Physiological method for measuring the effect of qigong exercise

Students of Qigong want to know how they are improving, and are interested in what kind of differences exist between the students and well trained qigong masters. We have analyzed a lot of qigong masters and students. Physiological measurements such as EEG shows well the qigong condition. However, the measurement gives the subject some weak pain and also a negative psychological effect, especially for the beginners.

We found two simple measuring methods which are applicable to evaluate the level of qigong: One was a ratio based on the rate of the subject under qigong conditions and normal conditions with his eyes closed. The other was the time between the R wave of the subjects heart beat measured on his chest using a wireless transmitter and the bottom of the photo-plethysmogram wave measured on his finger under normal conditions and qigong conditions. The pulse rate ratio method shows a higher value for well trained persons add a low value for beginner. But, the method shows a little scatter of data depending on the persons. However, we found the pulse propagation time method which was a relatively simple relation compared to the pulse ratio method, In this method, there is a small fluctuation but this is less than by the other method. We examined these methods for both internal qigong (standing posture qigong) and external qigong. We can apply a rough relationship to evaluate the training effect in the first order of approximation.