can learn to both open up to it more completely and guide its flow through them. Qi gong is one of the major ways in which practitioners can learn to identify the qi within.
That qi within is the source of all the body's activities. As Kohn (1993) noted, sexual energy is only one form of qi, although an important and concentrated form of it that is termed "essence" in the Taoist system. The physical practices, including sexual practices, that are prescribed within Taoism are all designed to preserve, manage, control, harmonize, and balance qi in order to be in perfect harmony with the Tao itself and with the qi that flows through the universe.
The purpose of qi gong and other Chinese practices is not simply to obtain health and longevity for its own sake, but to attain those things because that means that one is in balance with the universal qi or the Tao. Disease is seen as being out of balance, or out of harmony, with one's qi either too weak or too strong or in the wrong proportions, in the
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