Electrodermal measurements during a qigong workshop

Electrodermal techniques measure the electrical conductivity of acupuncture points on the skin to provide information about the condition of the meridians and corresponding body organs. To monitor the effects of a qigong workshop on 29 students, a Ryodoraku instrument was used to measure the conductivity of 24 acupuncture points, 6 points on each wrist and 6 on each foot. These points are located on the 12 meridians. During the workshop, Dr. Bingkun Hu taught the microcosmic and macrocosmic orbit qigongs. Each student was tested four times during the weekend. The subjects served as their own control.
The Ryodoraku instrument applies 12 volts D.C. to a wet cotton electrode in contact with the skin, and the current flowing at 0.75 seconds is recorded and later plotted on a special nomograph. The responses are converted to a distance (cm) with respect to an average value of all 24 measurements. Responses above a band 1.4-cm wide centered at the average response indicates that the corresponding organ has excess qi and if below the band it is qi deficient.
The Ryodoraku responses of the 29 subjects were higher in the afternoons of both days than in the mornings (p-value <0.00001). This effect may be due to qigong practice, a diurnal effect, or an increase in the sympathetic nervous system activity. To evaluate changes in energy balance among the meridians of the body, the standard deviations of the Ryodoraku responses were calculate for each subject and for each of the four measurement times. Ideally, the standard deviation would be zero when the functions of all organs of the body are balanced. The results show that the standard deviations decreased for 26 subjects over the weekend workshop (p<0.00001), 22 over Sunday (p<0.004), and 11 over Saturday (p=0.13). These results suggest that the qigong workshop had balanced the energy of most of the students and the effect was greater on the second day of the workshop.

Partial funding by NIH grant U24HD32994 to Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation (Samuel C. Shiflett, Principal Investigator).