Qigong, Biopolitics, and Psychosis

During the early morning, the urban parks in Chinese cities were utilized as "breathing spaces" or places where individuals could practice the healing and social qualities of qigong. The "breathing spaces" of the urban parks mirrored the symbolic "breathing space" that one carves out from the congesting politically-imposed order that manifests itself in all urban cities. Chen discusses the historical context in which post-Mao Zedong China created a high demand for these spaces (physically and spiritually) as a symbolic gesture at restoring individual control over the body as well as the pragmatic need for a system of healing in a time of the growing cost of healthcare. Chen states, "Cultivating qi on an individual basis involves transcending one's everyday thoughts and perceptions to facilitate opening up to a larger cosmological order via breathing" (8). The practice of qigong appears to be a liminal phenomena that is able to achieve a temporary state of transcendence from the imposition of the state while not subverting political notions. The following will attempt to show how, like the practices of Ayurvdeda described in Jean Langford's Fluent Bodies, qigong appears to be a malleable practice that circumvents attempts at essentialization and potential extraction as a viable method of healing. Furthermore, qigong practices, while providing a liminal space for temporary alleviation of the psychopathology of everyday life, do not attempt to subvert the state but rather, at times, appear to align with biopolitical conceptions of health and wellness. Medicalization and the pathologization of qigong deviance are used as instruments of the state to facilitate order and social control.

In Langford's Fluent Bodies, one observes how Ayurveda adapts within the political terrain of post-colonial India, and uses mimetic devices (i.e. parallel institutions) in order to gain political legitimacy as well as negates modernist assumptions of private/public conceptions of medicine, the mapping of medical concepts onto the human body, and the presumption of Ayurvedic practice as a static traditional discourse against the backdrop of scientific dynamism (19). Similar to the malleable practices of Ayruveda, Chen describes the reframing of qigong during various points of Chinese political history. For example, during the Maoist years of Cultural Revolution it was believed that beliefs in mixin or superstition and magic hindered China's progression towards modernization. The divorce of qigong from other related practices such as teyigongneng, was a strategic move that allowed for the continuation of qigong practices during the Cultural Revolution's campaigning against mysticism and spirituality (65). Qigong was able to survive campaigns aimed at destroying traditional practices by reframing itself as a strategy for health. From a biopolitical standpoint, this reframing upheld the ideals of the Maoist nation-state by developing and maintaining strong, able-bodied subjects. The post-revolutionary years, however, marked the transition to a market economy as well as the decline of state services assigned to healthcare. Individuals were pressed to maintain health in order to avoid costly medical services. Citizens were simultaneously discovering new independence through economic agency, as well as the permission to express spirituality and "oneness" with the cosmological order rather than simply with the state. Commercialization and the reframing of qigong as a marketable commodity shortly followed after the Mao Zedong era. Commercial zeal along with spiritual repression appeared to spawn qigong "fever," which in turn, threatened social order thus instigating further governmental involvement with qigong practices. Chen discusses the trend in political lampooning via the means of cartoons in the media (75). Political transgressions imposed on the body included the pathologization of qigong and deviation from qi run rampant.

One can view the taxonomic nature of psychiatry as being instrumental to the pathologization of certain maladaptive behaviors. Maladaption may include any behavior that does not uphold the sentiments and/or contribute to the economic progression of the nation-state. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of mental illness must consistently be reviewed and modified in order to keep up with the changing political, cultural and social terrain in which individuals live. Homosexuality, for instance, was once considered a deviation that required psychiatric treatment. It appears that the emergence of culture-bound syndromes requires a more thorough look at the reification of psychiatry and mental illness in general. Schizophrenia has commonly been linked to spirituality and transcendental experience. The following is the account of a psychotic patient as recorded by Karl Jaspers:

Then came illumination. I fasted and so penetrated into the true nature of my seducers. They were pimps and deceivers of my dear personal self which seemed as much a thing of naught as they. A larger and more comprehensive self emerged and I could abandon the previous personality with its entire entourage. I saw this earlier personality could never enter transcendental realms. I felt as a result a terrible pain, like an annihilating blow, but I was rescued, the demons shriveled, vanished and perished. A new life began for me and from now on I felt different from other people (Laing 95).

The socio-cultural-contextual view of psychosis elucidates the concept of qigong deviation in a non-pathogenic way. R. D. Laing suggests that individuals in society are "pseudo-sane" or not truly sane in that we are living under conditions that promote false consciouses and uphold aquired cultural and social complexes in which individuals must learn to rationalize via the socialization process (35-37). These complexes, such as the industrial-millitary complex may be devastating to inner sensibilities and thus may hinder individual potentialities (36). Laing states:

Having at one and the same time lost our selves and developed the illusion that we are autonomous egos, we are expected to comply by inner consent with external constraints, to an almost unbelievable extent (47).

As mentioned previously, qigong practices provide a liminal space of transcendental healing, temporarily removed from state-imposed control over individual bodies, all while maintaining civil social structure that does not subvert the state apperatus. Constructions of qigong deviance, however, depict the penetration of the state, once again, into the personal lives of individuals. As commercialization of qigong along with spiritual repression of the Mao era promoted a feverish reception of yangsheng, or life cultivating acts, a sense of disorder that threatened state function was imagined and the consequent legitimization of qigong was used as a method of control and surveillance.