Finding Your Optimal Self Through Qigong

Introduction to Qigong and the Guest 0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Really exciting talk today. You'll notice as we go through this that our guest is off camera, which speaks to all of what we're going to dive into. It's a Dallas principal and teaching, and we're going to dive into the. Why? So Tavia Fang, is going to talk to us today about qigong. That inner energy, something that we kind of think we know about it. We hear it in different terms. You know, you hear about it kind of like is is energy. Is this, you know, as a baka some people call it this connection we have.

What is it? How do you access it and how does it heal and make you a better person? There's no better person to talk to. The tibia. Tibia. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Honored to be here. This is awesome. And you know, so what is it. So today you're off camera and I respect that. And it's I would like you know let everyone know like what's going on there. Well, I joined a Daoist sect years ago and I took a vow not to become famous, not to promote myself and to only promote the art and to be a conduit, a channel for the art of qigong.

And so that's my mission is not myself, but the art of qigong. And, it's humbling because we have that. We all have that natural desire or instinct to be out there. And I've had a million marketing people tell me, if you just went on camera and you just promoted yourself, we could make we could go to so much bigger. But I must keep this vow I took. I take my vows very seriously. And so, Yeah. And so I've actually, grown much more humble because of it. So that's all. See, in your position. Because, I mean, people might like me, don't realize it, but there's thousands of people that have gone through teaching through you as a conduit, but you're conduit to the actual teachings, like you said, not to your own community, your ecosystem all the way you're supporting them and helping them.

It's really about you being this channel that leads them to what you need them to know, which is a beautiful thing. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So, so for anyone that's listening that hasn't even heard the term before, qigong. In a nutshell, what are we talking about? Well, she is simply energy. So if we look at the classical Chinese character for chai, it's a rice kernel meeting gas. So it's a rice kernel popping and it meets gas. So it's combustion. So you it's alchemy. You put two and two together and it creates energy.

So just like when you breathe in, the word for breath is also has chai in it. So when you breathe in you take an oxygen. And that creates energy in the body as anyone can understand. So gong means the refined skill. So it's the refined skill of working with energy. And that's all it is.

What Qigong Means and How It Works 3:08

That's a very broad general definition for qigong. But what I could say about the qigong that we do is imagine tai chi meets yoga meets meditation. That's what it is. That's what we have in our system. So there's a specific sort of system, a process through which you access this and call it maybe manipulate this energy. But yeah, there's there's over 3000 kinds of qigong that are documented today. So within those thousands of kinds, there's so many different variations with completely different principles.

I've learned about 50 plus styles, which seems like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket. So every style has a different purpose or a different, principle. And so I've really stuck with this style of qigong. That's for healing and maximum potential and peak performance. That's what turned me on about that kind of qigong, those styles of chu. Is it like people can, you know, if they want to explore this, they can go through this library of the various types of qigong and think, here's my outcome, here's the goal I'm seeking, and this is the best sort of form, right?

Well, exactly like I I've worked with people who have cancer. I've worked with people who have difficult to treat illnesses like me. And I've on the and we've had incredible results, and I teach them a little bit differently than the person I've taught hedge fund managers, and who are like making, you know, 20 million, $200 million decisions in an instant. And they need that peak performance. They need to be thinking differently. And taking out the emotion. So I teach them differently. So I'll teach them a different form of qigong for achieving different purposes, if that makes sense.

That makes a lot of sense. And that's incredible. It reminds me of a discussion we had with a gentleman that worked on PMF. So, you know, Electric Pulse, where you're talking about taking your innate internal capacity and your innate energy and sort of accessing it or manipulating it for your benefit, whereas there's other sort of forms of therapy where you're adding energy to the body so that the cell does whatever it's doing better. So what you're suggesting is that what we do internally, you can sort of supercharge that by accessing and kind of speaking or communicating to this energy.

Exactly, exactly. So you if you have a something that you're trying to achieve in your life, you need to be at the top of and be at the best you possibly can be. So whatever it is like. I've also worked with world champion martial artists like the female 2019 karate champion Dua Hussein from Kuwait. She won the world championship in her competition. In the final match. She was doing our qigong right before she fought and she said it got her into a super concentrated mindset and she was able to conquer any emotions that were getting in her way.

And then it also raised her blood levels up and raised her blood pressure up to the right amount so she could start to regulate her system. Okay, so you're actually able to self-regulate and gain control over the autonomic nervous system that they said for many years we couldn't control. But now we found through cutting edge science that yes, you can control the autonomic nervous system. So I can regulate my immune system, I can regulate the the nervous system, the peons, the parasympathetic nervous system.

Through these ancient techniques that the Dow has been doing for thousands of years. But now I've applied neuroscience. I've worked with neuroscientists to understand why it works the way it works, and how it works from a neuroscientific framework. So when you're talking to sort of conventional, call it modern day science, this because this is an ancient art, an ancient science in itself, are you, when you speak to them, are we talking about the same thing? We're a typical, you know, functional medicine doctors talking about energy rooted in the mitochondria, the cell, you know, the production of ATP.

Are we talking about the same thing or is it a different form of energy. That's a great question. So I wouldn't say I'm an expert in mitochondria. But what I understand is Sasha right. Sasha is a modern sports science and what they've shown through Sasha. So you're just for those who don't know what Sasha is underneath the skin. You have this fibrous, gluey web that surrounds, encapsulates the muscles and the organs, wraps around the bones and becomes the bones. So the bones are actually the hardest part of your fascia.

So it's this connective tissue that runs throughout your entire body, even encapsulates the brain. And so this fascia, when you coil it and uncoil it, they can generate an electrical charge that they can measure with a scientific instrument that is what my master said. When you coil and uncoil the meridians in the body, you generate qi. But I realized these connective tissue lines are the meridians, are the connective tissue lines, what Thomas Myers termed as myofascial meridians. So he was in a he was a manual therapist who dissected cadavers and found that

Healing, Performance, and Nervous System Regulation 8:43

there was these connective tissue lines in the fascia running through the body. He knew nothing about Chinese meridian maps, measured them up. They were almost identical to the Chinese medicine Meridian maps. And so that was a real, awakening moment for me, and realizing that there was actually a science that could explain what this stuff was, that was looked as an esoteric concept, is actually grounded in something real, and it's tangible. Yeah. I've seen when you walk into, say, even a traditional Chinese medicine purveyor and you'll see, like the acupuncture map on the wall.

And it's so highly, extremely detailed. And what they're saying is they're accessing sort of key points and you wonder, how is this research done so many hundreds of years ago without the modern day tools? But in fact, maybe the modern day tools are what are preventing us from accessing ancient knowledge. You know? So when you speak to your masters, have they dove into like, where did this even come from? Well, that's a great mystery that I still have not answered myself. And that is one of the things that I'm amazed about is whoever, you know, put together this system is just it's mind blowing to me, especially, like you said, we have all these modern tools now.

We're starting to discover what they found thousands of years ago. I just blown away by I still don't know to this day. Yeah. And you see, that's true in a lot of areas like, you know, a lot of sort of synthetic pharmaceutical solutions mirror what has been known in ancient wisdom, just at a different dosage or just synthesized so that it's scalable. Right. You wonder, how do people figure these things out? So there's a, there's a clinic here in Toronto where I am, that, in terms of when it comes to acupuncture, I went there once to meet them.

I was told that they would do amazing work. And what the master there told me is people that use needles are still in training, because to access the needle is sort of, call it an amplifier of the work that you're doing. And she does acupuncture, you're using her hands. So you literally is sort of over and above the body, and she's saying she's accessing and manipulating the same sort of key points or targets on the body. And the needles are just for the person that just can't do it that way. Does that make sense to you?

Oh yeah, because my first medical qigong master I studied with, he said something similar. He used his fingers, like, instead of needles. Right. And he has had thousands of patients, with really difficult to treat illnesses and, he has had incredible success with that mind blowing when you think about it. But you see it work. It's the proofs right there. Yeah. You know, so how did you get into that? Like where did the well, where did the journey start from, you know, and that also and this is my focus.

I was born with chronic illness and my parents didn't want me to be on medications and in hospitals and with doctors my whole life. So my grandmother died an early death of a respiratory disease. My aunt died of colon cancer. I've got heart disease in my family. My sister was born pneumonia. My brother was born with rickets. You know, I had three strikes against me, you know, I had no wiggle room to. And my body was weak, very weak. And my father was into qigong. And so he knew what she got to master that could take me on.

So every day after school, I went and trained, and I learned how to strengthen my organs and strengthen my energy and my body and gain like a wellspring of energy and focus my mind and concentrated and become a powerful force. So I took a break from this week. Feebly, kid, I gained real solid strength. Now fast forward, When I was a teenager, I was in a brutal car accident. Doctors told me I had to have surgery on my spine and my knee, and there was no way around it. They said I and I was really scared to go under the knife.

You know, it's scared to be cut open. And I know that once you have spinal surgery, it's never going to be the same. And my master, he said, don't do the surgery yet. Try this qigong. He gave me this simple qigong exercise, which is this wave like, dragon like motion of the spine. And I did it every day with this, coupled with this deep, slow, methodic breathing. And every day I did this qigong just for 5 to 10 minutes a day, or any time I felt that back pain and little by little it dissipated. Now it took me four full years to fully recover, but I never had surgery and now my spine is in better shape than most people I know half my age, and I attribute it to this qigong and the Chinese.

The ancient Chinese have a saying that you are the age of your spine. So your number means nothing and it doesn't matter how people judge age these days about, you know, your beauty, but it doesn't matter how beautiful you are if you don't have a spine that's fully functional, that's that's soft and supple, like a baby. And that's what I strive to achieve, is keeping this really healthy spine. The spine connects everything. Does all the organs hang off the spine and the spine connects to the brain.

And as we age, our brain atrophies because we don't have sufficient cerebral spinal fluid pumping to the brain. And what this does is it stimulates that cerebrospinal fluid to pump more easily into the brain. So we get deeper circulation in the brain. That's why we have clearer, sharper thinking when we do qigong, we can master our emotions with qigong. And at the same time you get the mobility benefit. You get really amazing mobility. So is it more that, so the body is resilient. The body is designed to sort of survive and repair, you know, and come back.

Is it that you're taking those existing systems and processes? Your spine was damaged and the body gets to work repairing, and your Excel writing that? Or is it an another process entirely that a normal repair or sort of, you know, survival process doesn't accommodate and doesn't do and you're adding a layer to it? Is it? So that's what I'm trying to understand, is that supercharging what we already do, are you adding a new layer that somebody has an access to yet? That's a really insightful question.

And that that's a one of the better questions I've had in a long time, actually. And that makes me think. And how I can answer that is this is you have your own energy, which is we call your prenatal chai. So that's like in your genes, your genetics, right? So then you have acquired sheep so you can acquire chai. So for example I'll just give you a tangible example. You go stand in fresh air in the mountains versus in a polluted city, right. So you can get that energy from nature and bring that into the body.

Combine that with your existing energy that you have, and you need to create flow of circulation. Because what she does is it's the catalyst for the movement of blood. So she is the catalyst for the movement of blood. And what the what we found in these, in the clinics that I worked in is that patients who were very ill had lack of circulation, they had blockage, and it wasn't able to circulate. Once we are able to break through that, clear those blockages.

Fascia, Meridians, and Scientific Validation 16:48

Now we're able to start to oxygenate the blood. But we need that. We need healthy food. We need good supplements. We need good air. We need those healthy things, and we need healthy people in our life because all of that is energy. So they call run chai is people cheat. So you get energy from people. If you been around someone who brings you down and that's because their chai and your chai don't mix well together either in that moment or not at all. Bad chemistry. We call it chemistry, right? So the so you can get she or you can get energy from nature, from the sun, from food, from supplements.

So Gucci is the food cheat. And so the Dow costs were playing with supplementation for thousands of years because they're seeking that immortal elixir. So they're seeking ultimate longevity. So I call the Daoist or ancient Biohackers what we would term them as biohackers. So they would like drink mercury to try to like, attain longevity. A thousand years later, they realized that didn't work. So but they're always like searching for the thing that's going to bring them, that immortality. So yes, you can get that energy from nature, from food, from people, and you have it within your own body.

It's this sounds so aligned with what we tell people genetically, meaning that you have this innate capacity, you have your wiring, here's who you are. And then based on your epigenetic decisions, what you eat, what are your environmental exposures, what are your lifestyle? Those two things together equal your net result, meaning that you you're you're wired for this. You did this and it was either match or not match, which means good result, bad result. So someone's going down that path. You're saying that you can kind of support this part, but here's your innate capacity.

We can bring that up so that, but then it would make me think that in order, if you're increasing blood flow in your, you know, you're getting that circulation going, that it needs to start with, well, let's make sure that the blood is clean and pure. And if you eat the right things and you're not full of toxins and you're, you know, is there any sort of therapeutic thought around that, or does the key itself resolve that? Well, absolutely. I mean, I'll never forget we had a student in our class who was working a night shift and he said, I'm, I'm taking all the medicines and the supplements and I'm doing qigong and I'm not getting better.

And my master said, what time are you going to sleep? He said, I work a night shift. So he said, oh, so you're not sleeping? You need to sleep between a at a latest at 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., because that's the organ rejuvenation time. That's when the organs get their rejuvenation of cheap. So and so you have because you have the Chinese organ medicine clock. So each different hour is related with a different organ system. So it's the same thing. Like you can do all that qigong you want, but if you're not eating the right foods or taking the right supplements, you won't.

You're just like taking a few steps back, one step forward and two steps back. So all of those things are important. It's all part of the whole. There is a cog in the wheel. Yeah, it makes sense. And sorry, I just, for my curiosity, those principles in qigong are there's qigong was found in many different cultures, not just in the Daoist culture. Correct. That's a great. Yeah. Great question. So you have five main branches of qigong. Okay. So you have Buddhist qigong, Daoist qigong. You have martial qigong, which is like for self-defense, you have medical qigong and you have Confucian as qigong.

So this is I'm just referring to Chinese qigong at the moment. I mean, there's qigong in India, there's qigong and different, there's qigong in Korea there. So I'm not I'm just talking specifically about Chinese because that's the the area of my expertise. Okay. Yeah. I think that, there's also probably many cultures that are practicing qigong but don't realize that's what they're doing. You know, you know, accessing energy, understanding that there's certain exercises they can do that help with certain things, but don't realize that that's what it is.

It's just the discovery of, here's the science, you know, which happened some time ago. So when when you say, when you talk about food and eating and how that affects your energy, is there, sort of what does that diet look like? I'm curious about, you know, the belief in the keto diet, vegan, paleo, etc.. And there's been so much science in this art, right? Is it really a combination of science and art? What is the thinking on what is what is food look like? Well, that's why I, I'm I'm not a believer in one size fits all.

I like I believe everyone has different DNA as you say, or genes and so I believe that different people have different needs. But there is some common themes that Chinese medicine has with diet, and that is eating the five colors. Okay. We have the five elements in Chinese medicine and qigong. And the five elements are earth, fire, wood, water and metal. Okay. And each of so these are the five main elements that we have that are in the earth and that are within us. And they have different relationships with tastes like sour sweet.

So you need to have the different five flavors. You need to have the five colors. And these by incorporate that into your diet. That is going to help your Qi significant because you get the key of the color. And also colors make you feel good. So incorporating a more colorful diet, when you see a colorful plate of food, you feel much better than when you just see like just everything is all brown. Right, right. So or just like a bowl of just simple porridge it's all white. Yeah. But you see I like, like a colorful salad, you know different color vegetables and, and so on and so forth.

And, and you feel that vibrancy and you take on that vibrancy and also those five different tastes stimulate different senses. And and when we look at it from a neuroscientific perspective, it makes total sense, because actually different colors and different flavors stimulate different regions of the brain. So it totally makes sense to me that Chinese medicine aspect, you know, whether you should eat meat or be vegetarian. I don't get into it because I think that's individualistic, right? It depends on the person. Okay.

But, the five elements really makes sense to me and resonates with me. It makes sense and it's aligned with what you're hearing and science now. Or, you know, food is such a crisis, especially in North America where, you know, you wanted American to these go eat American food and you'll probably get it. So that's where, you know, it's become such an important element

Origins, Acupuncture, and Personal Journey 23:58

in terms of functional medicine and precision health that, you're seeing a lot of this, you're seeing the books and you're seeing a lot of the blogs and the Instagram post talking about exactly what you just said, which was discovered, how many hundreds of thousands of years ago. We're just coming back to it now. There's also there's a gentleman we spoke to a few weeks ago who, he he's a regenerative farmer, so he's very much into the science of the soil and the science of the plant. Meaning it's one thing to eat a tomato.

It's another thing to eat a tomato. Meaning that is that thing really what it was meant to be that was growing in a greenhouse that has no life in it. So do you consider call to call it maybe the key of the plant, like when you're eating and consuming something that in itself has energy and life that's meant to be sort of transition to you? Absolutely. I mean, the best food in the world that you could probably eat is wild. As long as it's grown, you know, it's growing in soil. That's, that's that's healthy.

But I totally agree with everything you just said. The where where the food is produced, how it's produced, even the energy of the person who's, who's like cultivating it, that of all, all of that affects it. I mean, when you look at, there's in Japan, they have, a bocce balls so that these are like, they, these are hand-rolled balls and they say the person's energy rolled that ball really intensely and makes it really, really tight. And small. And so everything that goes into that plant or whatever is being cultivated is important and has a direct effect on the energy that it's going to give you.

Yes. It, it, it makes sense because people the thinking is, you know, what do you think of it sort of at the level we're speaking of it, some people are like that sounds like foo foo like does it make sense? But you talk to the actual scientists that study energy and look at the science of it. It's energy moves when you open a, you know, a hot door or a cold door, the temperature changes, the energy shifting. Same thing with what's in you. What's in the food? Energy is constantly transitioning and moving.

And so the science of it backs up what we say. We just don't apply the science to this context of food and who we are and all that stuff. We use it for other things. So we don't learn that. But, you know, another thing I was thinking, when it comes to, you know, what we're eating, how we're exercising, a lot of people may that are new to this may not understand what is gonna look like an implementation. Meaning what is your average week? What are you actually doing? What are the practices other than how you eat?

Is there a prayer or is there, you know, movement? What does it kind of look like? That's a great question. So what you do with qigong is you start by settling and rooting into the ground and really feeling the energy of the place that you're in. So I like to go barefoot outside on the grass, or if I'm on the beach right in the sand or wherever I am, I like to just feel the ground. Then I start to sense the sounds around me, listen to the sounds around me, and then I start to feel the energy around me.

So you start to utilize your senses. You exercise your senses in that way. And then I connect to the cosmos through the crown point. So the cosmos. So you have your earth. Chee through the feet. You have what they call heaven chee. But it doesn't have a religious connotation. It's not like the religious sense of heaven. It's the cosmos. So that that is, we connect with that chee like the universal chee. And what we connect with is like a violet light. And it was interesting because when I looked at the scientific, telescopic images of the universe there, actually there's violet light in the universe.

So I was blown away by that correlation. And so you draw that in and you draw in the energy from the earth, and you draw in the breath and you bring it all into your center, which is called your Tian tian, which is your it's it's in the lower belly. In Japan, they call it your hara. Dancers know it because dancers use it as their focal point, as their center of balance in their body. So it's deep in the lower belly. And if we look at it from an anatomical perspective, it's where your digestive system and your reproductive organs reside, right?

So that's where the energy is produced. The most powerful energy of your life is your reproductive energy. Sexual energy and your energy where you digest your food. So those are the two most powerful things. And they're both centered in the lower belly. So we draw in the energy into that area which stimulates the digestive system and the reproductive organs. And these two, when you stimulate the digestive system in the reproductive organs, we know this will help extend your life. Now then we go into, like a gratitude meditation where we can start to really tune in to something that really makes us grateful, because then we can start to change our mind state.

And now we can do our qigong, and we go into this dynamic qigong where we have many different exercises that work on twisting and deep wringing out of the organs of the meridians through this coiling and uncoiling motions, through twisting through forward and back, side to side. It moves all around. Some movements are like a drag, and some movements are like a tiger, and they evoke different mind states. Okay, so and this originated from originally, 5000 years ago, they had the Wu tribal people were dancing like these animalistic dances around a fire, like shamans.

Right. And they got them into these trances, what we call in neuroscience, a flow state. And when you're in a flow state, that's when magic really happens, and that's when healing can happen, and that's when concentration reaches its peak. And so we tap into these flow states while we're in movement. And then when we're finished we go back and we start to do

Energy, Food, and the Five Elements 30:28

deep powerful breathing exercises of breath control and working with different elements or energy to bring them in. Like I might look at the morning sun and with my eyes closed and breathe in that energy and feel it coming through my eyes and feel the golden light coming in through every cell of my body, drenching it in this healing light. And that really starts to change your physiology. And what I realized about qigong, something very powerful. It's a very good book called the The Intention Experiment.

I think it's called and in this book they did scientific research on people who had powerful intentions, who were able to change their physiology through intention. And you can starting to. So what happens is, and when I started studying neuroscience, when I got a neuroscientist teacher, I realized that, yes, what you're doing is you are you're believing in something so powerfully that it actually has a physiological reaction. So you're inducing a physiological reaction through strong, powerful, honed intention.

Does that make sense? It all makes sense. And it's everything you said is kind of like taking bits and pieces of all these different biohacking and wellness things that you hear from different people. And it's just been bundled up into, here's optimal human performance, right? Here's how you actually access your your body and use it properly because you hear this stuff, but you hear different pieces of it from different people that specialize in those various things. And even just our last concept of thought.

And, you know, if you think about, like you said, sexual energy, you think about something arousing, it changes your physiology immediately. Yeah. So for some people that here or thought can change things. Oh, that doesn't make any sense. Well go think about food and go, you know, you don't do it. All of a sudden you salivate. Does your body change? It does. And that's how powerful thought is to to create but also prevent, you know, it works both ways. And the other thing I heard you talking about there was the meditation, which is being spoken of in so many places now, do you think that prayer, you know, the religious prayer, if done properly, we are truly like through gratitude, you know, giving, trying to connect.

Is it that you're sort of accessing this external energy and and this is why you're, you know, manifestations can sort of come through and you're or is it more like you're just entering a deeper meditative state, and you're accessing something else. So how does that connection happen? I would actually say both. Oh, I say it's a mix of both. Because what we say is you want to open your they say Kai, by way, that means open your meeting of 100 points, which is your crown point. So you open that to the cosmos and then the energy can come and flow through you.

But you're also you have to get into that meditative, receptive state to be able to do that. And then you can draw that in. So I would definitely say it's a combination of you got to kind of open the door and then invite it in. Exactly. I mean, prayer is used in all religions. It's so ancient. There's a reason for it that it's so powerful and millions and millions, hundreds of millions, if not billions of people do it, you know, for thousands of thousands of years. So it has validity to it, without a doubt.

Most of you, and I think some people understand the dogma, but there's like an obligation where I have a belief and I have to pray, for a certain reason or a certain time. And then there's people that extract additional benefit from it, which that wisdom is why I was taught in the first place. You know, you can tell me what you think about this, but there's a gentleman that I know that once a year goes into a deep sort of meditative prayer where he literally locked himself into a room for a week.

No access to people, no access to anything. He's in this room that's all. That's all he does. And he says that he gets into a state that's so deeply connected that he feels like he's literally traveling through time and space. You know, that fabric of the universe, that the energy. So can your soul actually leaves your body? I don't know what how and what what he's claiming he's actually doing, but he's saying by the end of that week he's in such a deep meditative state that he's outside of the awareness of his body, and he's like, kind of moving our own, the fabric of the universe.

I, I, I feel like I can relate. I mean, I have a qigong technique that I do called the White Tiger Breath. And I get into that state where I lose the sense of my physical self, and I even forget that I have a physical existence, and I feel like I'm woven into this, the fabric of the universe. So, yeah. How long does it take to get to that masterful level? Like how much practice do? Well, you know, to be direct, I've had students come in and be able to access that the first time. The first time? Yeah.

But that that's not not every it doesn't mean everybody's going to get that. But and you'll get glimpses of it at first. But more, the more you do it, the more you can get into it until you can start to get into it. On will. Wow. Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. There's, so in, in in that state, I guess things like manifesting, you know, connecting and drawing what you want from the universe is, was just supposed to be much easier thing to do. Yeah. Well, I got to tell you, though, there's a caveat.

I stopped teaching those techniques to beginners because, I realized there was some people who were going off the wrong way on it. So what I do now is I teach those techniques after somebody been with me for a period of time, and I have a relationship with them, that I can trust those techniques with them because, you really have to you have to be careful with it. And, because you're accessing something very powerful. And it's important to also have a guide with you that understands how to do that and what that means, so you can ask questions or share any problems that you run into on the way.

I know for sure. That makes a lot of sense. You know, one of my favorite lines from Spider Man is with great power comes great responsibility, right? So you gotta remember that. So then, we've spoken about a lot of elements of how things benefit you and you yourself healed. And a lot of people are listening today, are coming here thinking from sort of the health perspective, meaning whether they are ill or they don't want to be on the preventing something that maybe dad or grandma had, you know, tell us about people that you work with in terms of their wellness journeys and how they've been able to heal and what they did and how they experience that.

I've worked with literally thousands of people, and I've seen so many different types of people, and I found some very similar underlying common threads. And so, for example, a lot of the people that I worked with with cancer, they had these like they had things in their life they couldn't let go of, whether they felt victimized and they felt they couldn't forgive the person who they felt victimized them, and they couldn't let go of that feeling victimized.

Daily Practice, Breathwork, and Meditation 38:18

They or another person couldn't let go of feeling sorry for themselves, feeling that their life was miserable, or another person who was so angry. They helped deep seeded anger towards others, feeling that they were screwed or cheated by other people. Now, if you're participating in society, chances are you're gonna encounter someone who's gonna cheat you, screw you, and try to, you know, you know, they say, Tom petty said. Some say life will break you down, break your heart and steal your crown.

Right. So we all go through that. But the difference between the people I know who are able to overcome those things, like the qigong masters that I study with, I've seen them go through really intense things in their life, like I watched one of them lose one of their children to to death and and watching him go through that and watching how he overcame that with qigong and within my own life, the turmoil that I've gone through, the roller coaster of life it's been through with me through thick and thin.

When I hit rock bottom, qigong allowed me to let go and let go of that anger towards other people and forgive. And and that's what I've seen people who can let go. And that is taught in actually many religions too as well. Letting go the powerful, the power of forgiveness. And in our qigong, we have that practice of letting go of emotions, letting go of anger, letting go of of any depression, sadness, letting go of it all. Now, it doesn't mean we ignore it and push it, push it, stuff it under the covers.

It means we connect with that and then we can let it go, because that actually stays in the body physically. And they've proven that with science, that emotional trauma is stored as memories, as physical memories in the fashion. Just like when you cut open a piece of wood, you can see the trauma it's gone through in its rings when you cut open a tree. And the same thing with the fascia, we store kinks and knots. That's how emotional trauma is stored. And if we don't release that on both a physical and a spiritual level, then it will stay and fester and grow.

Yeah. And some people who again, it's because it's not, call it like, chemical or clinical in terms of what you're saying. Some people don't believe it. But if we look at the science of what the genetics of it, it makes so much sense because we know that there's certain genes that will determine to what degree do you imprint trauma on pain, PTSD. And some people genetically are much less prone, you know, get in a car accident, walk away, jump into Uber like it didn't even happen. And some people for six months can't go down the street to again because of the trauma.

So what were we? We learn genes, drive cellular processes. So in order for you to imprint it, remember that there's a neurochemical. But there also has to be something physical. And this is the difference between medicine today is all chemical biochemistry. But the physics is sort of the ancient art that we lost, which is what you're talking about, that there's a physical, physiological change, which is why you retain, why you imprint, why you remember, why there's trauma. So we know scientifically that there's genes that drive it.

But we haven't answered yet is what are they driving? Right. What's that actual physiological thing that happens? And that's what you just described, that emotions literally are stored physically, right. We know that disease for the most part everyone agrees is rooted in inflammation. Right. But what you're saying is that there's sort of some cancers. Example example, you know, that are rooted in emotion. And that's another beautiful thing you brought up because the inflammatory load that leads to diseases, where again, looking at the sort of medical state that here's the state, the causes of the disease.

But what caused the state, right. How did you even get there? It could be environmental chemicals, whatever. But it could also be emotional. And we're learning and people say this, that you your emotions drive thought which. And we've already agreed that thought drives physiological change. Right. Which then could lead to these diseases. So there's connecting all these dots and finding people like yourself that have a really big piece of the story that has been missing from sort of the, the science part of it. Right.

And so it really opens your eyes to like the things that we kind of think we know. Well, it's been known for hundreds of years. Why. And now we just have to put the two together. We get the whole story right. So it's truly kind of eye opening to me and mind blowing. So what does your routine look like? Like what is your sort of qigong routine? Your days or weeks look like my qigong routine or my my daily routine? You know, your Chico routine. Like, what do you do to maintain where you're at? Well, I like to go to bed early.

I like to be in bed no later than 1030 and the sleep by 10:40 p.m. at the latest, because then I'll be asleep by 11, and that's what I want to do. And then I wake up nice and early. I wake up with the sunrise. And you get much more energy that way when. And that's like a Daoist principle of harmonizing yourself with nature. And so when you follow natural energy, it's like surfing. You're going to have more energy when you harmonize yourself with the, the cycles of the sun. And so I wake up early with the sunrise.

I have some water, use the washroom, and then I go out and I do my qigong, in this in sun, in the sun rise. And then, I'll, I'll spend time doing I do different practices depending on what my body needs in that moment. Sometimes it's more intense, more fiery qigong. Other times it's more soft and gentle and watery qigong. So gentle movements and other times, throughout that practice, I'll be doing standing qigong where I'm just standing and breathing and, and I and I live in a place with a beautiful view.

I mean, I'm looking at mountains and ocean and I just take that in and I absorb it. And as I breathe in, I feel myself. It's coming into my body and I just like I said, I stare at the sun with my eyes closed and I. It's like I'm drinking the sun. So it feels feels so rejuvenating and healing and like. Like I had Covid a while back and I, I the I just shook my body for 45 minutes in the in the morning sunshine. And I felt so good after that 45 minutes straight, just shaking my body out, just shaking my whole body.

It's a Daoist exercise of letting go. And I was sweating, I felt great, I did breathing, and so it came back. I felt great, and I knocked Covid out. The third day, you know, I had you know, so I had two days of a fever and I had to regulate it with qigong. I regulated my body temperature, which you. So I was able to like when I got my fever and my headaches, I did a specific breathing technique because I sometimes I couldn't get out of bed. So I stayed, did the breathing technique in my bed, and I and I was able to release the fever and bring down my body temperature and I was able to stabilize it, release the pain, and then go into, sleep.

And and so that's why I only had Covid for two days. And I attribute to the qigong and some good supplementation to I took some really good supplements too. But, so basically my daily qigong routine is, is balancing and regulating. So, assuming I'm not doing anything, I'm not outside and a sunset comes, I'll do another round of qigong and, get that that sunset energy that and, and kind of recede into the night. So a more calming, meditative, contemplative qigong. And always with qigong, we always have meditation.

With qigong we the movement is actually meditation and movement. But then you actually stop and go into complete stillness and you go into different types of meditation with that and gratitude meditation, what some people might equate to prayer, right? I mean, you could even equate this stuff to prayer in a sense. You might we might just call it something different. Yeah. And in that meditation sorry we take it a long time. But one other thought is, you know, some people say I just can't get there, you know, to that meditative state.

So is meditation like eliminating and emptying your head or is it more like finding something to focus on and or is it a combination of how do you actually get into that state? Well, that's a great question because so many people it's it's a mystery to them to to and it's actually quite simple. So you start off the most simple meditation there is. And that's easy to get into, is just following the breath in and out of the nose. Then you can follow the breath into your lower belly. And so you what you're doing is when you have a lot of extraneous extraneous thoughts or thinking, excessive thoughts, it's taking up real estate in the brain.

What you want to do is take up real estate in the brain with a single focus.

Trauma, Forgiveness, and Emotional Release 47:48

Okay. So from a neuroscientific perspective, by focusing on one thing, it's going to take up more real estate in the brain so you don't have the energy or time or ability to focus on too many different things or have extraneous thoughts. So focusing on the breath, then I can focus on something as simple as, okay, I'm breathing in. Like I said, the sun, and I'm focusing on the feeling of that sun coming into me. I feel the warmth coming to my eyes. I feel the warmth go into my face. I feel it go into my throat.

I feel it going down my chest. So you we bring what's called into perceptive awareness. That's a a more, modern term neuro introspective awareness, which is just becoming aware of the feelings in the body. And that's meditation. You're now going into a meditation, and now you can start to direct that where you want it to go. So, for example, I feel tightness in my chest because I'm feeling anxious. I breathe in, I feel my chest expand, and then I feel it relax. And I even say relax. So I create my own mantra relax.

And that sends a signal to the brain, which sends a signal to the body to actually relax. You got to maybe got to do it over and over again. You keep doing it, and now you're starting to gain control of your body, and you're doing a meditation that's actually benefiting you and making you healthier. You know, you just made it so easy to understand that for the first time. I'm and I by the way, I've been challenged by this personally. I do pray regularly, but to get into a meditative state has been a challenge.

And you just literally opened my eyes to exactly what I was missing. It's that, you know, everyone's trying to eliminate noise, but what you're saying is focus on the micros, you know, and the more micro I just keep getting more micro, more micro, and you automatically get drawn away from all the noise because your focus and the, the what it takes to get to that level of focus to the heartbeat, to the pulse, to the feeling. It's kind of like it draws everything out and you're in a meditative state.

Exactly. Yeah. That's it's such an elegant way to think about it. And it's it's so much easier than trying to sit there and think of, you know, I need to focus, not thinking about anything. And it's challenging. Then you give up, right? So yeah. Yeah. For those, I mean, there are those who'd like to do the empty mind meditation. And for those who like to do me my meditation, I invite you to do this meditation. Observe yourself thinking. Just observe yourself with your thoughts of you, thinking your thoughts, and observe how that goes.

That's going to bring you into a really interesting meditative state. Just observing how you're thinking. Yeah, and bending my brain just thinking of other. One important point I want to emphasize is that, like even when you do prayer, like it's so important with qigong, meditation, prayer, anything you do where you're actually feeling it. So for example, when I hear people sometimes like saying a prayer over food like, thank you for this food, you know, they're just saying it. They're not, you know, yet.

And feeling it will bring you into that meditative space and make the the effect so much more powerful and create those physiological changes. So if I'm saying like I'm doing a gratitude meditation for my food, or if you want to call it a prayer before dinner, you and you're saying, you know, thank you for this food. Thank you to the sun or something like that, or thank you to the earth. You know, you actually want to feel that gratitude and like, go into it and totally feel it. And so it's just like salmon says, you know, how are you?

And that you can tell they have no interest in how our robotic response. And then you just feel that. But when someone's genuine like a Francis, how are you? It brings you into that moment. And that's what you need to do. You need to feel it. You need to really feel. And once again, confirming that physiological change, even the way you just said, how are you? I felt it right. And that feeling means something happened. Biochemistry, biophysical, like something changed. And that's how, you know, sort of energy, thought, emotion and does cause change that people don't think about because it's sort of, you know, it's not talk to us.

Right. So how does, I know you've worked with thousands of people. You've also trained a number of coaches kind of globally to work with people. How does somebody work with you or do you still work with people or how does that work? Oh, yeah, I work with people all the time, you know, weekly. So we have online courses and we have ebooks. People want to get into that, that I published. We have beginner for all total beginners or the advanced person. And so a lot of people get started that way. And, I, I actually do in-person trainings.

I'll be doing one potentially in Turkey, soon. It's all can be found on my website also, and in Europe and in Asia. I'll be teaching, this year in person trainings and, otherwise we have our online trainings as well. Okay. And where's the website white Tiger qigong.com. So qigong we spell it Q I g o ng. That's qigong.com. So white tiger qigong.com. That's the name of our academy okay. And if people go there, they can find resources like books. They can get training, they can book time with you if they if they want to do that.

Yeah. It's a little bit difficult to book time with me directly. You can book time with our instructors. Okay. And, but if you do some of our online trainings, you can get you will have direct time with me. Okay. In our master courses and teacher trainings online. Now, I'd like to offer all of your, listeners and viewers, a free e-book, that normally that we charge for. And I'll, I'll give you later, link that anyone here can download as my gift. Sure. We'll share that with everybody. That's beautiful.

Thank you so much. And I'm sure there'll be empowering for people is open their eyes towards what's possible. And that's that's amazing. This, though, honestly, this conversation was mind blowing for me. It's, answered so many questions and, and and validated so many things that we think about here about, you know, about. But now we've connected the kind of deeper like science to it and what you're what you keep referring to as an art. Yeah. I see is it's the validation of the site that the hub, the root that was missing from all of what we speak of.

So it really, sort of opened my eyes and and thank you. This is incredible. Thank you, thank you. It was a great interview. I'm really had fun talking to you. Yeah. Thanks. So I, I invite everybody go to the website. We'll again we're going to we'll list that there so you can access it. Get the e-book learn I'm going to do it myself because you know I want to be able to stand in the position that I see in that picture right there. I don't think I can balance like that right now, but I'm going to learn how everybody take advantage of that.

Thank you again. This was awesome.