Use Tai Chi and Qigong to Tweak Your Genes

This is exciting stuff. Recent studies are showing that stress impacts the body by altering your genes. Specifically, this study by Gunther Meinlschmidt and his team at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) showed that a single stressful incident suppressed the expression of the gene that makes oxytocin receptors. Oxytocin is the "trust neurotransmitter" - so it seems that stressful events can alter your ability to trust on a molecular level? Yikes, right?

The good news about studies like this is that it is becoming more and more evident that we are not slaves to our "genetic makeup." Having the gene for some disease or other does not mean that gene will ever express itself. Epigenetics - the study of the impact of environmental factors on the ways our genes express themselves - will, I think, continue to prove that we are not just products of what we carry inside our cells, but the kinds of experiences we put ourselves through.

Every time you get yourself to a Tai Chi or Qigong class, you teach your body that it has regular access to a beautiful, peaceful, invigorating experience. This goes beyond "reducing stress," although we do that too. This is about maximizing your wellbeing on a cellular level, and giving yourself the best shot possible at turning on the genes that keep you feeling good and turning off the genes that may express as disease.

This post is part of a series called What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You. Look for more parts in the coming weeks, or click "What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You" at the bottom of this post. 

I offer weekly classes and occasional workshops. For my class schedule and information about fees, click here. For upcoming workshops, click here. 

Using Qigong and Tai Chi for Healing, Part One: General Approaches to Healing Serious Illness

This post is Part One of a series that addresses healing from serious illness. As more parts go up, you'll be able to access them via the label at the bottom of this post, "tai chi and qigong for health recovery." Just click on it, and all the posts in the series will come up. 

Okay so if you've found your way here because you are in a situation where you've received a diagnosis of a chronic disease, including Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Alzheimer's, welcome. Maybe you've had a crisis diagnosis like cancer and you are facing one of the most terrifying and difficult experiences a human can have. I hope you hang in here for a little while.

When you are handed a diagnosis of a serious and / or chronic disease, you are handed a huge weight and burden as well, which is the medical concept of the disease, the statistical evidence, the prognosis for "people like you." Maybe you've been told that people like you typically get worse over time, or, in the case of a crisis diagnosis, are likely to die. Maybe your doctor (and a whackload of pharmaceuticals) can help you manage it or delay it, although chances are you'll be managing a ton of side effects too.

Your doctor might have given you some literature that mentions Tai Chi as a therapy for what ails you. Some more enlightened doctors might recommend Qigong (it's less well known than Tai Chi). I know this happens because I get occasional phone calls or emails from bewildered people who stumble into this site because they've just been handed a grocery list of things they need to do to help themselves, and this is one of them.

There is a certain gear switching that it's helpful to do when you go from your doctor's office to my world. I don't care much about statistics or "people like you." I care about you as a whole person. My perspective is that you are a unique and you bring a unique set of things to the table, and I want to help you sort through your stuff and get as much as you can from your life. This is advice I would give to anyone who is faced with a scary diagnosis or a major health challenge, but the information here will apply to some degree to anyone who is looking to make Tai Chi and Qigong a part of their lives.

Why I'm doing this series: I have experience working with people with Parkinson's diagnoses, as well as people with Multiple Sclerosis, Fibromyalgia, Alzheimer's, Chronic Fatigue, chronic pain, and a host of other issues, and there is a bunch of information I have that I always try to remember to tell them, but often don't because once they come to class, we're too busy working on the Tai Chi and Qigong itself. This series comes out of that experience but I'm also writing it in order to address some common fears and concerns that people have when they're looking for a solution to chronic illness.


You Have Choice
You always have choice in terms of how you deal with your diagnosis and your health. The tiny menu of not very positive options your doctor can hand you is only a small part of that. I am not doctor bashing: I'm just saying that the treatment strategy that you work out with your doctor is not your whole strategy for dealing with yourself. You still have the rest of your life to deal with.

The choices are probably not the choices you wanted to have, and that sucks. But you do have choice. Mainly, you can choose to stand up for yourself. You can choose to give yourself the best shot possible at getting better, managing your symptoms, or maximizing your quality of life.

Avoid the "Magic Bullet" Approach
When you're facing a major health challenge, you need to cover all of your bases. This is not a time to turn into a scientist and just tweak one variable at a time so you can discover the one thing that will work for you. This is the most basic kind of fantasy that many people have with regard to health and wellbeing: we think there is one answer and that once we've got it we can stop trying. That is part of the natural human tendency to be lazy about stuff, but it is not helpful at all.

This is why potions (one week it's goji, the next week it's acai) and superfoods and exotic supplements are so popular: people fantasize that they are going to do one thing or find one thing that will transform them forever. That is not science. It's fairy tale thinking.

Tai Chi and Qigong will make a fabulous part of your overall healing strategy. They can contribute to the miracle of getting better despite the heaviness and seriousness of your illness. Tai Chi and Qigong are also hard work. It will probably not feel like a miracle when healing happens for you. Chances are it will feel like you worked hard and you slowly climbed up the hill back to a state of better health. And it won't happen only because you took up Tai Chi or Qigong. It will happen because you did that and a bunch of other stuff. It will happen because you threw everything you had into healing.

One way to understand the arrival of serious illness in your life is that your system is telling you that you need to be kinder to it. Ask your body what it needs. Start with simple things: a nap, a bath, some kind, focused attention, some deep breaths, a glass of water.

Acceptance
Accept that it could take a while. You didn't get into a state of chronic illness overnight, and you might not experience instantaneous healing. Might not. I believe it is possible to heal very quickly. Miracles do happen. However, any healing journey should be approached from the perspective that it will take as long as it takes, whether that's an hour or ten years. Be prepared to try different things, and to address all levels of your being as part of your journey. Like any journey, you have to take action (even if that action is getting lots of rest).

You Are Not Alone
My philosophy, developed as I've dealt with many spiritual, emotional, occasionally physical kicks to the head, is that we all have stuff to heal. Whatever you are handed - psychologically, spiritually, or physically - is your project here during your time on earth, and it is yours to heal. If you have a chronic, progressive disease, you have been handed something especially extreme. The difference between you and evidently healthy people is that you probably can't ignore your symptoms. It is now time to focus on yourself and your health.

Basic Protocols
This list includes a number of things that will help support good overall well being and are necessary to any program of health recovery or disease management. (I think they're necessary to optimal health, too. Anyone can use these protocols to help themselves feel better.)

1. Diet. There are a huge variety of ideas out there about optimal diets for humans, but there is a consensus that it's a good idea to eliminate processed food and focus on a whole-food (i.e., real food) diet with minimal additives. I think there's enormous benefit to be had by returning to the idea of getting a decent meal, three times a day. Simple.

2. Water. It is becoming cool these days to claim that the (paltry) "eight glasses a day" that were recommended for so long are excessive and will only lead to more trips to the bathroom and some kind of, I don't know, waste of time? Many people will argue that you should simply rely on the body to tell you when it's thirsty, and there is a certain beauty to that, but wait a minute wait a minute.

If you've ever been a chronic dieter or experienced any of the very common disordered eating patterns that many people deal with, you know that it is very easy to lose all sense of when you are hungry, or to ignore your hunger (for a while, anyway), or to eat far past the point of no longer being hungry. My experience has been that thirst is an even trickier sense, even easier to knock right out. When they start drinking more water, many people find that they suddenly realize that they are more thirsty, sometimes intensely so. This is a part of the body waking up to the fact that it doesn't have to live in a state of dehydration any more.

How much: Take your body weight in pounds and divide it by 2. That number is the number of ounces of water you should be drinking daily. (A liter of water is about 34 ounces.) I know it's a lot, but it will make you feel so much better, and your body will thank you for it.

REALLY IMPORTANT NOTE: If you drink this much water, you must include some salt in your diet. I cover my needs with a daily half teaspoon or teaspoon of solé, a solution of natural salt in water. This also takes care of trace minerals if you use a high quality salt like Himalayan or Andean pink salt. More info about how to make a solé here. Dr. Fereydoon Badmanghelidj is a medical doctor whose work with water and claims about its healing powers are absolutely fascinating. Your Body's Many Cries for Water is a good place to start reading about water.

3. Supplements. It is possible to get very lost in the supplement aisle of the average grocery store, especially in this era when there seems to be a new designer supplement coming out every five minutes. My approach is to ensure that I'm getting a good base with a high quality multivitamin / multimineral, and to add to that as necessary. For me, that means getting additional magnesium, B complex, and omega-3s. For you, it might mean something different altogether, but it is worth getting into at least a basic supplement. Evidence is building that some diseases, including Alzheimer's, are actually manifestations of nutritional deficiency. Our food supply doesn't have sufficient vitamins and mineral to support good health, even if you're eating a lot of produce and whole food. Factory farming sucks. Taking a basic supplement can help you with this.

4. Work on reducing or eliminating things that drain your resources. You will not heal if you are continually exposing yourself to the same stressors and conditions that contributed to your illness. It is worth considering all aspects of your life and how they impact you when you're approaching the task of healing. You may benefit from working with a therapist, energy healer, or other practitioner to help you discern and identify factors that need to be managed differently or eliminated altogether. Before you dismiss this advice because you don't think you have stressors or you think you are managing them perfectly, just consider that you might be numb to the reality of your life situation or that you might not be the best judge of what you can and can't handle. Often, the patterns that are most damaging to us are invisible to us. Get a third party perspective on this.

5.  Build your resource tool kit, including books, online articles, mainstream and complementary practitioners you trust, and daily practices you can do to help yourself. Be aware that a basic Google search on any medical information will be dominated in the first few results pages by mainstream medical sites that offer the same information as most doctors. Google the name of your disease plus "recovery" or "recovery strategies," then go to the fifth or sixth page and start looking for alternative or complementary information. I've had good luck using "I recovered from" and then the name of an illness to find information about real people who sorted themselves out. You can start right away with short meditations for health and wellbeing, freely available all over the place. I like the Meditation for Health podcast by Robert Puff - any of the episodes labeled "Guided Meditation" will talk you through a short relaxation technique. This episode is specifically for when you are suffering physically or mentally - very helpful to sort yourself out if you are in crisis right now.

NOTE: It is important to develop some discernment when trying to sort out quackery or vague New-Age philosophies of illness from solid strategies that may not be part of mainstream medicine but do have a good shot at helping you. Otherwise, you can end up chasing a bunch of red herrings. I'll cover how to choose the most effective alternative and complementary strategies in a future post. In the meantime, make sure you investigate options thoroughly. Just because a solution is alternative doesn't mean it shouldn't make sense to you. Be open minded, but make sure your brain doesn't fall out!

Next post: The whole truth about making Tai Chi and Qigong part of your healing strategy. We're talking how much practice time you'll need, potential roadblocks, and advice for sticking with it.

Let Go of Your Baggage Using Tai Chi and Qigong

I'll tell you a secret. Okay, it's not really a secret. Here it is: stressful events, negative emotional patterning, and all kinds of things you think you've forgotten but still jump out at you at key moments (usually when you're upset / stressed) are not just part of your psychological makeup. They are carried in the body. I'm talking about habitual tensions - like that jaw-grinding habit you haven't ever managed to stop or that old backache that turns up at the least convenient moments - that make your life subtly miserable.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, negative experience is said to be stored as cold chi, which blocks the body's natural processes and prevents the body/mind from working properly. Eventually, these blocks can manifest as disease. It's a totally different model of health and disease than we have in the West, but it has the advantage of integrating mind and body and the energy systems that permeate and integrate the two together.

Here's the best part: when you use Tai Chi and Qigong for healing, you can leave all that on the practice room floor at the end of your lesson.  Each time you practice Tai Chi and Qigong, you let go of a little bit more. It's a gradual process of clearing that our exercises are designed to accomplish. Little by little, you allow room for transformation.

This post is part of a series called What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You. Look for more parts in the coming weeks, or click "What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You" at the bottom of this post. 

I offer weekly classes and occasional workshops. For my class schedule and information about fees, click here. For upcoming workshops, click here. 

Is Tai Chi a Martial Art? Can You Use It for Self-Defense?

I get asked these two questions more than any others (with the possible exception of "How do you pronounce Qigong?"). Short answers:  yes, and yes.

Longer answers:

Is Tai Chi a Martial art? 

Tai chi is one of several soft-style martial arts also called "internal" martial arts. This name, "internal," is to distinguish it from so-called "external" martial arts, like Karate, where the emphasis is more on muscular force and not as much on developing chi. (More on this distinction is to be found on this Martial Arts thread - interesting chit chat there.) If you watch a Tai Chi practitioner, it is evident that the movements are blocks, kicks, strikes, and punches - things you would use in a fight. Therefore, Tai Chi is an art that is martial in nature.

So You Just Hope that People Attack You Very Slowly?

Har har har smart guy. Obviously, you hope that people don't attack you at all.

Here's the theory, which is cool and does work. In Tai Chi, you train slowly so that your muscles learn to do the movements in a way that is completely relaxed. I've written about this elsewhere, but Tai Chi does not work, neither for its health benefits, its meditation benefits, nor for its martial arts capabilities, if it's done with tension. When you go to apply your Tai Chi - in class as part of Push Hands, or wherever else - if you're not relaxed, your opponent will get the better of you. You train slowly to learn to relax, so you have a shot at relaxing when you have to go fast. You learn that the softer person has all the advantages in a physical encounter: the softer guy dodges better, turns force better, avoids strikes better, and never gives away his or her centre, so can't be moved as easily.

That Sounds Like Magical Thinking.

Yup, it does, but it isn't. It is a matter of simple physics. If you learn to do the movements of Tai Chi correctly (and this is no mean feat), you will understand how to use your whole body against an opponent. Your arm might be stronger than mine, but it probably isn't stronger than my whole body. In relaxing completely and using the body's natural structure, you are able to channel your opponent's force down to the ground, or turn it. Your arm might be stronger than mine, but that doesn't matter if you can't push my centre. Your arm might be stronger than mine, but it's not stronger than the floor, which you'll find yourself pushing against as you try to push me. That's the way it works.

But You Still Can't Use Tai Chi for Self-Defense.

You can, and I have. In more important ways, I use it all the time, since Tai Chi movement informs just about everything I do. It's a more efficient way to go about your daily tasks, to defend yourself against everyday injuries, as well as to fend off the occasional person who might do you harm.

However, there is one very important point here: just because you learn a martial art, and you can use its principles in class or as you're going about your day, doesn't mean you know how to fight. You still have to learn how if that's something you want to do. What you won't learn in class is how scary it can be when someone crazy or angry is being aggressive toward you, or how to stand up to that aggression (or avoid it altogether, which is preferable in most cases). Most people do not tend to cross the line over into physical aggression, but some do. Knowing when that's about to happen is a whole other deal.

Long story short, class can help you with discernment - being in touch with what's going on around you so you can work more skillfully with the people and situations you encounter in the rest of your life. Class can help you practice your skills with dealing with the physical force of another person. We practice this in the form of Push Hands, a partner exercise, and through resistance that your instructor gives you from time to time as you perform the movements, so you can feel how they really work. Slowly, you build confidence that the movements do work.

So Using Tai Chi for Self-Defense Takes a Long Time to Learn?

Yes! And some people never really learn to trust it. Here I'll finish with a long quote from a master. This is from Cheng Man-ch'ing's book Tai Chi. The topic is the secret to perfecting Tai Chi as martial art:

...there is a secret. But it is so simple as to be unbelievable. Its nature insists that you believe, that you have faith; otherwise you will fail. The secret is simply this: you must relax body and mind totally. [Sound familiar?] You must be prepared to accept defeat repeatedly and for a long period; you must "invest in loss" - otherwise you will never succeed. I succeeded to my present state because I pushed pride aside and believed my master's words. I relaxed my body and stilled my mind so that only ch'i, flowing at the command of my mind, remained. Initially, this brought many bruises and defeats. In fact, in some matches I was pushed so hard that I lost consciousness. But I persisted. I followed my teacher by listening to and heeding my ch'i. In crushing defeat, I forgot anxiety, pride, ego. by emptying myself I gave the full field to ch'i. Gradually my technique improved. Then, and then only, did my responses sharpen so that neutralizing and countering were the work of a moment. 

That's Tai Chi as martial art.

Learn to Use Your Mind Effectively with Tai Chi and Qigong

The mind is capable of many amazing things: puzzling through challenges and information, guiding decision making, and helping us to get what we want. However, the mind is a Jekyll and Hyde kind of a deal. When you're not paying tons of attention, it will start misbehaving: grinding over a problem that is beyond your control. Replaying troublesome conversations. Thinking over everything and anything that could go wrong. The mind is fully capable of making your life miserable.

The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has this to say about the mind: "The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you." Eastern philosophy calls this "monkey mind" - mind out of control, jumping all over the place, wrecking your fun time, kicking sand in your face.

When you practice Tai Chi and Qigong, you are only giving the mind one thing to do at a time, which encourages it to slow down, to just pay attention to that one thing. One thing at a time. Doesn't that sound nice? Over time, you develop the habit of slowing down. It's a whole new way to enjoy life, and to turn your mind into an instrument that serves you, rather than an abusive taskmaster who wants to comb through all your old misgivings. It's a better way to live.


This post is part of a series called What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You. Look for more parts in the coming weeks, or click "What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You" at the bottom of this post. 

I offer weekly classes and occasional workshops. For my class schedule and information about fees, click here. For upcoming workshops, click here. 

Reiki Healing, Qigong Exercise, and Medical Qigong

I just discovered this wonderful article by Catherine Calhoun over at the AOMA Graduate School of Integrative Medicine that compares Medical Qigong and Reiki. I probably don't write enough about Reiki on this blog - short of the scant bits of information I've got up on my page on Reiki and Shamballa Healing. Reiki is an amazing thing, as is Qigong, and although I feel that there's a powerful synergy between the two practices, my sense is that those who practice them often come from two different camps and there's a lack of understanding between the two.

First, let's get some terms straight. There are two main branches of Qigong. One is all about using exercises and meditation to move your own chi / energy. This is often called "internal" Qigong because it's all about you working on you. 

When you want to use chi / energy to help someone else, it's called "external" or medical Qigong. A more helpful distinction I think is Qigong exercise vs. Qigong for healing others. 

The Qigong that I teach is the first kind: Qigong exercise and meditation that you do in order to help yourself. This type of Qigong has profound healing capabilities. In my experience, it helps keeps your joints open, transforms the mind / body into something much more hearty, and generally makes for happy times. 

I haven't personally studied medical Qigong, but my understanding is that medical / healing Qigong practitioners train extensively in the first kind of Qigong in order to open themselves up prior to learning how to work with another's energy. 

When I started my Reiki training with Carol-Ann Glenn of Roseheart Wellness, I had already been a Qigong and Tai Chi practitioner for many years (fifteen, I think?). I was used to moving chi through my own body, but hadn't had any experience in moving other people's (not intentionally, anyway). In Reiki, a trainee receives attunements from the Reiki Master. An attunement opens up the energy field of the practitioner and allows him or her to draw on the healing aspect of Source (the Reiki "ray"). I believe that Reiki is very similar to medical Qigong, in that the purpose is to move another's energy and facilitate healing.

Here's what Catherine Calhoun has to say about it:

Reiki ('rei' meaning universal and 'ki' which is the Japanese pronunciation of 'Qi') and Medical Qigong have the same root philosophies - the concept that the Qi which animates and enervates everything in this Universe can be directed through the practitioner in such a way that the Qi which flows to the patient can to effect a healing and balancing response in the patient’s body. Master Li emphasized that you let the Qi flow through you so that you are both a recipient of healing and a channel for it. Reiki teaches the same concept, highlighting the need to let Qi flow through the Crown chakra, into the heart and out through the minor chakras in the palms.

My experience with Reiki attunements and using Reiki for healing others is that it is a profound practice with many benefits. Just in case you are in the same boat as I am - you've been doing Tai Chi or Qigong and you want to get into Reiki - I thought I would share some of the experiences I had. I'm hoping this will also give people who have come here looking for healing some insight into how I work. (Go here if you're looking for information about how a Reiki / Shamballa appointment works or fees.)

When I started Reiki, I was no stranger to chi / energy. Some people who start on the Reiki path have no prior experience in feeling energy. There is nothing wrong with that: you have to start somewhere! For me, I found that having already opened my body up to some degree enabled me to start working with Reiki without getting freaked out or feeling disoriented by the physical sensations it produces. Most people have very positive experiences with their first attunement, but for some, the energy movement is a bit strange. Having already felt profound shifts in my own energies from Tai Chi and Qigong, I knew exactly how amazing the Reiki attunements were (really amazing).

I felt bewildered by the nature of Reiki. When you practice Qigong and Tai Chi, you are working with the limitations of your physical form. You're also expanding and removing those limitations, but this is done through hard work that takes lots of time. As things progress, you feel that you're moving forward, making positive changes, and this is a beautiful process. In many ways, Reiki is no different. Once you are attuned, it is up to you to work with Reiki healing in order to integrate it into your life and understand exactly what it can do.

However, there is a huge difference between the Reiki process and the Qigong / Tai Chi process. To use an analogy, learning Qigong and Tai Chi is like slowly building up a car from spare parts. You build the engine. Then you lovingly assemble the body. You paint and buff and polish. At some point, you put on tires and take it for a spin. You continue to work to improve it. Slowly over time, you pimp your ride.

Being attuned to Reiki is like being handed a set of keys to a new Porsche that's sitting in your garage. You probably have no idea how to drive it, and that is a learning process, but you've suddenly got something incredibly powerful at your disposal that you didn't have the day before.

Qigong and Tai Chi are a pilgrimage. Reiki is grace.

I faced snobbism from the Qigong camp.  Because of the way Reiki training works, there is suspicion about it in some Qigong and Tai Chi circles. Reiki is often lumped in with various new age frippery, and in certain contexts it can seem fairly flakey. Because of the perception that you learn Reiki in a weekend, the Tai Chi and Qigong camps have some major questions about how valuable it can be. Like a lot of judgmental thinking, some of this comes from a place that is less than open minded. Glenn Derrick, writing for Reiki.org, remembers having just this attitude when he first encountered Reiki:

when I first heard of Reiki, I fully rejected it as false. The claims of Reiki simply didn't match what I "knew" was necessary for healing energy to freely flow from the hands. My experience had taught me that such abilities came only through painstaking discipline and long-term efforts.

After working with Reiki, Derrick changed his mind - he's now working on ways to integrate Reiki into Qigong in order to accelerate his students' progress.

I felt I had a good model to help me keep working with and develop a better relationship with Reiki long after my attunements. Like I've already said, you don't learn Reiki in a weekend. You get the tools to learn it and the attunement in a weekend, but you keep learning long, long after that. I think without the experience of practicing Tai Chi and Qigong, I might have felt a bit lost in terms of how to keep developing my Reiki. Years of slow, steady progress, understanding how my system deals with new energies, knowing what happens if you take a long break, how to settle back into a practice after a hiatus, how to listen to my body, intuitively connecting with the ambient energies in a room or around a person - many of these subtleties were things I had started developing through Tai Chi and Qigong. I am very glad that I didn't go into Reiki practice "raw."

I feel that continuing to train will deeply enhance the effects of Reiki on my system. This one is speculative / based solely on my experience because I can't find any information on this out there. In Qigong and Tai Chi, you are literally transforming your muscles, tendons, bones, and internal organs by teaching them to allow chi to move through them more abundantly, smoothly, and constantly. When you practice Reiki, you are running a very high quality of energy through your system. Somehow I feel that my Qigong practice allows the Reiki to go right into my cells and muscle tissues on a very profound level. Reiki is supposed to do that anyway, but I guess I feel as though my system is fortified by the Qigong to allow this to occur very readily and in a way that allows the Reiki to stick / helps me integrate the changes that happen because of Reiki healing. It feels as if there is a deep level of integration going on with the Reiki, because of the Qigong and Tai Chi. If you do both, maybe let me know if you feel this is happening to you.

Reiki massively boosted my confidence in my Qigong and Tai Chi practice and helped me understand what I was doing more deeply. Like Catherine Calhoun points out, in Reiki the emphasis is on allowing the energy to flow through you. This is ideally what Tai Chi and Qigong are all about too. You need to relax and allow, surrender your tensions, and let flow happen - really relax for real. Yet, many Tai Chi and Qigong practitioners end up forcing things. Because there is all this detail to learn, and all these milestones to pass, you can sometimes end up thinking that you are in charge and that the point is that you are this amazing person with all these skills. That is so not the point. As great as it is to develop yourself and build up a list of accomplishments, the point is to use what you've learned to forget about ego, let go of pretense, and join with the flow of life itself. The more I learned how to do that with Reiki, the more I felt I could do that in Tai Chi and Qigong.

Reiki is a handy tool I use in my teaching all the time. An ideal way to experience Reiki is to book an appointment for either a full in-person healing session or distance healing. However, Reiki is also wonderful for spot treatments. Because Reiki offers structured protocols (long and short) for many different types of energy healing - including clearing blockages, moving viruses or infections out of the body, balancing the chakras, and grounding - it is something I turn to again and again for helping my students address issues that come up in class, or to enhance their Tai Chi and Qigong experience.

Tai Chi and Qigong Can Help You Feel Amazing

Warmth, tingling, a sense of aliveness, a palpable, bouncy, uplifting and at the same time grounding sensation are all par for the course when you practice Tai Chi and Qigong. One of my advanced students likes to joke that she would never have spent so much money on pot in high school if she had known she could get high for free doing Tai Chi and Qigong. There is nothing like discovering that you can take an hour class, go in feeling whatever - run down, uptight, stale, unstretched - and come out feeling absolutely excellent every single time. The best news is that once you've taken a few classes, you can practice on your own and have that great, lively, mellow feeling any time you want it or need it.

Once you get into it and start to work with correct technique, Tai Chi and Qigong can also be amazing workouts. You will build up your legs, work them in ways you never have before, stretch things you didn't know could stretch. People have this idea that Tai Chi and Qigong are gentle and that means they aren't effective as exercise. When you're ready, let me show you otherwise. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

This post is part of a series called What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You. Look for more parts in the coming weeks, or click "What Tai Chi and Qigong Can Do for You" at the bottom of this post. 

I offer weekly classes and occasional workshops. For my class schedule and information about fees, click here. For upcoming workshops, click here.