Academic Thought and Academic Characteristics of Liu Tianjun

Liu Tianjun is mainly engaged in teaching, scientific research and clinical work in the field of qigong in Chinese medicine, and the textbook "Qigong in Chinese Medicine" (People's Health Publishing House, August 1999), which is edited by him, is a qigong textbook for colleges and universities of traditional Chinese medicine.

Theory and practice are both emphasized, and the combination of classical and modern is the direction of TCM qigong science. The equal emphasis on theory and practice means that while exploring the academic origins of qigong theories of various schools, we focus on the actual experience of qigong practice, so that theoretical knowledge can be realized in actual experience rather than relying on logical discourse to grasp theories, in order to avoid "mantra". The combination of classical and modern refers to the combination of the ancient experiential scientific method focusing on internal cultivation and the modern experimental scientific method focusing on external testing, in order to find the internal experiential significance of the external testing indexes, and to explore the scientific research methodology and research techniques characteristic of the qigong discipline.

Based on the above directions, we have made some progress in the teaching, scientific research and clinical work of qigong in Chinese medicine. In teaching, while teaching theory, we emphasize on designing classroom exercises for body, breath and mind regulation, so that students can understand the meaning of theoretical knowledge in actual practice in the process of operational exercises. In his scientific research, he adopts the two-way correlation experimental method of recording both internal subjective experience indicators and external objective measurement indicators, thus pioneering the scientific research method of qigong and obtaining preliminary research results. In his clinical work, he emphasized the realm of qigong practice, pointing out that the efficacy of qigong in treating illnesses comes mainly from the physical and mental states achieved by practice, rather than from specific gong methods. In addition, on the basis of a systematic study of psychology, he combined qigong therapy with modern psychotherapy and proposed the theory and method of cultivation-based psychotherapy.

In addition to the above academic work in Chinese medicine qigong science, he has also devoted himself to the study of traditional Chinese medicine methodology over the years. In several published papers, it is proposed that the methodological system of traditional Chinese medicine itself is the experiential science methodology, and it is pointed out that the experiential science methodology is two methodological systems that can go hand in hand with the experimental science methodology and complement each other. Experiential science methodology is a methodological system of dialectical logical thinking based on physical and mental experience. Traditional Chinese medicine has naturally chosen this methodology in the historical process of its own development, which is determined by the academic content of traditional Chinese medicine and the traditional thinking mode of Chinese culture, not out of backwardness or accident. The proposal of experiential science methodology is an exploration to fill the gap in the field of methodological research in Chinese medicine.