Coupling qigong and electricity for a miraculous cure

The room is bright with a couple of wooden tables and matching chairs. In one corner of the room is a computer that runs a program diagnosing the patients before they enter the room and are treated by Lee Yuan (李原), the man who has spent more than 40 years practicing and teaching qigong, and treating patients with electric qigong.

Inside the room, a sign reads, "Do stand away from the parameter if you are not here to be treated, or your [sic] will inhale bad qi." Lee, dressed in a gray polo shirt, with his trademark white silky hair, is about to treat Huang Shih-min (黃詩簢), a 12 year-old girl whose parents want Lee to treat her for a nose allergy.

"She used to breathe with noises in her nose, and her nose would often be blocked," said Mrs. Huang, as he daughter awaited treatment.

Everything is set and Lee is ready to perform his treatment. He holds two wet towels that are folded in his hands. He begins to unwrap them, revealing two keys wrapped in wet paper towels. The keys are connected to a live wire, which is plugged into the socket right next to the bed.

"See, I wrap them in wet towels because normal people cannot take the current straight from the keys. That's why I wrap them in a towel," Lee says.

The feeling of the electric treatment is like a massager with a spiky surface. It is a bit like touching a refrigerator that is leaking electricity. Lee controls the current through his hands and the qi stored in his stomach controls the power, Lee says.

Ready to treat the girl, he takes a deep breath and looks at ther lying flat on the bed with her two hands folded on her stomach. She seems tense, but lies obediently. Lee uses his body as the medium to transfer the current from the wire to his patients. He claims that he is able to control the current depending on how sick the patients are. He says he has never burned a patient.

Lee says that he practiced conducting electricity on himself hundreds of times before he started treating other people. "More importantly, I have been a vegetarian for more than 20 years. My body is clean and my mind is pure. That's why my patients are safe with me."

Pointing to his ample belly, he says, "Feel how hard my stomach is ...

This is qi."

The wire connected to the keys releases approximately 110 volts. Lee says wrapping them in wet paper towels increases the power 50 times. As Lee holds the towels against the acupuncture points around Huang' s nose, she grimaces but does not cry. When Lee continues to press the towels on her nose for a few second more, however, tears well up in the corner of her eyes.

"These are not tears from pain," Lee says. "Rather they are the essence of the cause of her breathing problems, which is leaving the body. I have cleared the passages by pressing the good qi into her body so that the good qi can begin to help her inner circulation, especially in her nasal area."

Coming from a famous qigong family, Lee began taking lessons from his grandfather when he was four years old. According to Lee, qi means the circulation of blood in the body. If the qi is weak or bad, then diseases often follow, he says.

Electric qigong is based on traditional qigong, which originated in China. In his early 20s, Lee traveled to China, Thailand other countries in South East Asia in search of a master to help him improve his qigong.