. Yes. Thank you dear Torsten for inviting me again. Hello everybody. Um, first I would like to mention the projects that we have done. We have done 12 research projects, six with practitioners, and six with another technique that is external chi, sending chi to different things. I will mention those in order you, you remember all the things that we have done? So with practitioners, we have measured quality of light, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, body weight with kids. We, we have measured immediate memory, impulsivity, control, attention level. General, a state of health levels of energy and brain response. And the last research with adults were vision improvement, happiness and stress, and pain levels. On the other hand, sending external team, we have measure growth in vitro with plans, body weight increase with reptiles. Growth and survivals at the coral nursery in lab. Um, an illness in called Coral syndrome. White syndrome is a syndrome in the corals in the sea. Uh, we measure growth and survival in coral fragments in the sea by distance. It was a different project. And also we have measured genetic mutations in fruit flies. I would like to add to that, that uh, we have already published, um, a separate video and I will put the link underneath where you're presenting some of these research works. So for those, uh, research projects we're not covering today, you will, the listener will find a link where they can find you, uh, some presentations about the results that you've created there. But please continue now with your current project. Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. So the last one, we make sure vision improvement. Uh, we did a retreat and it was, we got really good results. And also we did another project when we measured happiness and yeah, it was a really good, and the last one was the stress and pain, and we can talk about that because we all are related with pain in, in our life. We have. Experience the pain in a different situations, right? So pain for me is a big master, eh, as an athlete, and all the persons that do exercise, we are related with pain. Pain is, is, is close to us, but eh, a lot of people ignore the pain, don't pay attention. From my humble opinion, we have to learn how to deal with pain. Nobody taught us, uh, that pain is a, a really good master. So when you feel pain, I guess you have to recognize the pain and then say thank you to the pain because it's telling you is the way your body talks to you. Because we are a amazing machine. Our body is amazing all the time. Our body is trying to keep balance all the time. It's fixing, fixing everything. So when there is pain it's because something is grown and you have to pay attention. But um, some of us have different. Different pain tolerance, right? You can tolerate the pain or you can not tolerate the pain. It it depends of the pal because it could be chronic pain. It's a pain that you feel on your knee. For, for instance, you start to feel pain on, on your knee and say, it's okay. Don't worry. I keep doing my stuff and next day the same, and the same and the same. So when you keep the pain for long time, it's a chronic pain, or you can have, uh, acute pain if you are running and then you, um, push your elbow. You can feel the pain, right? It's an acute paine. It's on the instant, so depends of, of the, the kind of the pain, and it depends of the tolerance of each person of the pain. But we all have pal, and that's why we decide to measure if pain. Is able to reduce by challenge practice and that's why we, we did this kind of, uh, research. So let me, let me just, uh, summarize something here because I think you said something very important. Uh, this is not like taking a tablet that you just want to get rid of the pay. You basically acknowledge that pain is a message from the body that wants to tell you something important. So it's not, not about living completely without pain because then it means you would just ignore the messages and there might be an underlying message that is really important for you to learn so that you can do changes in your life and, uh, make sure you sort out whatever you need to sort out. So you acknowledge that pain is the message, uh, from the body, but you're saying, uh, we all have different, um, um, I mean, pain is nothing we like, right? It's not, uh, oh, I'm glad I've got pain. It's, I'm so happy. Yes, you're happy because the body tells you something and you thank it for it. But you know, it's not a pleasant feeling. So they, they, you need to manage the pain if it becomes acute or if it becomes um, um, something chronic. And that is where you are stepping in now and say, let's, first of all acknowledge it's an important message behind it and we need to find out what that message is. Then we can move further, and then we can work and do what you call pay management. Right? Right. Actually one of the teachers told me when Qi blockage manifests itself on a physical level. It's because it has been there for a long time at the Qi level. So, you know, according with the, uh, Qigong and traditional, uh, Chinese medicine, uh, there is a symptom because two things, there is a low amount of Qi or there is a lack of Qi, and the Qi doesn't flow well. So that's why we, we call a Qi blockage, right? So the teacher said if you feel pain or it manifests at the physical level, it's because it has long time ago in at the Qi level working. So that's why when the pain talks to you, we have to pay attention. Because there is already something that, that we have to fix. I assume this doesn't count for when I cut my finger, because then the pain is immediate. Uh, but, uh. Any other pain that I might feel in my body, like, you know, back pain or something like that. Uh, you are saying, or the teacher is saying here, this is the end result of something that has been going wrong for quite some time because the, the energy level or the, the Qi level, uh, already has been trying to sort it out basically without creating pain, but only if, yeah. This doesn't, didn't work. And you, uh, the body didn't solve whatever it needed to solve, that's when the pain kicks in to say, okay, hello. Now do something about it. Right. Right. Exactly. That's the way the, the body works. Yeah. Very good. So, eh, every time I tell my students that there is a medal, we call La Qi Gather Qi. That is really, really effective to reduce or eliminate pain, and it's so simple. You gather, Qi Ball between your hands and then you mind goes to the universe. As a consequence, your hands open a little bit and then you mine and the Qi from the universe. Come backs between your hands. As a consequence, your hands, um, approach don't close, completely only approach. That's the method. La Qi. Gathery is so easy, so easy, and, and very effective. So you can do lachy for minutes. And open and close gathering sheet from the universe, and then send that sheet to the part that needs to fix. And there are, I have some examples how this works, uh, really, really well. For instance, eh, my Greece long time ago, I have a, I have pain on my wrist, so I talk with my mass massage. And I say, could you help me because I have some pain here? And he told me, yes, come, come next day. So I going to him. But when I was there, I say, hold on, don't do that because I'm a zhineng qigong practitioner, so let me try to fix it first, and then if I cannot do it, I can come with you. And he told me, okay, just try. So every day I was gathering qi as sending to my priest. And after three days, eh, the pain start to reduce. To reduce, to reduce and say, wow, this is amazing. So if I can do it with my grease, eh, I guess I can do it with all the parts of my body. So that was a really good example. And another example, I was racing my bicycle and I start to feel pain on my throat. And I had a raise on Sunday. So it was on Monday. On Monday, and I woke up with pain on my throat and I say, I cannot get sick because I will raise on Sunday. So I start to practice and in that place where I was practicing, it was an acupuncture guy. So I went with the guy and I say, could you help me please? I don't want to get sick. So he told me, yes, yes, lie down. And I go, I'm, I'm going to put some needles, you know, the acupuncture, right? So I, I stayed there like 20 minutes and then I felt how the pain reduce and I say, okay, thank you. But after some hours, the, the pain start to come again. Next day I went, uh, with a Mexican traditional medicine doctor. And I say, could you help me because I don't want to get sick and I have a race on Sunday. And he told me, yes, pass me your arm. So between the arm and the forearm, eh, the opposite to the elbow. This area, he start to do a massage here. It was painful by the way, so he had to do a, a massage here and the pain of my throat reduced. He explained to me there is a lymphatic nodes here. Those are part of the immune system. That's why, uh, uh, the, the pain reduce. I say, great. But after some hours, the, the pain start to come again. So next day I decide to gather chi. I say I'm gonna do La Qi and send Qi to my throat. And I made it, the pain reduced, so my conclusion was everything work, acupuncture works, eh, Mexican traditional medicine works, but La Qi works. So I took a decision. For me. It's better not to get an appointment and go to the doctor and pay for a session. I prefer to do it at home for free. And fix my throat. So La Qi is a really, really good method to reduce and eliminate pain. Of course, if your pain is chronic, if the mind has been attached to that illness or pain, it will take more time. So you just have to be more patient and think she, she and constant, if the pain is acute. It is easier to to fix. I like, I like how you say, uh, if the pain is, um, chronic, your mind is attached to it. Because what it shows is that the mind has been dealing with this pain for such a long time that it's more difficult to transform because the mind kind of, you know, thinks it's normal. I have this pain, I had it for all these weeks or months or whenever or however long. So there is an attachment. To, uh, to these things. This is also why diseases that we carry for a long time usually take us a little more time to get, uh, uh, to heal it when we work with zhineng qigong than something that happens in an instant. Uh, so, uh, yeah. But I love the way you've put it when you say the mind is attached, and I think that is a, that's a true fact. Now, I would like to hear a little bit about, um, the workshop that you gave, where you actually did the research. Maybe you can guide us through the workshop. Tell us what kind of, uh, people were there, what kind of pain were they dealing with, uh, what were the exercises that you did and how did you work with them and what are the results at the end of the, the study? Yes. We create a retreat in another state. We live in Mexico City, so we moved to another state. It's a beautiful place. Um, do you remember Torsten that once you asked. If you go from the city to another place, the pain will reduce and the stress, and I say yes, eh, but our research that will be a different research. For instance, you can measure the pain and the stress in the city, and then. You move to the forest or to the beach or to the mountains or whatever you want and measure again, because I think it could be a difference between living in the city and living in contact with the nature. However, it depends of the person because here in my home, close to my home, there is a beautiful park, and every time that I arrive home. I ride my bicycle between the park and I always connect with the happiness, release stress and everything. It's beautiful. But once one friend visit me and I told him, when you come to my apartment, walk, uh, across the park and be in touch with the actor. Release your stress and tell me what do you feel? So my friend arrived and I said, what did you feel? He told me I didn't feel anything. I say what you think? They connect with happiness with another, he say no. So it depends on the person. We think that uh, you can reduce the stress if you move to another place, but maybe not. That could be an interesting research. But our research. We all move. We were, uh, 70, we moved to, to a beautiful place one day before we settled down. We have dinner there and we sleep there and we explain what will be the, the, the research next day. We, we all had the same conditions, the same environment, the same food, the same everything. So we take the first measurement about the pain, stress. There is a questionnaire, uh, levels of stress, and there is another, we use 2, 2, 1 for stress and one for pain. And the questionnaire of pain, it was divided two, chronic pain and acute pain. So the students answer the, the questions. And then we start to practice half, seven hours a day, eh, with sun. Rest of course. And different kind of methods, eh, organize the Qi field, La Qi, eh, wall squats, eh first level of zhineng qigong experiments, uh, experiments with Qi. Also we walk, uh, in the nature and connect with nature. We sing with dance, so everything is in the article. You can check all the methods that we practiced for for some days, and after that we measure again, the students answer the questionnaire, a stress questionnaire and pain questionnaire. So we gather the data. Analyze in a, in a statistical way. And then the results shows that, um, stress and pain levels reduce in participants. So it was a really, really nice, uh, project and is already published and we can check in in the student's how. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. Uh, the listener will find a link underneath, uh, the show. Where they can actually read the research paper to see exactly what methodologies you've used, uh, what the results are, exactly what the measurements were. And as you said, uh, you, your papers have been published. So there, yeah, there is an interest in the scientific world about, uh. What you are doing here and uh, we are able to, to show the two studies on pain and the one on happiness. Um, the one on a vision that you also did is not published yet, so we cannot put them onto the students hub yet, but hopefully at the later stage this will also be published. But you know, anybody who would like to read up on the concrete methodology, on the concrete results, they can do that there. Now in the podcast, uh, I would also like to see whether there are any particular stories that come to mind. So do you have any examples of people what kind of pain they went into the workshop with and what happened during the workshop and where, how they came out of the workshop? Yeah, it was different kind of pain, chronic pain, acute pain. Um, the, the data of each person. You cannot publish in, in the article. I mean, you gather the data, but then those kind of data becomes numbers so you can analyze in any statistical way. So you don't say, uh, Maria has pain in the lower back and there the pain was reduced. That's it is not because, um. All the information also is confidential, right? Right. Uh, unless you can, you can give your testimony. Of course you can do it, but if not, in this kind of research, uh, everything is confidential and all the information, um, comes to, uh, numbers and that numbers are analyzed in a statistical way. And that's why we, it is the way we do the scientific research, but it was different kind of pales. Uh, acute pains, chronic pains, uh, lower, lower, but a lot of muscle pains, a lot of, uh, joint, joint pains. Um, even with the eyes, there was also pain of the eyes, different parts of the body. So it's basically what we, we measure because stress manifests in, in a different kind. So let, lemme just see, um, whether there, were there any, any differences in the kind of pain? Was it easier, for example, to do chronic pain than acute pain or, uh, were there certain parts, certain ways or certain uh, um, categories of pain that were easier to heal with qigong? Well, in this kind of research we didn't analyze between chronic and acute. We analyze a chronic with chronic before and after and acute and with acute before and after. The one that you are asking, it will be another kind of research, really interesting, but according with my experience, acute pain is easier to heal because what you already mentioned, the mind is not really attached. It start. So when as soon as you hit, you crash, you do something and produce a chi block, your mine immediately has to start to send Qi As soon as you born, you could you crash the first. The first mine has to be"send qi" "send qi" "send qi", and it'll be faster to cure. Because if you could, and I say, okay, when I arrive home, I will send chi, or maybe tomorrow it will, it will take more time. But if your mine, if you crash and you are on the floor, you, you are sending chi to your hip, to your elbow, to your knee, uh, any part. And with chronic pain, as you mentioned, because the mind is really attached. I mean, you have lived with that pain for weeks, months, or years. It's really interesting. Now we tolerate, in that case, the, the pain. We, we learn how to live with the pain instead of fixing. So you, you live with the pain on the knee and you walk in that way, and you do exercise in that way. So yeah, we live with that pain. Normally in that case, because your mind is really attached, you spend more time according with my experience. Now, your research focused on physical pain, right? So that you didn't touch emotional pain. We've got a few more minutes and I'd like to hear a few things about the other study that you did, because when you talk about happiness, uh, this is obvious in the realm of, uh, emotions. So, um, I would like to hear a little bit about that and whether you worked in the same way or whether you did anything different there. Yeah. Well, physical pain. Yeah, we measure physical pain. However, stress is a kind of emotional pain. It's uncomfortable Stress is when when you don't feel, and it could manifest physical or emotional, of course start with emotional and then physical. So stress is a kind of mental attention, and we measure also that stress. But the other. Scientific research was with happiness, and I like it because we always measure like difficult things, right? Pain and stress. And I say, okay, let's measure the opposite happiness. Of course, when you reduce stress and pain and sadness, you, you will be happy So. We did exactly the same, but it was really interesting when I was checking in the database. What are the articles that already have measured happiness and chicken both together? Eh, I only found one article in English. Of course. It could be more scientific research in different language. I dunno. But I only find one in English. They'll talk about a happiness and qigong. So we did exactly the same. We went to the beautiful place. We stayed there with the same conditions, and then we take the initial measurement, we practice heart, and then we, we did the final measurement, analyze all the data. And, uh, the results show that students increase the level of happiness during the retreat through the practice. To what extent do they increase the happiness? Can you say that? Is there like a, a scale or something that we can use to see how much happiness has increased the, the data In the article, there is the information. With numbers, like you can see what is the difference between one at the beginning and at at the end. Now, did you do the, uh, happiness research, uh, project with the same kind of exercises? Did you also do level one just like you did for the pain and stress, uh, uh, group? Yeah, but uh, but also that one, what everything is in the methodology. In that one, we have two instructors, Chinese instructors, and also we have healing, uh, practice. We have also experiment, uh, you know, what we practice with sounds in that retreat. Everything is in, in the, in the articles. The, uh, every single method that we practice. Yeah. But it's different from the first one. The second one, we practice sounds, organ sounds, and we had also healing sessions that we didn't have in the first one, but we also have some experiments and also walk between the net or, and, and, yeah. Right. Uh, the reason I'm asking is that, um, uh, I, I just want to know whether there are any specific exercises, because I think in the third study that we don't have time to talk about now, the vision one, you did some exercises that was particularly focusing on the upper part of the body. In particular the head, right? You did parts of a level two, uh, with a cranes snake and dragon's head and so on, where you basically activate. Concretely in the upper part of the head so that, uh, the energy can probably flow better into the eyes. Is that correct or did I, do I remember this incorrectly? No, we did a, a special exercise for the maze. There are three, uh, exercise for the ice. But um, it's really interesting Toand because every single method zhineng qigong method has the same sense. So you can fix your eyes practicing, eh, La Qi, or you can fix your eyes doing wall squats. I did it before. Or you can fix your eyes. Practicing, practicing level one or organize the Qi field. I mean, every single method in zhineng qigong has the same objective. Gather Qi and open meridians so it doesn't, yeah, it, it matters the, the method because, uh, for instance, there are specific metals for the eyes, or if you, if you want to fix a heart or lungs, you can do change chi another, uh, exercise. But also you can do, you can fix with another kind of exercise. So, yes. It's true that there are specific methods for the, some kinds, some parts of your body. But yes, you can do different kind of methods for fixing the whole, like the totality and, uh, because we often get the, the question they people come to us with very specific, uh, symptoms and want to know what is the specific exercise to do. And then there are sometimes surprised if you say, do the lit you up. You know, uh, uh, or do a La Qi or do the Wall Squats , um, because it doesn't really matter so much what the problem is. Uh, the way the, the underlying principles of all the exercise is always the same. And the Qi is very intelligent, the life force energy, and it goes the way it needs to go. And important thing here is to use the consciousness, uh, as usual now to help it guide, um, and create the results that we want to create for yourself in terms of your health and wellbeing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Very good. And also you can use a specific for, I mean, to add or whatever you want. There is no rule that's important. There is no rule. If you feel that, if you do an specific, um, exercise for your lungs, that will help you because your mind believe that that will help you. If, if you know that every single method will help you, you'll heal because your mind. Yes. Think about that. Well, thank you very much Citlalli for, uh, sharing. Your expertise here and for introducing your studies. And, uh, as I said, the link will be underneath so people can read up on the details if they're interested. Uh, they can also go and research a little deeper into the other projects that you've done that we haven't touched here today. And yeah, and obviously your website or your contact details will also be underneath, so if anybody, uh, would like to work with you, they're more than welcome to get in touch. Thank you very much Citlalli and um, yeah, and I hope to see you soon on the show. Yeah, thank you very much Torsten to you. And see you soon.