3. Make body and mind pleasant: practitioners can feel physical and spiritual happiness through exercise. Studies show that “Long-term, continuous, mid-weight and heavy-weight class movements and deep breath will make the brain secrete endorphin.” Endorphin is also known as “pleasure hormones” or “young hormones”, which means such hormones can help people keep young and happy. The feature of health Qigong happens to meet with the requirements of long-term, continuous, mid-weight and heavy-weight class movements and deep breath. The exercise of health Qigong can effectively generate such “happy hormones”. Hence, we all have such experience that whenever we complete our exercise and sweat a bit, we feel warm, comfortable and refreshing. That’s why the old people radiate with vitality and youth every time when they return from their morning exercise.

4. Smooth meridians and invigorate circulation of blood: it is helpful to practitioners’ smooth meridians and running of Qi and blood. Mister Lv's Spring and Autumn Annals·End Volume wrote, “Running water never becomes putrid and a door-hinge is never worm-eaten”. Hua Tuo, a well-known doctor in Eastern Han Dynasty, advocated, “People should exercise their body but they shouldn’t have excessive exercise to make body tired. People must often exercise to digest food, smooth blood vessels and maintain healthy just like the door-hinge is never worm-eaten”. It’s because such feature can relax the entire body including limbs, thus improving the running environment of the Qi and blood in meridians. Besides, full body movements can activate the Qi and blood in meridians, and increase entropy production. Further it will strengthen its circulation. The circulation of Qi and blood is an effective method of preventing splanchnic diseases.

5. Strengthen heart and benefit the lung: the full body movement feature of health Qigong can effectively enhance practitioners’ physical health, improve the heart and lung functions, and reduce fat and pressure. Such feature of health Qigong also meet with the feature of modern aerobic exercise. Studies show that “long-term, slow and gentle aerobic exercise can reduce blood glutinousness while the amount of blood platelet remain the same”. Numerous studies also prove that “slow and gentle aerobic exercise can effectively increase the high density lipoprotein cholesterol in the blood of practitioners and lower low density lipoprotein cholesterol. Therefore, it metabolizes the fat of practitioners, soften blood vessels and remove the occurrence of arteriosclerosis and diabetes”. The benefits of aerobic exercise for practitioners are “increase the total amount of blood, strengthen lung functions, improve heart functions, increase bone density, reduce fat in the body and improve psychological status”.

6. Unity between man and nature: the feature of being round and lively can help practitioners fully adapt to all things in the nature. With the summarization of phenomena and rules of the nature and society, it’s not hard to find that round form are the most suitable form for existence of things while round or periodic change forms can be adapted to the development of things to the uttermost. For instance, the trajectory of existence and movements is round no matter it’s as big as the nature and the universe, or as small as atom and neutron; animals and plants in the organic sphere live in a round form; social development and people’s thinking process rise in a logical and spiral way. This means the round form is the most suitable form for the survival of things and can promote social progress to the greatest extent. As a result, each move, each skill or each set of methods of the health Qigong emphasizes arc movements which are circulating and cycling. It stresses the feature of soft, gentle, round and consistent, and goes with the thinking of unity between man and nature. This can help practitioners adapt to the nature and set up the concept of unity between man and nature, thus promoting the development of human lives and achieving the purpose of health and longevity.

（By Hu Xiaofei）