As previously mentioned, there are some 75 forms of qi gong that are to be found in the ancient literature pertaining to it. Many of these have fallen into decline. That said, new forms have come into existence that has largely replaced them. In the main, there are five forms of the practice that you will find going on nowadays. These are medical, spiritual, martial, life-nourishing and intellectual to put them into their approximate categories. Each has all of the elements of qi gong at its heart. As such, they do not differ greatly from one another to an untrained eye. Rather, each form places less or greater emphasis on the different aspects of qi gong to provide sightly differing outcomes. One of the most popular in China is medical qi gong which has many different sub-forms. These are designed to focus on particular ailments, such as muscle tendon change qi gong, for example.