Our world is going through a massive pandemic that affects us all. It may be that we or someone close to us is sick or we have lost our job and livelihood due to the national shutdown of businesses. We may be feeling isolated and fearful. This course is designed to boost your immune system and teach you ways to soften the emotional and physical blow of these stressful times. It is in times like this when we are especially challenged, that practices like qigong and meditation are most helpful. Qigong works on three levels, affecting our physical, mental, and even spiritual health. These practices go back thousands of years and are a part of what is known in China as "Yang Sheng" or nourishing life practices - sometimes called "long-life practices" - designed to help us lead long and healthy lives. Over the next 10 days, you will be offered a range of physical practices and emotional techniques to help you ground in your body and regulate your nervous system, promoting both a joyful and easeful existence.

This course consists of ten parts, lasting a little over one hour.

Lesson 1

Introduction To Qigong

What is this mysterious, miraculous, and marvelous practice called qigong? What are we doing when we do qigong? What are its roots, and how can it help us with our modern-day problems and concerns? How can it help us in troubled and challenging times? In a sense, we are stepping out of our mundane, limited sense of reality and opening ourselves up to a richer, wider, and deeper form of experience. We are allowing what is infinite to be contained by what is so finite: our own bodies. When we do our practice, our form, our breathing, our visualizations, our movements – we align ourselves with our own origin, our own divine birthright. We are allowing ourselves to become “empty vessels,” ready to be filled with the energy of the universe itself.

Lesson 2

Immune System Qigong

It is always a good idea to work on your immune system, yet even more at this time. I will give you some special points on your body to massage, which will help support and build your immune system.

Lesson 3

Daoist Inner Light Practice

This is a lovely practice for bringing in golden healing light to anywhere you have disease, pain, stress, or toxicity in your body and to release it all into the air as black smoke. We also go a little further to experience yourself enveloped in a luminous egg of golden light and how to then turn that light outwards and send healing qi and light out into the world, to anyone you know who is sick or in pain or anyone else in the whole planet who is suffering from the current pandemic.

Lesson 4

Grounding/ Rooting Qigong

The more deeply grounded and rooted we are in the earth, the stronger and more emotionally and energetically balanced we will become. When you are grounded and rooted deeply into the earth, the easier it will be to recover from stresses and the challenges of life, especially in this extremely challenging time.

Lesson 5

Gathering Qi From The Sun, The Moon & The Four Directions

This is a practice of gathering elemental qi from the sun, the earth, and each of the four directions. We can then use this gathered qi for making us stronger, more healthy, and more highly functioning human beings.

Lesson 6

Great Mother Meditation

One of the ways the ancient Daoists described Dao itself is that of the Great Mother. In this session, we will open a deep connection to the source of all life, here symbolized by the Great Mother. We will experience ourselves as being connected on a very deep level to the source of all life, the Great Mother. In the second part of the practice, we will experience ourselves as mothers, whether we are female or male. We will experience ourselves as giving birth to our new and true selves (zhen ren), letting go of anything that holds us back or keeps us from shining forth as the radiant, healthy, and powerful being that we truly are.

Lesson 7

Nature Qigong

It is by connecting our own sense of being to nature in a very real way that we can strengthen our own qi body and feel more at peace in our hearts and mind. Yes, you can do qigong with trees! Trees have a kind of energy and even intelligence that we can tap into to strengthen our own qi. Here are several ways to practice qigong with trees.

Lesson 8

Organ Balancing Practice

Each of our five major organs — liver, heart, spleen, lungs, and kidney/adrenals — have various attributes associated with them, in what in Daoism is called wu xing or five transformational phases. This includes the color, season, direction, element, as well as positive and negative energetic qualities. This practice is an internal qigong practice to balance, strengthen and detoxify each organ, thereby boosting your whole energetic and emotional system.

Lesson 9

Small Heavenly Orbit Qigong

This is a very ancient practice, the Xiao Tian Zhou, sometimes called the Microcosmic Orbit. What many students don’t know, however, is that there is a very specific way to set up the orbit. In this session, I will teach how to open up 12 important energy gates or qi cavities in your body. Only when they are all open will you be able to successfully circulate your qi up your du mai, which runs up your back, and down your ren mai, which runs down the front of your body. This is a somewhat advanced practice, but I wanted to include something for the folks who are already familiar with qigong practice.

Lesson 10

Great Spiraling Dragon Qigong

This is a lovely short qigong form from the sacred Daoist mountain of Wudang. In it, we embrace the yin energy of the moon and the yang energy of the sun. We create the sacred lotus flower mudra in front of our celestial (third) eye and then become dragons soaring into the sky. This form is a way to go from being a hidden dragon (wo lung) to becoming a flying dragon (fei lung)!