Workshop presents techniques of Chinese energy healing

Salvatore Canzonieri displays a technique of qigong, or Chinese yoga, to attendees at a workshop at Cha Cha Gifts & Wellness Center in North Brunswick on Feb. 12. His next workshop will be Saturday. JENNIFER AMATO NORTH BRUNSWICK — Salvatore Canzonieri, a local expert in Chinese energy healing and kung fu, presented “Self Healing & Purifying Qigong Basics” on Feb. 12 at Cha Cha Gifts, LivingstonAvenue, North Brunswick. His next workshop will be 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 26.

Pronounced “chee gung,” qigong is a holistic system for selfhealing that allows practitioners to eliminate unresolved anger and grief, develop fitness and vitality, reverse the aging process and feel happy, energized and powerful. It can also be used to improve the effect of hypertension, diabetes, allergies, arthritis, degenerative disk disease, cancer, depression, anxiety and addiction.

For beginners, Canzonieri taught the class how to breathe deeply and release negative energy out into the world by bringing positive energy back in to the body.

First, Canzonieri had the participants put their feet together to balance the self. He asked them to breathe deeply from their diaphragms to push their ribs and belly out.

He then instructed them to bend their knees slightly in a more relaxed stance. Deeply breathing again, Canzonieri had the class align their wrists and look at their fingers to concentrate on the digit that is longer. To even out this finger, he asked the class to repeat to themselves, “Finger longer” and then feel their fingertip, their veins in the finger, the bones, the tendons and ligaments, the muscles, the fingertip again and then the nail. He told them to look past the fingernail and think, “My finger’s longer” in order to feel the finger stretch. As everyone looked at their hands again, the fingers appeared aligned.

“Imagine if everything you imagined came true? There’d be naked people everywhere,” he laughed. “Or purple giraffes, as my daughter would say.”

Canzonieri then described how the right side of the brain is limited by the left side, and that qigong keeps the left side busy so that the right side can act. He said that decisions and intuitions come from the heart, and that the thymus gland on the heart depresses the immune system when someone is upset, which is why “healing the self and purging the self and manifesting the self frees your mind.”

He said that mental blockages come from one’s past, and that you hear “energy in your head, not as words but as feelings.”

Therefore, to dispel these negative emotions, he once again began with diaphragm breathing. As the ribs push out, the kidneys can breathe, and as the lungs expand up toward the collarbone, more oxygen flows.

“Energy has to move in your body. Wherever energy goes, blood follows. Wherever blood goes, oxygen follows,” he said. “Most people are barely getting any oxygen so they are stupefied a lot of the time. … The more oxygen you have, the more aware you are, and the more abilities you have.”

Placing the feet hip-distance apart, Canzonieri had the attendees stand like apes, with their knees relaxed, tailbone dropped and tucked in, head up, armpits open as if an egg were underneath and tongue placed on the roof of the mouth. He said that this stance, which he has been doing for an hour a day for 30 years, helps build muscles while also preventing osteoporosis and arthritis and rejuvenating the body.

Canzonieri told the class that while concentrating on the sensations in their palms and fingers to pretend they are dropping down from an elevator into the earth, drawing energy from the lava of the earth into their bellies and energy from the sun and other stars into their heads. He said all the meridians of the body are open, so they pulse and vibrate, and the blood rushes around the body to oxygenate it.

“In that space you feel stillness and the stillness changes to quiet and the quiet changes to peace and the peace changes to joy and the joy changes to bliss,” he said. “You feel empty, closed, quiet and blissful in the state of nothing.”

Everyone then moved their arms and hands downward so their palms faced the floor, moving their hands in and out as if they were cupping a circle. The next step was pulling the energy into the belly and pulling the hands away from the body as if slowly bouncing a basketball. This form of la qi pulls new qi into the body and releases stagnant energy by forcing it away.

The next exercise was to simulate holding a cereal bowl, or beggar’s bowl as the Shaolin Buddhist temple refers to it, in order to funnel positive energy to attract the right people, places, possessions and prosperity.

“We want health, wealth and happiness to go to us and go through us,” he said. “Hoarding is why the world is in a bad place today. … The more you help people unconditionally, the more other people help you unconditionally … not expecting anything in return.”

Still holding the simulated cereal bowl, breathing in and lifting the hands by the forehead activates the central nervous system, spine and organs. Then, bringing the hands close to the face as if wiping it with a towel creates warm energy from the spiritual, emotional and physical centers. Finally, by turning the palms upward and lifting the hands while breathing out, the vessel of the body gives up its energy to the heavens and energy pours into the earth so there is no tension.

“You create all of this in the spiritual self so it brings the physical self through all the emotions,” he said, with the participants ultimately feeling joy and gratitude.

Canzonieri is an International Congress of Oriental Medicine and Martial Arts-certified instructor of Chinese qigong. He has practiced qigong for over 30 years, and said he received the Theodore Vail Award for using a form of Chinese yoga to save the life of a dying highway accident victim in New Brunswick in 2000.

To register for the Feb. 26 class, call 732-249-1821. The cost is $65. Cha Cha Gifts & Wellness Center is located at 1300 Livingston Ave.

For more information on Canzonieri, visit http://jindaolife.com.

Contact Jennifer Amato at jamato@gmnews.com.