China's ancient form of mind-body aligning exercise Qigong a challenge for Yoga?

With yoga hogging so much of the limelight around the world — that too on the longest day of the year — a suitable riposte from China is awaited. After all, as India claims first dibs on this au courant wellness art and science, China may think it is high time to put yoga on the mat with qigong (cheegong), its own 4,000-year-old healing technique apparently practised by 80 million people there.

While it has not yet caught the fancy of San Francisco or colonised Times Square on the summer solstice, qigong, with adherents in 29 other countries, already could pose a challenge to yoga. But as qigong seems suspiciously like yoga, given that it comprises exercises and postures, regulated breathing, meditation and massage, and is said to calm the mind and tone the body, confucian is practically guaranteed.

It is not surprising that people have begun to call qigong ‘Chinese yoga’; hitting back by calling yoga ‘Indian qigong’ simply does not have the same impact yet. Besides, China will also have to deal with the possibility of yoga gurus deciding — as per hoary Indian tradition — to assimilate qigong as a form of pranayama, before China claims exactly the opposite as part of its general thesis that everything of relevance actually originated in that country. Both sides would be stretching it a bit, but then that’s par for the course.