Hello. My name is James Haggerty. I have been a student of Sifu Roosevelt Gainey for a little over three years. By now I'm sure you've read countless accounts of how Chi-Kung has changed peoples' lives. Perhaps you've seen amazing and impossible to believe demonstrations of energy work on the internet. Or you have studied the martial sciences and heard but never been exposed to the internal aspects of the art.

I was a construction worker, a steel laborer. I've built skyscrapers for twelve years. But I'll get back to that.

Chi-Kung is energy work. To put it simply, it is the science behind the science. The fabric holding everything together. And the way in which I saved my life.

When I was twenty-three I fell off a building. It sounds trivial even to me when I talk about it now, but I fell twenty-five feet onto my neck. I shattered vertebrae in my neck, nearly pulverized my pelvis, and turned my left hand into a catcher's mitt. The pain, to say the least was excruciating. When I went to the hospital the doctors told me: they did not know how I survived! They didn't know.

Their advice was pain-killers and physical therapy. They wanted to cut my hand open and drain the fluids. My hand, which survived the fall, they wanted to cut and drain.

I told them no.

I went home and spent the next three months with my hand in a pot of hot water, as hot as I could take it, moving my fingers. The swelling receded. My hand returned to its normal size and I began to explore the avenues of alternate medicine.

Prior to the accident it was a fitness nut. I used to lift weights, do push-ups or pull-ups for an hour at a time. I boxed, and swam, practiced Yoga and did more crunches than anyone else I knew. I was proud of my strength. I was useful in my career. I could do things at work that defied the norm.

When I fell my strength was gone. Gone too was my confidence. Every day I lived in pain. Pain-killers became the norm. I became an alcoholic. But I still had to work. Bills still needed to be paid. The price of living went on so I turned to drugs and drink as both a way to cope with my life and just to get through the work-day.

For five years I lived in constant agony. Five years of pain and drugs and drink. Five years of coming home every day too exhausted to even eat dinner. To sleeping away my weekends. And in general becoming the most miserable person you wanted to meet.

Then I met Sifu's nephew, Akh at work. Akh was a wire-lather. We hit it off as workers do. We were the workers. And those who do the work: do the work. We got the decks in. We made the concrete pours happen. We could push ourselves and those we worked with, while still having a good time.

There was something about Akh that intrigued me. He was different. It was indescribable. He was like a big kid. I know what you're thinking: all construction workers are big kids, and we are after a fashion. But Akh was different. He was happy. Genuinely happy. There was a joy to him nothing could seem to faze. But we worked together for a year before he told me about his uncle.

My strength was gone. I couldn't muscle my way through the day anymore. I was forced to rethink my job, and how I performed it. Akh saw this in me.

Then one day he showed my friend Bobby and I something wonderful.

Akh is a big man, close to two hundred fifty pounds. Yet Bobby pulled him as if he weighed no more than a piece of tissue paper!

To say I was shocked would be an understatement.

Then Akh showed me. It was simple he said. And it was. Absurdly simple. He showed me function. And its function that makes Sifu Gainey's Chi-Kung so powerful.

I was amazed. So Akh invited me to come out for one of the weekend classes. I told him I would, that I was looking to it.

Saturday morning came. Akh called me, and I told him no. I couldn't make it. I would try and come tomorrow. As I hung up the phone and lay back in bed, I remember thinking: Ok. You're not going. What are you going to do today? Pop some pain-killers and go get breakfast. Can't go yet, nothing's open. So what are you going to do? You're awake. You know you can't go back to sleep once your awake.

I called Akh back, got directions and heaved my butt out of  bed.

When I arrived there was no one there. It was cold, middle of November. But I was used to the cold. After all I worked outside for years. Anyway, Sifu wound up coming about a half-hour later. I could see it in his eyes. Who the hell is this? I know how I looked. I was a mess. But I smiled and told him his nephew invited me out to find out about this mysterious martial art that he'd called Chi-Kung.

Sifu laughed and introduced me to breathing and the tree.

He brought Brenda over and told me to punch her in the stomach. I looked at him in disbelief. I studied boxing when I was a kid. I could throw a punch I told him. Brenda would die if I hit her I said. He told me to hit her anyway. I did. Sifu got angry and told me to stop pulling my punches. I hit her again and nearly broke my own wrist.

Still holding my wrist, Sifu told me to go wait by the bench. He called Larry over. Then Sifu stood on the bench, with a towel in his hand. I watched Larry from a standstill jump up and kick the towel from Sifu's hand.

That was it. I was hooked.

"Where do I sign?"

Later I heard the stories. How Brenda changed her life. All about Larry. How Celeste overcame Lyme Disease. Vanessa's now perfect skin. I began to hope.

"You mean all I have to do is breathe?" I asked him.

"Yup." Sifu replied.

And that's all I have done. I've learned to breathe. To control my breath and control my life. To harness the potential within every human being on the planet. To take my health in my own hands and increase the quality of my life.

Within the first month I wasn't falling asleep as soon as I returned from work. Within three I gave up the pain-killers and cut back on the alcohol. Within a year, my back no longer bothered me. Within two I was dare I say it, healthy. And now a little over three years later I am healthier than I have ever been.

Sifu knows there are no words to express my gratitude.

So I do the work. I breathe.

That is my thanks.

I can only hope that is thanks enough