Is Western science "required" to practice qigong?

He sounds very accomplished. All the more reason to ditch the recordings and go study with him directly!

As to the rest of your message...

Im not sure why you need to try and translate the mechanics behind qigong into ‘sciencey sounding stuff’. Let’s face it - it’s not real science and it’s also not real qigong. You lose the point of both.

Do you feel that ‘science’ is more ‘real’? Do you feel that you need to uphold a certain air of intelligence to be taken seriously? I don’t really understand.

Why didn’t the enlightened sages who created the alchemical path and it’s offshoots (qigong, neigong etc) talk about parasympathetic rebounding and the 12 harmonic nodes? Shouldn’t we assume that they are far smarter than us and follow their advice instead of trying to be cleverer and re-invent the wheel?

Your question is a good one. For me the answer is pedagogical - meaning from my direct experience of taking classes from qigong master Chunyi Lin, he said that in China you just strictly obeyed the master's orders - no matter what - you did not question the master. In fact to "ask a question" in China to the teacher is considered an insult - so it was an "adjustment" for him to answer questions here in the U.S. And he has joked about how he has become "Americanized."

So I was able to see that process of him "Before" he was "Americanized" and "After" he was "Americanized." haha.
So my take on this is that - another example is that the story was given how to heal a boy in China, then the boy had to be slapped - and not in front of the parents of course, but in the West a qigong master would not be allowed such "discretion" - and yet the instructions of how to do the healing are from spirit information signals from the Emptiness. And so even the qigong master can be "surprised" by the instructions or visions he receives or she receives - but learns from experience to trust the Emptiness.

And so for me, trying to learn what the actual "teachings" are is complicated - for example Chunyi shared in 2015 how in his experience he discovered that when people open their third eyes then they commonly overuse their psychic energy and so then the person gets fat because they have to now rely on food for their source to replenish their energy. He said he has seen this many times now. But at first when he came to the US he taught the motto, "the more you heal, the more you heal yourself." Now he doesn't say that anymore! So he has learned from experience. Another thing he told me is that he has learned - he at first told a person to practice as much as they wanted - so it would not be forced. But now he realizes that for serious conditions a person needs to meditate at least 4 hours a day. So again this is something he has learned from his experience in the West.

So then - having considered the differences between Western and traditional Chinese culture - then since we can not just strictly "follow" the orders of the teacher here in the West - then I was forced to research what are the general principles of the training.
Here is my take on it - first I did the training by following the teachers instructions and also the book Taoist Yoga: alchemy and immortality. But I was told on this website that the book was "too dangerous" and so I should not read it. Then I was told if I have questions for teaching then I should just "ask the teacher" or "given him a call"  - but to call the teacher here in the West is not cheap! I think now the rate is $140 for 10 minutes for a healing - and a healing requires that little to no talking should take place. So I stopped reading the book and I stopped "asking" the teacher (i.e. attending the classes) because I could not afford to cheap asking the questions. haha.

So then I figured based on the experiences I had - then if what I experienced is biologically real - and it was confirmed to be real by the teacher who said I had an "enlightenment experience" - and so then if it is biologically real then it also must be transculturally real, since modern humans have less DNA variation than one troupe of chimpanzees. O.K. so then I figured - if there are general principles of science involved - then there is no need to rely on the effects of one teacher or another teacher or even one culture or another culture! A big problem in parsing out the teachings - on this website for example - is people are quick to judge a "school" based on its teacher! Well to me this is like saying a baseball coach is fat and therefore he team must be terrible. haha. For example Falun Gong is described as the teacher being fake but the principles of the training being real and achieving results. So there is a mixture involved - since obviously Falun Gong throws in Western concepts. Zhong Gong, a school that Chunyi also trained in, also throws in WEstern concepts - but this is something I had to discover on my own.

So in other words the "qigong revolution" in China of the 1980s already had a lot of Westernization - I recommend Dr. David Palmer's book "Qigong Fever" for a fascinating overview of the role of qigong as a kind of "vanishing mediator" in the Westernization of China.

And so the point being that a person could simply "follow" the instructions of the teacher but since the teacher is teaching in the West then their instructions are limited and even in China, traditionally, a student of alchemy would study many texts and Chunyi himself said he read many meditation texts as well. So then finally I realized that Western science was limited in its understanding of Daoist alchemy yet at the same time I also realized that you have to really study Western science in order to validate Daoist alchemy. In other words because of my qigong enlightenment experience, I was able to focus my mind, by sitting in full lotus all day, and reading one scholarly text a day, to read an overview of WEstern science. I have since corresponded with many science professors - math, quantum physics, philosophy, etc. And so the "promotion" of Western science - those "promoters" are quick to dismiss Daoist alchemy as woo-woo New Age nonsense - the so-called "skeptics" - but what I realized is that their WEstern science is not advanced enough! It is because they do not understand Western science well enough that they are unable to understand Daoist alchemy, a study that really requires quantum biology and quantum relativity.

O.K. having said that - the qigong revolution in science also relied on turning to Western science. So for example the first qigong master to perform in the public in a big way - did so by doing qigong anesthesia - and ..........