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Stress is linked to the following diseases: hypertension, heart attack, diabetes, asthma, chronic pain, allergies, headache, backache, various skins disorders, cancer, immune system weakness, and a decrease in the number of white blood cells.

Stress can affect sexual performance and rob you of your libido. Disturbed sexual performance may appear in the form of premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, and other forms of difficulty in reaching orgasm.

Stress is more powerful than diet in influencing cholesterol levels. Several studies—including one of medical students around exam time, and another of accountants during tax season—have shown significant increases in cholesterol levels during stressful events, even when there was little change in diet.

Stress is now considered a major risk factor in heart disease, right up there with smoking, being overweight, and lack of exercise.

Stress can affect the secretion of acid in your stomach and can speed up or slow down the process of peristalsis. Constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, and weight gain can all be stress related.

Your muscles are prime targets for stress. Under stress, your muscles contract and tense. This muscle tension affects the nerves, blood vessels, organs, skin, and bones. Chronically tense muscles can result in a variety of conditions and disorders, including muscle spasms, pain, and teeth grinding.

Stress hampers the immune system. Four hundred people were intentionally exposed to common-cold viruses. Those who scored highest on a test of stressful life events were more than twice as likely to develop colds after exposure than people who scored lowest.

Severe stress is one of the most potent risk factors for stroke—more so than high blood pressure—even fifty years after the initial trauma. In a study of 556 veterans of WWII, the rate of stroke among those who had been prisoners of war was eight times higher than among those not captured.

The good news is that stress can be alleviated with the right exercises, movements, stretches, and relaxation techniques. This is exactly what this Simple Chi Kung program is designed to do. It helps you tap into your resources so that the inevitable stresses and tensions of life don’t get you down. Instead, these Chi Kung practices can give you the ability to transform stress into a catalyst for creativity and a stepping-stone toward manifesting what you want out of life. You will learn to change the leaden, lethargic, low-energy state that so many of us experience when we wake up or return from a day of work into the golden, abundant, high-energy state that everyone craves and needs for true well-being.

CHI KUNG’S EFFECTS ON SPECIFIC BODY SYSTEMS

Numerous medical studies have shown that Eastern practices like Chi Kung and meditation can reverse the incursion of many stress-related ailments. Master Chia himself has participated in many experiments that recorded remarkable changes during Chi Kung and meditation practice. Details from some of these experiments can be found in appendix 2.

Brain and Nervous System

Chi Kung switches the autonomic nervous system from the stress-induced fight-or-flight mode of the sympathetic branch over to the restorative healing mode of the parasympathetic branch.

The parasympathetic branch of the nervous system creates feelings of pleasure and harmony, like the feeling you get sitting on a beautiful beach watching a sunset, or listening to your favorite music, or gazing into your lover’s eyes. It’s the feeling of deep relaxation, bliss, or simply put, the feeling of “Ahhh.” This feeling isn’t a passive or sluggish state of mind and body; rather, it’s an aliveness that is both buoyant and pleasurable. Because Chi Kung practice can bring your nervous system into a state of parasympathetic dominance, it gives your body a chance to restore and heal, clearing the damaging effects of day-to-day stress long before serious physiological damage can occur.

To function in this healing mode, the cerebral