The impact of Lung-Strengthening Qigong on wellbeing: a case study

Qigong is an umbrella term for a group of traditional exercises originated from China. Lung- Strengthening Qigong (LSQ) is one of these techniques enabling practitioners to maintain and improve their physical and mental wellbeing. We recruited 170 practitioners and 42 non- practitioner/control samples to investigate the impacts of LSQ practice on body, mind, thoughts, and feelings. We requested completion of a questionnaire regularly from both of the practitioner and control group, fill in an online diary and end of study survey (EOS) only from the practitioners. Statistical analysis was conducted on the questionnaires, whereas qualitative thematic- and quantitative machine learning-based analyses were applied to the free-text diary entries. We evaluated all different data resources together and observed that (a) there was a significant improvement in physical and mental wellbeing (increase in sleep quality, feeling life, coping with life, feeling life energy and a decline in stress amount) of the practitioners, which were not observed in the control group, (b) four different groups (non, low, moderate, high-level) of benefits were emanated among the practitioners, (c) numerical evaluation of questionnaires and EOS, as well as the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the diary entries were all found to be consistent, and (d) majority of the participants (84%) reported a striking improvement in their well-being, (e) majority of the positively impacted practitioners had no or some little prior experience with LSQ. This study is novel in various aspects including (i) increasing the sample size radically compared to other conventional studies as well as considering a control group for comparisons, (ii) providing regular live LSQ sessions to the practitioners, (iii) incorporating both qualitative and quantitative type of analyses to understand the impacts of Qigong.