How to Use Medical Qi Gong to Heal Yourself and Your Loved Ones
Leonard Shen is a Doctor of Medical Qi Gong, Buddhist Lama, Christian mystical priest, Harvard-trained litigator, Fortune 100 corporate executive, and on the Board of homeless shelters and technology startups. Founder of California Qigong, he teaches Qi Gong online and uses sophisticated medical Qi Gong protocols to promote healing.
This article is the second in a series published by Brainz Magazine, describing how Medical Qi Gong can be used to heal oneself and others using detailed protocols developed over the last 4,000 years in China and now recognized for use with patients of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
In last month’s Brainz Magazine article, “Medical Qi Gong to Heal Yourself and Others,” we introduced the science of Medical Qi Gong (MQG). Developed over the last 4,000 years in China to a high degree and practiced in Chinese hospitals using solely its energy healing techniques to cure diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and liver, lung, and kidney diseases, MQG has recently been authorized by the VA for the treatment of millions of patients.
This article, the second in a series delving into what MQG is and how it works, will focus on the role of patients in their own healing.
What is Medical Qi Gong?
An MQG practitioner uses gentle movement, breathing and visualization techniques, and meditative exercises to sense into the body and energy field, remove toxic energies and historical trauma, and infuse and balance positive life force energy. Whether practiced by individuals to heal themselves or by an MQG doctor to enhance the energy of a patient, the detailed protocols and prescriptions of MQG can strengthen the immune system, increase energy levels, promote calm and emotional resiliency, and increase kinesthetic awareness and connection to the environment.
How does disease arise?
According to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), we are generally born with open energy highways (acupuncture “meridians”) that ensure the smooth distribution and nurturing of life force energy (“chi”) throughout our system. But from the first time a parent shouts “Stop that!” to a 2-year-old, sending waves of negative energy into the clear field of the toddler, to the impact over the rest of their life from toxic relationships, car accidents, psychological stress, and abuse…the entire lifetime of exposure to negative energies disrupts and diverts the original unimpeded flow of energy in the body.
Once an energy meridian is blocked by a clot of externally inflicted toxic energy, like a dam in a river, there ends up being too much energy in one part of the body and too little energy in another, and the body becomes a checkerboard of unbalanced energy. Once the energy pattern has been warped, biochemical and cellular behavior change, and over time even the physical tissue can shift and grow to follow that abnormal pattern. This can eventually lead to biological malfunctions, cysts, and even tumors.
This is how TCM explains its belief that emotional trauma and exposure to or suppression of anger, rage, fear, grief, loneliness, sadness, and other emotions lie at the root of many illnesses, as the mind-body connection works over time to create the conditions leading to physical illness.
How does MQG cure disease?
To break up such accumulated clots and stagnations, MQG trains patients to make certain sounds and to vibrate the parts of the body where there may be blockages. In fact, TCM has held for centuries that certain emotional frequencies tend to be stored in certain organ systems. So, to clear those emotional histories, vibration of those organs is necessary.
For example, the energies of anger, frustration, and rage tend to accumulate in the liver and eyes. TCM holds that long years of suppressed anger can lead to problems in those organs, including glaucoma and liver disease. A patient with those issues will be taught to make a descending-pitch, resonant sound, “Guooooo,” and seek to vibrate their liver area, then, with palms over that area, imagine ripples of released toxic energy pushing their hands away from the body and being released and dissipated.
Suppressed anger can also be released through more vigorous exercises, including figuratively “beating the punching bag” by swinging the arms forcefully for several minutes to throw angry energy down certain acupuncture meridians, out the palms, and deep into the ground while loudly shouting “No!”
In parallel with the patient’s own “homework,” the MQG practitioner will sense into the patient’s body and associated energy field. The MQG practitioner will then remove excess energy and infuse positive chi where it is needed, rebalancing the energy field to a healthier state. The practitioner will also educate the patient on where to direct their homework exercises, focusing on this or that organ and deploying many different techniques of vibration, visualization, gentle movement, and meditation.
Does MQG work?
In addition to centuries of use and refinement in China, the efficacy of MQG has begun to be recognized in the United States. In May 2026, Harvard Medical School hosted a conference titled “The Science of Tai Chi and Qigong as Whole Person Health,” where hundreds of physicians, academics, and practitioners from 65 countries shared research about what has long been known and practiced in the East as a powerful system for healing.
More importantly, earlier in 2026, after several years of studying the healing efficacy of Qigong, the VA announced that qualified MQG practitioners would be authorized to treat, not just teach, millions of VA patients around the country. A certification partnership program has been established with the National Qigong Association to facilitate the qualification of Qigong practitioners for this enormous market of patients in need.
MQG gives patients autonomy
One of the concerns patients have raised with Western medicine is the loss of autonomy. Whether receiving tests and scans, taking prescribed pills (or pills to ease the side effects of other pills), or going on the table to receive surgery or radiation interventions, many patients feel that control over their own healing is largely out of their hands. Yet autonomy and sovereignty over one’s body are perhaps the single most indispensable part of our existence.
MQG takes an entirely different approach. “Teach a man to fish”: patients are taught how to sense into their own bodies and then to direct the vibration of their own voices, the stretching and arcing of their own limbs, and the visualization of light to clear out any stagnations or blockages they may feel in themselves.
Patients are encouraged to apply these techniques at any time, on any day, sensing, modulating, and steadily shifting the energetic equilibrium in their bodies to a healthier state. The more they practice, the more they will remove blockages and suppressed emotions and feel their bodies and emotional states even more, creating a virtuous cycle of sensing and healing, sensing and healing, which can over time ameliorate both physical and emotional illness.
Changes in mindset and the “energetic aquarium”
At least as important as these physical exercises, MQG also strongly encourages patients to reflect on the energetic “aquarium” in which they live and eliminate ongoing sources of negative energy. Removing anger from the body through MQG exercises is great, unless the next day it is replenished because a toxic spouse or boss at work rekindles and retriggers the same emotions. This self-reflection may require even radical changes, such as quitting a job or divorcing a toxic spouse, if patients want to truly address the root causes of the emotional and physical stress that has led to their diseased state.
Finally, patients will be counseled to take a penetrating look at their own behavioral patterns and mindsets. Many of us have been schooled since a young age to “be a man,” “sit down and shut up,” and suppress our voices instead of speaking our truth. That habit of suppressing emotions and swallowing the emotional sewage spewed out by others can be self-destructive and must be changed for true permanent healing to occur.
Most difficult of all, MQG trains patients to practice forgiveness and to take accountability for deeds that, difficult as it is to acknowledge, we may have done ourselves wrongly. Holding subconscious guilt and resentment, and warping reality to mask our hurt, consume huge amounts of life force energy. Once freed up by MQG, that energy can be productively used instead for the immune system and a multitude of other functions requiring life force energy.
Where can I find out more about Medical Qi Gong?
Fewer than 1,000 MQG doctors have been certified in the U.S. (These degrees are theological doctorates to comply with U.S. regulations, not M.D.s.) My colleagues and I at California Qi Gong are among those MQG doctors, with years of training and clinical work directly under Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson, “the father of Medical Qi Gong in the West,” as well as extensive other healing experience. It was Dr. Johnson whose eleven MQG books documented and brought back to the U.S. dozens of protocols he learned in Chinese MQG hospitals in the 1990s.
Our mission is to bring the healing powers of MQG especially to those who can least afford it, and hence we have provided over 80 pro bono training workshops with homeless shelters, VA patients, dementia wards, and women with cancer.
We are also launching a Master’s of Energetic Medicine (M.E.M.) degree certification program in January 2027, training people to use the power of Medical Qi Gong and other healing traditions through over 600 hours of clinical and classroom training.
Please see www.californiaqigong.com or email leonard.h.shen@gmail.com for more information about our classes and the master’s program.
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Read more from Leonard Shen
Leonard Shen, Doctor of Chinese Energetic Medicine & Buddhist Lama
Leonard Shen is a Doctor, Lawyer, Buddhist Lama, and Priest. He has dedicated his life to public service, first as a Harvard-trained environmental advocate and Fortune 100 corporate chief ethics and compliance officer, and now bringing the 4,000-year-old healing tradition of Medical Qi Gong to clients and students through his non-profit. Dr. Shen and his colleagues at California Qi Gong provide treatments and online training, including for those who can least afford medical care. They are recognized experts, including presenting their work at Harvard Medical School in May 2026. Medical Qi Gong is used to treat a host of diseases, including cancer, chronic fatigue, menopause, and trauma-related illnesses.
