I LOVE teaching this course in the Winter.
For many reasons…
Here are a few.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Winter relates to your Kidneys, stillness, meditation, and the way you use and experience your mind, especially around fear. In TCM, your Kidneys
As modern humans, living modern lives, we all share the challenge of adapting to a completely new environment, range of experiences, and things that are dangerous. If your Kidneys were to tell what their biggest threats are, they would say sugar (refined starches), many recreational and therapeutic drugs, and neurodegeneration.
Common sense should take care of most of those challenges.
This course focuses on Qi Gong practices that, not only take your practice deeper inward, but also help you with your Bone Body. The third layer or level of Qi Gong skill development is called Gǔ Fēn 骨分, or the ‘Distinctly Skeletal’ part of your practice.
In TCM, your Kideys are responsible for storing (and spending) your Jing, or your essential (non-specific) tissue resources, like hormones, neurotransmitters, minerals, and your bone marrow (source of red blood cells and most immune cells). Chinese medicine has the understanding that your Bone Marrow is stored in Your Cerebrospinal fluid and Brain. Said another way, when you deplete your bone marrow, or allow for enough neurodegeneration, you will begin to age more rapidly and lose your innate adaptability.
The best ways to apply Qi Gong to boost your Kidneys and become your Bone Body include:
Standing Meditation (Zhan Zhuang), or ‘standing like a post half buried in the ground,’ will challenge your Kidneys, and improve every aspect of your physical, mental, and emotional adaptability and well-being. If your Kidneys feel tired, just keep your practice time below 30 minutes.
Your bones love to rotate together in a Symphony of expression and play.
Silk Reeling and Whole Body Connection. This aspect of Qi Gong is profoundly beneficial for coordination, self-expression, grace, and entering lucid Flow States. If you are an athlete, dancer, or martial artist, Silk Reeling is a game-changer!
Your bones love to rotate together in a Symphony of expression and play.
Five Animal Frolics and Longevity Qi Gong. One of the oldest forms of Qi Gong is imitating and playing like an animal. This opportunity to lose yourself while turning into a Panther, Bear, Tortoise, Ape, or Phoenix can connect you with some deeper instincts and free you from feeling stuck – on many many levels. These forms can be practiced slowly like Tai Chi or with the agility of a martial artist. The more you challenge your agility, balance, and coordination; while keeping your muscles and tendons toned and pliable the longer you will live. More importantly, the more alert and physically fit you can be up until your last days of Life.
Longevity practices should bring aliveness, playfulness, and gratitude into a very long and healthy life.
Breathwork and Meditation, especially in combination with the above practices, are ideal for enhancing your Neuroplasticity – which is another way of saying Neuro-Regeneration – which is the opposite of Neurodegeneration.
In TCM, Neuroplasticity practices boost your Kidney Yin and Yang functions, and are one of the few ways to replenish your Jing.
If you already have a Qi Gong practice, or have just finished Levels One and Two, this course will give you enough inner cultivation to practice and/or teach Qi Gong for years. With some more subtle Inner Refinement practices like Nei Gong, your understanding of principles, and your ability to help your future students will improve greatly. These practices are like a deeper Qi Gong language. They will show you what is aligned, efficient, connected, in flow, and what is still stuck, or just an old habit.
Developing skillfulness in Qi Gong is a constant process of making minor adjustments. The Inner Refinement practices that are included in this course will be the most effective and efficient tools to help yourself, and your future students make the right adjustments at the right time.
As a practitioner and possible teacher of the essentials of Traditional Qi Gong, you can be confident that what you are practicing and sharing is rooted in ancient tradition, is confirmed by modern research, is very safe, and will continue to show you endless subtleties for the rest of your life.
Here are a series of articles that explore Neuroplasticity, Movement, flow, and practices like Qi Gong.
Winter Mornings, Neuroplasticity, and Complex Conscious Movement (Part One)
Winter Mornings, Neuroplasticity, and Flow States (Part Two)
Winter Mornings, Neuroplasticity, Breathwork, and Qi Gong (Part Three)
Winter Mornings, Neuroplasticity, Breathwork, and Qi Gong – Part Four
To ensure that your Qi Gong practice is helping you with structure, efficiency, coordination, Neuroplasticity, and flow, I include the following aspects of Qi Gong in Level Three of the Som Dao Teacher Training Program.
Let’s explore the content of this course in more detail.
- Agility and Longevity Qi Gong incorporates enough resistance, speed, and mobility to help you build some lean muscle, strengthen your joints, and improve your flexibility and balance. This flow is most often used as a warm-up for Martial Arts classes and to help people activate their innate capacity for Neuroregeneration.
- Standing Meditation (Zhan Zhuang) will teach you more about postural efficiency and alignment than anything else. Your body will eventually show you where you are holding, leaning, or collapsing. The principles of Standing Meditation will guide your adjustments in just the right directions, forever. It is also a profound form of introspective and apophatic (beyond self) mediation.
- Silk Reeling Skills (Chan Si Jin) – nothing makes human movement more beautiful, elegant, and powerful to watch, than whole-body fluid and spiraling coordination. If learning Qi Gong is like learning an alphabet, practicing Silk Reeling is like writing poetry – while doing calligraphy at the same time. This practice can help martial artists develop explosive speed and power (Fa Jin) and assist those learning to release Trauma express instinctual and visceral distress.
- Five Animal Frolics – State Shift and Shape-Shifting Qi Gong has a very long history of imitating animals. Being playful, becoming a Dragon or a Monkey, and allowing your body to dream it has infinite possibilities is very good for your Spirit. Breathing with intention, until you feel altered enough to see the Universe as a friend is also very good for your Spirit.
- Freeform Tai Chi – Just as learning choreographed and repetitive forms can turn on or reawaken certain pathways in your nervous system and meridians, moving freely while focusing on subtle aspects of coordination, is the only way to engage other aspects of your Mind/Body connection. Sometimes dancing, Qi Gong and flow NEED to be random.
- Nei Gong Mediation and Your Six Innate Minds (Yuan Xin) –Nei Gong is a life-long path of meditation and learning to become a more adaptable and present human being. If there is one final attribute to add to your Traditional Qi Gong training, it is to find some guiding wisdom and Spiritual practices to cultivate an agile and self-aware Mind, as well as a collaboration of your instinctual, intuitive, adaptive, feeling, egoic, and existential Minds.
Become a Qi Gong Teacher
If you are seriously considering studying Qi Gong as a career, I recommend learning how to teach like a professional.
In this course, for those committed to teaching the Soma Dao Qi Gong process, I offer a special seminar on the traditions, ta tactics, and tricks of the teaching trade. Some of this content is from almost 40 years of teaching experience, and some comes from studying professional athletic coaching.
Being good at something is not the same as being good at communicating with a stranger about their bodies and feelings.
Today, especially, it is essential to become a Trauma-informed Qi Gong teacher.
I hope you feel inspired to find a Traditional Qi Gong teacher or become one.
Every city park needs a Traditional Qi Gong Teacher on Sunday mornings.
Learn More Here
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Beginning April 8, 2024
Learn the skills, practices, and principles necessary to safely and successfully guide others through several kinds of Qi Gong Classes.