A small note, the term “Qi-gong” was coined sometime in the early 1950’s
What was it called before? ex. what did Hu Yaozhen study in his youth that would later earn him the title Father of Qigong?
Hu Yaozhen studied:
- TCM/traditional Chinese medicine
- Daoist cultivation methods, neigong and yangsheng etc
- internal martial arts -- xingyiquan and some others
- trained in breathing and “healing movement” systems such as Wu Qin Xi
- studied under both Daoist and Buddhist masters, collecting and refining knowledge that had become fragmented
- Was said to have mastered a kind of iron finger technique that could temporarily stun people
- Worked closely with Chen Fa-Ke in the creation of Xinjia and with Feng on the creation of Hunyuan.
Around this time this general area of study became known as "qigong". It was Liu Guizhen who started publicizing the word in the 50s after his medical research team in Hebei came up with the term, likely in 1949. It was used to categorize all that came before; ex. what Hu Yaozhen had studied. But actually, the suggestion came from experience -- the word did exist and was used before, it just wasn't in the public consciousness. Ma Jiren, a historian, tracks the usage of the term from before the Qing dynasty. For example in the Yuanzhi Pian, a work from the Qing dynasty.
Another great example is the book "氣功療法 (Qigong Liaofa or "Qigong Therapy") published in 1934.
So you see, anyone interested in this topic would probably have been generally aware of the term Qigong, just maybe not exactly like how it is used today.
Today it refers to any kind of mix of daoyin, tuina, tuna, xingqi, yunqi, yangsheng, or whatever. Originally it was a technical term within a wider body of study, having no importance in and of itself except as part of a wider body of terms, likely indistinguishable from them and being paid no special notice. Kind of like the word tensegrity in Li Yiyu and Hao Weizhen's writings.
Today the previous generation considers Qigong as an advancement, technologically, over Daoyin. In that sense, the modern meaning of the word is probably even more recent, from the 60s. Notably, Wang Ziping's "祛病延年二十势" (20 exercises for health and longevity") was canonized and published in the 50s with Dr. Wu Chengde and was NOT referred to as a kind of qigong at the time, but was understood as such by the creators. It was only later that it was referred to as a kind of qigong. And the current generation generally does not understand it at all and regards it as mysical woo woo, helped in no small part by a slew of severely underqualified instructors and the coming tidal wave of AI slop tai chi and qigong ads.
