If you practice qigong for health, do you need to pursue seeing energy or communicating with spirits?

No. If you want to move your body through qigong, focus on the exercises first. Seeing energy or communicating with spirits need not become your standard of progress. I am not opposed to qigong. My concern is when someone originally seeks better health but becomes wholly absorbed in chasing powers without even understanding what they encounter.

Miao Nian shared that she originally felt physically unwell and wanted exercise to strengthen her body, so she read books and found a qigong teacher. The teacher said they could see the body's energy. With her nursing background, she admired this and felt that directly seeing conditions inside the body would be helpful. Yet after seriously studying beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels and practicing for over five years, she did not acquire the ability she had admired. She still felt that moving her body helped. These two matters need to be considered separately.

Later, she also had experiences she did not understand, such as feeling that male and female voices were conversing in her mind without knowing who they were. Looking back at the group practice environment then, she thought negative energy might have influenced her. This was her retrospective view through later spiritual experiences, not a statement that every qigong class is like this. Hearing voices alone also does not establish that someone else's situation is the same as hers.

When discussing spiritual cultivation, I continually remind people to proceed step by step. Rushing to awaken spirituality before understanding your condition may mean spending more time learning and adjusting later. Having perceptions does not mean you already know how to judge them. Experience practicing qigong cannot directly replace understanding of spiritual communication, ghosts, or deities. First acknowledge what you do not understand and then investigate. There is no need to force every feeling into an explanation involving deities.

If the aim is simply a steadier body and mind, Miao Nian also suggested moderate exercise together with seated meditation, and I agreed with this direction. Generally, beginners can focus on breathing while sitting, inhaling and exhaling slowly, without deliberately inducing bodily movement or pursuing particular sights or sounds. Deeper practices depend on your level and can be discussed later. First establish the fundamentals you can understand now.