The Qigong exercise above is said to descend and subdue "heat" in the body that arises from imbalances in the Liver Meridian.

Medical Qigong uses a combination of movement, visualization, and breathing (in this case toning healing sounds) to engage the power of the mind-body connection.

In this case, the sound for the Liver "Shoo" is used while imagining that any excessively rising energy is descended down.  Chinese Medicine poetically describes this rising force as the "Wood Element" - like a growing tree or plant rises up.  As we get close to summer, we want to make sure that "Wood" doesn't produce an excess of "Fire" and leave us overheated and exhausted!

It's almost HOT GIRL SUMMER!  Let's make sure you don't get a "Heat" syndrome!

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, in each season of the year, our bodies are sensitive to certain "climates" - meaning we might have issues related to that type of energy in our meridian system.

In Summer, obviously, this...

Medical Qigong is a scientific synthesis of traditional Chinese ideas regarding the body's life-force energy. As such, it contains valuable principles that we can apply to all areas of our lives.

One such principle is the three fundamental techniques of medical qigong: to tonify, disperse, or harmonize.  We'll use these techniques every time we design a session of practice, clearing the energy first of all, then filling it up, and finally regulating its flow.  This is also the flow of a medical qigong healing session - where the practitioner will first work to remove stagnation, then tonfiy deficiencies, and finally harmonize and integrate.

We can apply these principles to our lives more broadly as well.  If we're filled with stress and anger, it may be more effective to get out and exercise (dispersing) than to sit down and slow the breathing (harmonizing).  At other times, we may get too obsessed with what we need to reduce or remove from our lives...

It seems like there's a lot one can be frustrated about these days!

How do we keep our frustration motivating us to make powerful changes in our lives and our world, and not just breaking us down or making us miserable?

The Qigong lineage I inherited from Dashi Baugh contains an exercise specifically for this purpose - the "Punching with Angry Eyes" exercise from our Eight Brocades Qigong set. 

Sifu often said "This Qigong is for Spiritual Warriors," explaining that those of us who crave peace will often internalize and repress our anger, frustration, or even rage.  We need a method to get those mobilizing energies OUT, so they don't get stuck and harm our own bodies.

The video above is excerpted from part three of the 'Qigong for the Spring Season' course.  This exercise uses movement of the body, the facial expression, and breath regulation to help get those stuck energies out of repression and back into FLOW.  

A wonderful thing about this...

Spring is the season where everything is rising up.

According to Chinese Medicine, this can unfortunately mean that energy rises to our nose and eyes, causing sneezing and itching!

The good news is that many people have found relief through regulating the main meridians associated with this spring season - the Liver and Gall Bladder meridian!

Medical Qigong proposes that we need to be in harmony with the energetic cycles of the seasons - in spring energy is rising up.  We need to both de-repress our life-force, allowing it to rise appropriately, but we also need to make sure it doesn't rise too much.  

In the practice video above you can follow along with three excerpts from the 'Qigong for the Spring Season' mini course:

• Self-Massage for Gall Bladder 21 acupoint
  • helps dispel "wind" - the irritating energy that "invades" according to Chinese medicine, and causes allergic reactions
• Rubbing down the Gall Bladder meridian
  • said to help direct energy away...

According to ancient Daoist philosophy, Spring is the time of rising up.

Because of this, we have great potential to awaken these rising energies within us: we can bolster our spirit, we can gain new vision, we can limber up our bodies.

But we also have the potential to experience the opposite - specific challenges in this time of year.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, this upward moving energy can give rise to allergies with their itchy eyes and sneezing, headaches, and insomnia or other types of overwhelm. 

According to this ancient medicine, how well we harmonize with one season even effects what we'll experience in the NEXT season.

The qigong performed in the video above contains three main principles we want to understand to harmonize with the energy of this season.

1. We want to liberate this growthful energy and guide it to the surface

This is accomplished by the 'Dragon Stretches its Claws'

2. We want to harmonize the smooth flow of energy in our bodies making...

It's an odd time to be in the profession of teaching self-care and self-development.

From where I sit, the world has gone through so many shocks lately that it can be challenging to remember the importance of rest, compassion, and even personal growth.

In my work as a minister, I find myself continually trying to find the perfect balance between motivating ourselves to work for justice, and encouraging the ease, gratitude, and relaxation which promote resilience.

I often feel lately that I don't find that balance, but I believe the effort of trying to is a worthy one.  

It's a worthy one because no matter how we are trying to change the world or ourselves, we're going to need the practices of refreshment in order to restore our capacity. 

Inner work and outer work go together hand in hand, but in a culture like ours we've been trained to create false binaries, which can lead us to unconsciously sacrifice one or the other.

Because we're not encouraged...

If you're like most of us, you'll have had varying experiences with making positive change in your life.

Sometimes a desired change sticks right away, other times it doesn't happen no matter what you try!  Even worse, it seems like the changes we DON'T want can stick most easily!

It's easy to decide on something we want to change.  It's even easy to envision a path toward it, but the real trick is sustaining it.  

As we enter the 2nd week of the "Live Your Qi" 21 Day challenge, I want to invite folks to take a look at how they go about integrating transformation.  You've already got the "What", but it's the how that makes all the difference.

In Daoist spirituality this has a lot to do with the meridians that are said to be most active during this Spring season.- the Liver and Gall Bladder.  These are the Yin and Yang aspects of the energy of vision and change.  The Liver is the more Yin (nurturing, passive, restful) side, and...

It's the very beginning of this cycle of the 'Alchemical Immersion' Container - which started as a free self-paced training in the art of authentic Chinese Qigong!

This year we've expanded into creating a container not just of qigong practice, but also including you in whatever integrative cultivation you are engaging in!

The first step, then, is to decide what you're going to practice.

If you're taking my Alchemical Immersion, that's easy because it's laid out for you week-by-week.  Just watch the instructional video or jump right into the practice-along!

Whatever practice you're bringing into your life, one of the most important parts of creating an alchemical container is to decide what you want to commit to.  This helps to keep the pressure on which is a fundamental agent of transformation.  The important thing is to pick a practice commitment which is do-able, that's why I recommend the practices of the Alchemical Immersion be...

As I write, I'm GEARING UP to hold space for the free, annual, self-paced training I call the Alchemical Immersion 108!

in 2020 when the pandemic started, I decided to offer the first four months of my Qigong Instructor Training for free - in hopes that having a course of integrative arts training at home could help people feel more like they were in a sacred temple, rather than "locked down".  In hopes too that we could somehow transmute some of the heavy "energy" we all seemed to be navigating both personally and collectively.

People reported such great experiences from going through that Alchemical Immersion 108  program that I decided to make it an "evergreen" free offering! 

As we begin the third round in 2022, it gives me a feeling of truly beginning to do the work in envisioned for 'Templestyle' - to bring the sense of a sacred community to people all over the world, and to make widely available the ancient techniques by which to evoke that...

Last night we held a special seminar on "Qigong Medicine for Long-Covid Recovery" you can watch the replay here! 

In the talk we went over the type of disease this is, according to Chinese Medicine - a "Damp Plague"

We discussed the "Six Stages of Disease" and the idea that severe disease can enter into the "Tai Yin" level and cause "Qi Deficiency"

We also went over the main point of interventions which is to rebuild the energy of the Spleen/Pancreas meridian, and tonify the body's "Qi", or vital energy.  We spoke on how remedying this Qi Deficiency can address the root of various symptoms associated with Long Covid. 

The final portion of the talk was about specific remedies from Qigong medicine that one can try on their own, including diet, lifestyle, and qigong exercises.

Attendees were encouraged to check out the program "Qigong Therapy for Autumn", in which many of the remedial exercises from Medical Qigong are catalogued.  

Students were also...