What happens when you practice Zhineng Qigong for 8 hours, 24 days in a row? When Citlalli Alvarez heard that this was what students did at the famous medicineless hospital, she decided to become her own experiment. Being a researcher by profession, she took meticulous notes of what happened to her body, mind, and emotions during this intense time of practice. Follow her on her path and get inspired to do
what it takes to facilitate your very own healing. My name is Torsten Lueddecke, and this is the Wisdom Qigong podcast. Citlalli, you wanted to start by sharing a story with us. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, Torsten. Hello, everybody. Well, I will tell you the way I decided to practice Zhineng Qigong. I had a younger sister who passed away because of acute lymphoblastic leukemia,
and that broke my heart. So, I thought there should be something else. Chemotherapy is not the solution. So, I started to search for different alternative medicines in order to fight cancer, in honor of my sister. Before I found Zhineng Qigong, I will tell you a little bit about how my life was. Of course, I was really sad. My heart was broken. I cried a lot, and I felt
pain in my chest, right in the middle of my chest. I felt like I didn’t want to get out of bed or take a bath. And for me, taking a bath is a pleasure. But at that moment, I was really sad. The only thing that I was able to do was to take my bicycle as a lifeline because I used to race my bicycle. So, I took my
bicycle and started to ride again. I met one guy; he was my cycling partner. We rode together for five years, and we were boyfriend and girlfriend. He was my boyfriend for four years, and one day he had a brain stroke and passed away during training. So, the pain that I was feeling in my chest started again, but this time with a lot of pressure, as if something were
pressing on my chest and my back. My breathing was labored, like sighing, I guess. You say “sighing” in English. I stopped enjoying riding my bicycle. So, I quit, and then I got the flu. About two months later, I tried to come back and ride my bicycle, but I got sick again. I waited a little bit more, tried again, and got sick. I waited, tried again, and got sick.
It was during my fourth attempt that my father was admitted to the hospital. As soon as he was in the hospital, he went into a coma and passed away. I got sick again, and that was my life when I finally found Zhineng Qigong. Good news! So, I learned. I took my workshop, and when I was in my workshop, I saw a video where practitioners were sending Qi to
crops as part of scientific research. I thought, I want to do that. Then I learned that the scientific research protocols required practitioners to practice eight hours a day for 24 days. I said, I’m going to do that, and I want to be sure. I wanted to be my own experiment to see if Zhineng Qigong really works. At that moment, I was kind of naive and really innocent because
I didn’t know that at the Huaxia Center, thousands of practitioners were practicing at the same time, creating a huge, strong, powerful Qi field with Teacher Pang’s information. Right? So, practicing at the Huaxia Center versus practicing by myself in my apartment was a little bit different. But anyway, I decided to do it. Let me just put this into context, because some of our listeners might not know what the
Huaxia Center is. It’s actually the first medicineless hospital that Dr. Pang founded in the 90s, where thousands of people with terminal illnesses or conditions that Western medicine said, “there’s nothing we can do for you,” went and received healing, energy healing, basically through Zhineng Qigong and Hunyuan Qi Therapy. And you discovered the center, but obviously from the research aspect, because what they also did was use Qi to help
plants grow. They gave the plants Qi to get a better harvest, and that was a famous experiment they conducted there. You thought, well, if they do it for eight hours a day, 24 days in a row, let me see what happens when I doit in my life. Right, exactly. Now, what you discovered later is that there is a difference if you’re doing it with thousands of people together,
creating a massive Qi field versus doing it all by yourself at home. But still, as I know, you had amazing successes, so maybe you can continue your story here. Yes, yes, that’s right. So before I continue my story, I will tell you two short cycling stories. You know, how come I was able to finish my own experiment? I rode my bicycle for nine years. I raced my bicycle.
When I was in my second year, one coach called me and told me, “Citlalli, I’m inviting you to join my women’s cycling team.” I was really happy. We were four cyclists, two of them the best cyclists in Mexico. I was 31 years old, and they were in their 20s, 21, 22. Anyway, in one training, we were riding a hundred kilometers, and I was pushing hard to keep the
pace with my teammates. After we had ridden 90 km, the coach said, “Now it’s time to go fast.” I said, “What?” I was really tired. But anyway, my teammates started to increase the pace, and we were going faster and faster, then with 200 meters left… The coach said, “Now it’s time to do the sprint.” I said, “This is insane, I’m so tired.” But my teammates started to do
the sprint, and I finished after them. My coach came to me and asked, “What happened?” really seriously. I said, “Honestly, I was empty. My legs didn’t respond.” He said, “You had done the hardest part, you just have to finish it.” He turned around and left. And I thought, “Yes, he’s right. I have ridden 99.8 km with the best cyclists in Mexico. I just had to push harder.” The
last part, I call that lesson number one. Some years later, another friend asked, “Citlalli, do you want to be a good cyclist?” I said, “Yes, of course.” He said, “Take your bicycle and ride eight hours in a row. Don’t come back until you finish your training, and you will see the difference.” So, the next year, I took my bicycle and started to ride my eight hours. When I
was riding seven hours in a row, I was really tired physically and mentally. I said, “Why am I doing this? This is insane.” But then I remembered lesson number one. I said, “Come on, Citlalli, you have done the hardest part. You just miss one hour, just finish it.” And I did it. And when I arrived home, I felt really happy and really proud of myself. So I call
that lesson number two. It was 2011, and there I was, trying to do my own experiment in my apartment, practicing eight hours. I was in my seventh hour practicing Zhineng Qigong, and I was really tired. I said, “Why am I doing this? This is insane.” But I remembered lesson one and lesson two. And I said, “Come on, Citlalli, you can do it. You already practiced seven hours. You
just miss one hour; you just have to finish it.” And I finished, and I was so happy and proud of myself. This kind of mentality helped me to finish the whole process, the 24 days practicing eight hours a day. With my scientific spirit, I decided to take note of every single change I noticed through my practice. So, I will mention some of them. The first day, I felt
something between my hands. I said, “What is this? I don’t see anything between my hands, but I feel something.” My name is Leila Cupido, and I’m the project manager of the Students Hub. Our team is constantly adding events, teachers, videos, and other resources to take your practice to the next level, improving the quality of your life and the life of the people around you. We do this work
for you, so please use it. Something that doesn’t allow me to close my hands and sometimes pushes out my hands. So I took a note: something is in my hands. I don’t see anything, but I can feel it. Just for clarification, were you practicing La Qi at that moment? I was practicing La Qi, gathering my hands. Yeah. For those who don’t know La Qi, it’s an easy opening
and closing movement of the hands. So this is the kind of movement that you do, right? Yes. And I was feeling the Qi. Then I was practicing organizing the Qi field. It’s a meditation where you sit down, you don’t move, and only do the meditation. My body temperature changed, and I said, why is it increasing if I’m not doing any movement at all? So I took a note:
with my practice, my temperature increased, and I also saw lights and colors with my eyes closed. I said, what is that? So I took a note: I saw lights and colors. Then, when I was practicing level one, there are movements where you move your body in front of the television. As I was learning the movements, the volume of my television went down and up, down and up. I
finished the practice and called the person who gave me the CD. I said, there is something wrong with your CD. And she said, no, there is nothing wrong with the CD. Your television is broken. I said, no, my television is perfect. So I came to the conclusion that my television reacts to the change from practice. So I took a note. Then I noticed that one leg is shorter
than the other, and I always wear insoles in my tennis shoes to correct that. And walking barefoot produced a lot of pain in my hip because of my imbalance. But I decided to practice barefoot in order for the ligaments, tendons, and muscles in my feet to stretch more. So the pain started, and when I finished my eight hours on the first day, I noticed that the pain disappeared,
and I was ready to take a note. But my narrow mindset said, no, Citlalli, this cannot be possible. So I didn’t take a note, and I said, I will wait until the next day. So the next day I practiced, and of course, there was no pain. The pain had disappeared since the first day. So I took a note. I was able, after eight hours of practice, to make
my hip pain disappear. But I didn’t believe it. Now I have learned that I should trust in my practice. Then I was doing wall squats and doing Chen Qi. I was doing a hundred every single day. And in my eyes, there were a lot of crusty things, like dried-up tears. But it’s not tears, because tears are liquid. The one that is not liquid is what I’m talking about.
So, this is why you say it’s crusty? Yes. Yeah, something like that. Yes. So, I took a note. When I do wall squats, something happens with my eyes. I will add a parenthesis here because I’ve been wearing contact lenses since I was 15 years old, really young. After about two years of practice, I went to the eye doctor, and he told me, “Citlalli, you’ve reduced 0.5 diopter in
your left eye.” Then, some years later, I took out my contact lenses from my left eye. So this is almost perfect. It’s not 20/20, it’s like 19/20, but almost perfect. I’m only working on the right side. I’m still wearing a contact lens. So, closing the parenthesis now. One day, I saw myself in the mirror and noticed a huge light above my head. I said, “What is that?” It
was huge. I took a note. Another parenthesis: when I finished my eight hours of practice that month, I started to reduce my practice. Six hours, four hours, two hours. Then I saw myself in the mirror, and the light was shorter. I said, “Interesting.” When I was practicing eight hours, it was huge. Now that I practice two hours, it’s shorter. I took a note. And now we know that
if we practice, our Qi field gets bigger and stronger, right? Then I started. Do you remember the pain in my chest that I felt when my sister passed away and my ex-boyfriend passed away? I started to feel that again with my practice. I said, “Why is this so weird?” One day, I cried a lot, and I realized that I was releasing all the sadness that I had. I
started to feel at peace, happier, stronger, and more flexible. I took note of every single change. One day, I just decided to come back to riding my bicycle again. I was feeling better physically, mentally, and emotionally. And I did it. I was able to ride my bicycle again and win some races. Then the flu came. I spent, I guess, nine years before I got sick again. My immune
system was really strong for so many years through my practice. Finally, I think, I was able to be part of one scientific research project at a cancer hospital. It was such a happy moment for me because it was in honor of my sister. And now I’m more aware that what I say, what I think, and what I do is linked to my level of consciousness increasing. These are
some of the achievements I have gained through my practice, through my challenge practice. Let me try to wrap it up because I just want to get the full picture here. So you said to yourself, “I’m going to train 8 hours a day for 24 days.” And is that what you did? Because you said at one point you reduced the hours, but that was after the 24 days. Yeah,
yeah, after I finished the whole month with eight hours, taking note of all the changes. Very good. So, what happened? I mean, you explained some of the phenomena you encountered during your practice, and you also explained that some of the things you were carrying within you, like the massive pain from the death of your sister and your ex-boyfriend, that this basically allowed you to free yourself from it.
And you did that in a way that we would call a Qi reaction. So initially, the pain kind of returned, the physical symptoms returned, but only so they could get released. And that is something typical. So, for example, if somebody says they’ve got an old injury in the shoulder and they start to do Zhineng Qigong, they might feel pain in the shoulder, but this is actually the healing
work that is happening there. So for you, it’s the same thing. I mean, this massive trauma that you were carrying around, you know, with all these very unfortunate deaths in your family that kind of dragged you down and brought you into a position where life wasn’t any joy, where you had problems getting up, all of this was released during these 24 days. Is that so? Yes, exactly, yes.
And then you continued to practice, which you’re still doing to this day, and you got into research because you’re a researcher by profession as well. That’s maybe, you know, why you’ve got this dedication and you want to see what’s happening, you want to see the results, and you want to see what is the cause and what is the effect. And what you explained about the consciousness, that you
are more aware. This is something that came basically more or less as a side effect. It’s not something you had to work on specifically, right? This is something, because of the practice, your awareness grows and your consciousness grows. Is that so? Or was it a specific thing that you had to do in order to get there? Well, you know, Zhineng Qigong, practice with your mind, your emotions, and
your body. I mean, it’s complete. So when you are doing any kind of method, all the methods have the same essence, the same objective. And even, for instance, the practice, the challenging practice, unified me. Let me try to explain. When I was trying to ride my bicycle, I was divided. My mind said, “Come on, Citlalli, you have to train,” but my emotion, my heart, said, “I feel so
sad. I’m not enjoying riding my bicycle anymore.” But through my practice, my practice unified me. And when you are unified, it’s so easy to achieve your goals, right? Your mind in the center, your body in the center, your emotion in the center, and calm. So that’s what the practice does. That’s the way I can explain how you become more aware. Because it’s an inside job, right? So it
is this alignment of your mind, your body, and your emotions that makes it so strong, where you no longer have to fight one part of you against another and try to convince the other part. Is this what you call the unification within, right? Yes, yes, that’s right. Now, I think this is a really, really cool story, Citlalli, because we are often here confronted with people who have extremely
serious illnesses and they don’t know what to do. But they are more often than not, you know, coming to us or to our Qigong teacher and saying, you know, please help me, do something with me, while you actually took the initiative and said, okay, no matter what else is going on in my life, I’m going to go through this routine now, 8 hours a day, 24 days in
a row, and see what happens. You had no idea whether it would work, you had no idea what would happen, but you did it. And I can only encourage people to take that route, in particular if you’ve got something life-threatening. Because so often we say, oh no, yeah, just like when you gave us the great examples of your bike and of your cycling. So often we say, ah,
no, it’s too long or I can’t do it or I have to work or I have to take care of my kids, etc. Etc., rather than prioritizing what is the number one priority at that moment, which is a total recovery of your health and the fact that you said, “I’m going to do it and stick to it.” I think it’s an extremely powerful example that can, you know,
hopefully be a motivation to many others and an inspiration to many others to say, well, if Citlalli can do it, then I can do it as well. And yes, so thank you very much for sharing that with us. And you said you later on went into research as well. Maybe you want to explore a little bit more about what you discovered there. Yeah, I always recommend my students
to be their own experiment. It’s the only way. And remember, I mean, feel the Qi. See, the Qi is really easy. I mean, practicing Zhineng Qigong is a way to recognize and apply your change capacity. So if you are your own experiment, you can realize that. And just remember, if you are tired, if you feel uncomfortable, if you feel pain, it’s because you have done the hardest part
and you just have to finish it. So you also explained to me, Citlalli, that you experienced your Qi field. Maybe you can explore that part of your learning, of your experiment, a little bit. Yeah. After I practiced the whole month, eight hours for 24 days. I went to downtown and I took a subway. So I sat down, closed my eyes, I didn’t care about people. And I decided
to gather Qi Universe mentally. Qi Universe, Qi field, like 45 minutes more or less. And when I listened that I arrived at my destination, I stood up, and when I got out of the train, I felt something was coming with me. And I started to walk, and I turned to the right, but I didn’t see anything. I turned to the left, but I didn’t see anything. But something
was with me. And I was walking, walking with an amazing sensation. I was feeling like a peacock, you know, like the bird. It was so amazing. I was walking and feeling my Qi field. And after about three minutes, the sensation disappeared. And I said, “Don’t go away, don’t go away.” It was so good. But yeah, so now I tell my students, it’s so easy to feel the Qi
in your hands, but also to feel your Qi field or see the Qi field in your Qi field in the mirror or others’ Qi fields is so easy. So that information can get into the framework and it helps you to see and understand that there is something else. Right? Right. That’s beautiful, a beautiful experience that you had there. And it all happened in the subway. So just imagine
how easy it must be back home where you’re doing it and you have a quiet environment. Right? Right. I want you, before we finish the conversation, Citlalli, you’ve…. You’ve shown how powerful it is to practice 8 hours a day, 24 hours, 24 days in a row, like they used to do in the Huaxia Center. Now, you also said that it must have been even more powerful in the
Huaxia Center because there were thousands of people doing it. So now, we can only encourage people to do this practice if they have a serious challenge in their health or in their life. Or in their life. And do it at home because you’ve shown that it’s possible. Or you can, of course, also go to China into one of the centers that are there these days. The center that
comes to mind is the Huaxia Center. We have a podcast about the Sun Center for those of you who are interested, or any of the healing retreats that our teachers organize. So, you can do it by yourself, but you don’t have to. You can obviously get the support and be part of a group when you do the practice. The important thing is that you get going and that
you make a decision for your life that you’re going to tackle whatever needs to be done and do whatever needs to be done. Yeah, exactly. You know what it is. Because at the beginning, I didn’t receive the information that you can connect with the Qi field. So that was, that’s why I was thinking that I was naive and innocent because I didn’t get the whole information. Now we
tell the students that we connect with Teacher Pang’s Qi and we connect with the Huaxia Center or with the other teachers in China’s Qi field. And it’s easier because you can feel how the Qi field, the big Qi, supports you in your practice. I did it in a different way because I was learning. But now that I teach my students, I say let’s connect. Actually, when you start
your practice and you start the meditation, you connect. You always connect your Qi with Teacher Pang’s Qi and the Chinese Qi fields and everything, and that helps you. So even if you are now in your apartment by yourself, you can connect and you can feel the support of the Qi. Right. And of course, it’s better if you go with a group and we practice together. Right. That’s why
a lot of challenging instructors, we do free practice together every day so we can support our students. But yeah, you are right, just to make a note here, because there’s a difference. Yeah. We just described the power of doing eight hours a day, 24 days in a row. Now the free practice is great, but it’s like a one-hour exercise standalone. So if you really have something serious going
on… Yeah. You need to do more. You can’t just do a practice once a week or something. That’s, you know, that’s all wonderful, and it’s great and it supports you. But if you’ve got a serious issue, you need to get serious work done here. Yeah. And I forgot to say it at the beginning. At the beginning, it’s hard because the Qi is getting into your body and is
opening and creating reactions. But then, with the days, you will enjoy it and it will be more amazing and easy, and you will feel the Qi, and your mind will get into it. Because when you feel the Qi, your mind is not out, right? It’s the Qi and your mind getting together, and it’s really easy when you practice more hours. So, at the beginning, it’s a little bit
different and difficult. But then, if you keep doing it, the results will be amazing. You will feel really, really happy, really healthy. Release all the things that you have to release and take care of yourself. Yeah, it’s a great experience. You have to do it. And I think you’re a good proof because we can see you smiling and laughing, full of energy, and very different from what you
described initially. You know, where you started before you actually started to practice Zhineng Qigong. So congratulations to you as well for the choices you’ve made there and congratulations for the contribution you’ve made since then through your research and through supporting other people. And for the listeners out there, after Citlalli, you know, you did the experiment on yourself, you started a lot of research with other people, you went
into the schools, you had children practice Qigong, you noticed what the differences are, what the results are. You worked with plants, you even went down into the ocean to work with corals and see whether there’s any change there. So for all the listeners out there, we’ve got a very interesting video on our YouTube channel that you might want to visit if you’re interested in the research that Citlalli
did afterwards, where you can find out more about the results and the work that she has done from there on. Citlalli, you are teaching Zhineng Qigong in Mexico, are you? Yes, I’m teaching children, teenagers, and adults. And as you mentioned, at the same time, I’m doing scientific research protocols. Okay, wonderful. And your groups, are they local, are they in Mexico, or do you work on Zoom with international
groups as well? Yeah, now everything is online, so it’s easier because the students can join from different parts of the world. Yeah. So now online workshops. Perfect. So if anybody wants to get a firsthand experience of the woman you are and the work that you are doing, they are free to contact you. We’ve got your details in the show notes. Yes, thank you, Torsten. Yes. Okay. Thank you
very much for that, Citlalli. Thanks to you, dear Torsten, for all this work that you have done in order to spread Zhineng Qigong. We need more people like you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Citlalli. We trust you enjoyed this conversation and we invite you to subscribe to our podcast so we can stay in touch and notify you of future episodes. We will end today’s episode
with the Eight Verses Meditation performed by Zhineng Qigong teacher Katrien Hendrickx. Enjoy. To get your free eBook on the Eight Verses Meditation, please check the show notes below.
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