According to Mingtong Gu, the foundational cause of all chronic illness—whether labeled incurable by conventional medicine or otherwise—is stress manifesting as energetic blockages throughout the body. Unlike events we cannot change, the contracted energy trapped within us is malleable and can be released through specific practices like qigong. By understanding that physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual illness stems from blocked qi (life force energy), practitioners can address the root cause rather than merely treating symptoms. Energy is the animating principle underlying organ function, emotional wellbeing, mental capacity, and consciousness itself.
What Is Energetic Memory and How Does It Create Blockages?
Mingtong Gu begins by establishing that the body carries what he calls "energetic memory"—the accumulated imprint of all past experiences. This memory exists in two states: happy memory and unhappy memory. When you experience a stressful event, trauma, difficult emotion, or even consume foods that don't support the body, the energy in that area contracts. Contraction is the energetic signature of stress. A single moment of contraction is manageable if you can release it; the body naturally returns to ease. But when contraction happens repeatedly, or when you don't actively work to open and release contracted energy, it accumulates. Gu describes this as moving from isolated contractions to what he calls "chronicles"—chronic, ongoing states where the energy remains perpetually constricted.
This accumulated, unrelieved contraction hardens into what Gu terms "energetic blockages." These blockages are not abstract; they prevent the free flow of qi through the meridians and organs. When energy cannot flow freely, two consequences follow immediately: the body begins to malfunction at the biological level, and emotional and mental wellbeing deteriorate. You feel tightness, heaviness, fatigue, and dis-ease in both body and mind.
Why Is Stress the Universal Cause of All Chronic Disease?
Gu makes a bold claim supported by his clinical experience and aligned with emerging psychosomatic research: the primary cause of all chronic illness, including conditions labeled as incurable, is stress—specifically, cumulative, unresolved stress. He notes that conventional medicine increasingly recognizes this connection in lived experience, even if the language differs. When trauma enters the body, especially childhood trauma or profound loss, it deposits a charge of stress that the nervous system holds indefinitely. That stored stress becomes an energetic blockage. The blockage then compromises not only the physical functioning of organs, blood flow, and immunity, but also the emotional wellbeing and mental function of the individual.
The insight is radical in its simplicity: you cannot typically change the past event that caused stress, but you can change the energetic state in which that event is held within you right now. This shifts the locus of healing from being dependent on external circumstances or talk-based processing alone, to being dependent on your own capacity to practice and release what is being held.
How Do Physical, Emotional, and Mental Blockages Relate?
Gu distinguishes multiple layers of blockage that arise from the same root cause—stress. Physical blockages are tangible contractions in the body's tissues, meridians, and organs. Emotional blockages reside in the heart center and the organs associated with emotion (the "five organs" in Chinese medicine—heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys). Mental blockages exist in the brain and cognitive patterns. And beneath these, Gu hints at spiritual blockages—limitations in consciousness and wholeness itself.
Importantly, he frames all of these as expressions of the same energetic contraction. A person who experienced emotional abandonment may carry that as tightness in the chest (physical), as grief or mistrust in the heart (emotional), as obsessive worry patterns in the mind (mental), and as a sense of spiritual disconnection (spiritual). Traditional qigong practice, Gu suggests, works precisely because it addresses energy, which animates all these layers simultaneously. When you release the contracted energy, all layers begin to unwind together.
What Role Does Energy Play in Health and Consciousness?
Central to Gu's teaching is the principle that energy is the animating principle of everything. The same qi that flows through your meridians also animates your organs and their biological function, your emotions and heart, your brain and mental capacity, and your consciousness and spiritual wholeness. There is no separation between these levels—they are all expressions of the state of your qi.
When energy flows effectively and freely, you experience good feelings, happiness, a sense of ease, health, creativity, and mental clarity. When energy is blocked or stagnant, you experience stress, pain, emotional dysregulation, mental fog, and spiritual emptiness. Health, therefore, is not primarily a matter of what biochemicals you have or what organs are or are not diseased; health is the natural state that emerges when energy moves unobstructed.
What Does Qigong Practice Actually Address?
Given this understanding, qigong is not a set of random movements. Rather, it is a systematized method of using movement, sound, visualization, and intention to open and release contracted energy throughout the body and mind. When practitioners perform qigong movements, they are physically opening the body—lengthening tissues, expanding the chest, rotating joints—which literally allows blocked qi to move. When they use sound (toning or chanting), the vibration penetrates deeper into the emotional body, the organs, and the heart center, dissolving emotional blockages and the unconscious patterns held there.
This is why Gu emphasizes that qigong can address any illness, including those deemed incurable by conventional labels. The practice bypasses the need to talk through the originating trauma or event; instead, it directly dissolves the energetic contraction that trauma left behind. By releasing old blockages, practitioners naturally "open to the energy of love, energy of joy, energy of wisdom, energy of creativity"—the inherent capacities that were always present but were obscured by contraction.
Can You Really Release What You Cannot Change?
One of Gu's most empowering distinctions is this: you cannot change the events that caused stress, but you can change the energetic state in which those events are held. This reframes the healing journey. Many people spend years or decades trying to reprocess or recontextualize traumatic events, hoping that understanding will free them. Gu's approach suggests a parallel path: directly work with the body's energetic holding, which is plastic and responsive to practice, rather than waiting for the mind to "solve" the event.
This is not to dismiss psychology or the role of processing trauma consciously. Rather, it is to say that the body-centered, energy-based approach of qigong offers a complementary—and often faster—route to release. The body knows how to heal itself when given the tools; contracted energy wants to flow again naturally.
What Is the Practical Implication for Those With Chronic Illness?
If stress and energetic blockages are the root cause of all chronic illness, then the implication is profound: healing is not primarily dependent on taking the right pill, getting the right surgery, or waiting for a cure to be discovered. Healing is dependent on your own willingness and capacity to practice releasing the contractions you carry. This is not to blame sick people for their illness; rather, it is to empower them with agency. You can begin today, from wherever you are, sitting, standing, or lying down, to practice qigong and begin opening blocked energy.
Gu notes that qigong is adaptable and gentle. The movements are free-flowing and can be modified for any body. Visualization and meditation can be done in any comfortable position. This accessibility means that the practice is available to nearly everyone, regardless of age, strength, or current health status. The key is consistency and willingness to engage the body's own healing intelligence.
Where to Go From Here
If this understanding resonates, the next step is to explore qigong practice itself—either through online courses, retreats, or local instruction. Begin by noticing your own patterns of contraction: Where do you habitually tense when stressed? What emotions are you holding in your body? What past events still generate a charge when you think of them? These are pointers to where your energy is blocked. Then, through gentle, consistent qigong practice—whether movement, sound, or meditation—you can begin to open those blockages and restore the free flow of energy that is your birthright. The most powerful medicine in the universe, Gu suggests, is not external; it is the energy of love, joy, wisdom, and creativity that emerges naturally when contracted energy is released.
