Sometimes it is difficult for young people to practise QiGong. I found when I was younger I was bombarded by energy and found that very addictive. If you lose sight of practical concerns you can be neglectful of your affairs. Also you don’t know how to control the energy or manage it. When you are older you don’t get as much energy all at once and you know you have to be practically focused on all of your responsibilities.

It isn’t that young people can’t practise QiGong successfully but you need to realise that all activities and life responsibilities that are beneficial to you need to be looked after just as much as energy cultivation. Young people already have a lot of energy that nature bestows on them. So getting even more can be overwhelming, so don’t lose focus. Older people need more energy so QiGong provides that and normally maturity and a less hectic lifestyle helps.

The problem people can have who do QiGong is feeling that if they don’t focus entirely on energy cultivation it will disappear or abandon you. Yet the energy you are talking about is everywhere around you all of the time. All you have to do is pick appropriate times to do it rather than overdoing it. If something else in your life needs more attention then deal with that issue first. So much of our collective mindset is centred around anxieties. A lot of the pressure coming at us from outside can’t be ignored.

Then when you are in that safe space of feeling good you want to forget about the outside world and go deeper into what makes you feel good. Remember you need to be tempered by every force that is part of your life and the society you are in. Even though it feels unfair to have to be surrounded by so many pressures, QiGong is simply a counterweight. Some young people are better off getting into hard martial arts or physical work before they venture into internal martial arts. If they are already doing internal martial arts they have to remember to give equal precedence to all of their responsibilities.