The acquisition of healthy mentality and the development of human potentialities

Author: Huang Renshou//Gao Lin//Cao Kuishen//Guan Chaiyuan//Liu Qun
Affiliation: East China Normal University, Shanghai, China [1]
Conference/Journal: 2nd Int Conf on Qigong
Date published: 1989
Other: Pages: 357 , Word Count: 494


The key to the development of students' intelligence, the improvement of their physical condition, the cultivation of their moral character, the perfection of their soul and the increase in their wisdom by means of Qigong is to acquire a deep insight into a healthy mentality. The article is to deal with the following points on this question:

I. A person's healthy mentally is the expression of his psychological energy which can change a person's mental attitude when it amounts to a certain quantity. To acquire a healthy mentality, a person should first of all remove all the harmful factors in him that may impede the psychological energy. Through self-cultivation, self-regulation, and self-domination, he can gain a balanced coordination of his consciousness and his behaviours will be in good order. Further practice of Qi Gong enables a person to gain a full vigour of spirit, Qi and energy, therefore to cause some physical and psychological changes in him. There are some research works in traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that deal with the relationship between mentality and Qi Gong practice- which requires excellent psychological diathesis and noble sentiment.

II. The acquisition of a healthy mentality starts from the discovery of one's own unhealthy mentality, followed by a good understanding of 'hallucination' and 'dreamland'. And finally, guided by a healthy mentality, a person can reach a state of 'happiness', 'brightness' and 'emptiness' (with no distracting thoughts). Furthermore, if he practices harder, he will gain a best efficiency in thinking, reasoning, emotion and capacities. Experiments on people with special capacities show that consciousness has both strengthening and disturbing effect on a person's functional information. Many cases of Qigong treatment have also proved that a healthy mentality produces obvious effect on disease treatment.

III. From 'commandments', 'establishment (of a healthy mentality)', 'intelligence' up to 'supermentality' --this is an irreplaceable law in Buddish theory of Qi Gong. The 'commandments' keep a person in a balanced state of mentality in his daily behaviors: walking, living, sitting and sleeping. His psychological energy, therefore, is gathered together, his will strengthened, and disorder and harmful information in his body eliminated. Then, with all there conditions possessed, a supermentality, a high wisdom will be achieved, no matter how desires stimulate from inside and outside. With no healthy mentality, no the contrary, a person can never resist any harmful factors which may lead to greediness, fury and infatuation. 'Commandments', 'establishment', and 'intelligence', therefore, are the only solution to solve these problems.

IV. Methods of mentality cultivation are introduced in this part. For a long time, the idea of establishing a healthy mentality has been ignored. Practice has proved that a healthy mentality plays a decisive role in Qigong practice. We hope the subject we raise here will be of common interest and through the discussion on this subject both the theory and practice on developing human potentialities and increasing human wisdom will be promoted, thus contributing ourselves to the course of Qigong as a whole.