About Our Practice
Pam invites you to join her via an online Qigong Practice, sent to you twice a week. These warm-up movements, breathing exercises, and Qigong Practice will help you to focus on your day ahead, or help your body unwind from a stressful day; thus preparing you for sleep.
About Us
A Standing Qigong Practice
Qigong is an Ancient Healing Art Form over 5000 years old and has over 10,000 different forms. These forms range from long studied and specialized medicine to the simpler form of a Standing Meditation that It’s About The Qi offers.
Our Standing Qigong is a moving meditation. This meditation is accomplished with the body’s alignment, the breath, and the consciousness. And by consciousness, we only mean that you are simply awake, standing, and aware of body & breath. Therefore and as a result, your awareness of consciousness improves.
In the West, it is acknowledged that by practicing this Standing Meditation, we learn to help control our autonomic nervous system. We can bring this system from “fight or flight” to “rest and digest.” While we are awake, standing and mentally focused, we can bring ourselves into the parasympathetic state.
A Message from Your Practice Leader
While I understood that all the odd little movements and breathing relaxation exercises made my professional voice much stronger, I always wondered about the foundational aspects of the physical moves. Mind you, this was last century. China, in some parts of the world, wasn’t politically recognized yet, and in the 70s, anything most of us college dweebs knew about martial arts from China was picked up from the TV show “Kung Fu.” So, if the word “Qigong” was ever uttered before, I certainly never heard it.
Flash forward into this century and the first decade. For two years I took Tai Chi classes at the local YMCA, which in and of itself is not unusual. What was unusual is that our instructor, Bess, who was an absolute gem, was born and raised in China.
One small problem: Bess’s English was very minimal and no one in our group spoke the least bit of Mandarin. But there were always good moments for laughter as we persistently made our way through learning Tai Chi. So, by necessity, our learning was indeed monkey see, monkey do. As a matter of fact, Bess’ greeting to all new students coming in was with a happy “Come in, come in. Is monkey see, monkey do!”
And without fail for 20 minutes we would begin our class with a, as she would say, “We warm up now,” before we began our Tai Chi practice.
Life changes and mine took a new direction with heavier responsibilities and I moved too far away to continue with Bess and the YMCA.
A few years later, once things began to lighten up, I started looking for a Tai Chi group to shake of some serious rust. But now I kept coming across the word “Qigong.” So, with the advent of YouTube, I looked it up. I can’t say I was surprised. Not only were these moves reminiscent of my old acting days, but more importantly, the 20 minute “We warm up now” moves my non-English speaking Tai Chi instructor put us through were all Qigong. It was one of my “Ah-ha” moments in life.
I decided to obtain my certification as a Qigong Practice Leader from the Institute for Integral Qigong and Tai Chi (IIQTC) founded by Dr. Roger Janke. As I live in a large urban area (can you say traffic?) my physical practice is, by design, small and limited.
In my mind’s eye, this did very little to help truly spread the good health that I believe practicing Qigong has to offer. That’s when I started putting things that I had learned along the way from some of the years I spent in various areas of television production and some of the years I spent in private sector business.
By sending out a standing Qigong practice on a bi-weekly basis to be streamed at your convenience, I hope to reach and share this health benefit with those of you who may need to fit in a moment of calm in their day but find it, for whatever reason, an inconvenience to drive to a set location.
It’s About the Qi is ultimately designed to be a beginner’s Qigong, with my personal hope that these beginning steps might lead you into a deeper look into this healing art.
We Specialize In
Strength Building
Stress Relieving
Reengergizing
Why Practice a Standing Qigong?
Qigong for a Quality Day
Our standing Qigong practice is an excellent way to start your day in a calm and focused manner. Although it is best to complete all sections, if your day starts out already crazed, consider dividing the bi-weekly practice in these 3 ways:
Use the warmup around your morning shower time
Find 5 minutes in your day to stop and utilize the breathing techniques
Use the Standing Practice before retiring
Qigong at Bedtime
Sleep has become recognized as one of the most important aspects of our overall good health. Perhaps we don’t prepare ourselves as well for a good night’s sleep as we do for our daytime lives. Using this practice a half-hour prior to retiring is a gentle way to let our bodies repair from the day’s stress.
Use the warmup to ease the day’s kinks
Use the breathing to help focus on you, not the worries of the day
Allow an evening practice to help soften a tired body and a weary mind
Healing Effects of Qigong
A consistent practice of a Standing Qigong has been proven to be a complementary method of healing for many ailments, not limited to:
Balance Flexibility
Bone Loss Muscle Tone
Blood Cortisol RA/joint stiffness
Fibromyalgia Stroke Recovery
Relief from Stress
Mindfulness and the Tao
“Empty yourself of everything. Let the mind become still. The ten thousand things rise and fall… while the Self watches their return. They grow and flourish, and then return to their source. Returning to their source is stillness, which is the way of nature.”
Tao Te Ching, verse 16
Ready to Make a Change?
The benefits from a regular Qigong practice come about by supporting the body’s natural tendency to return to balance, and gently, yet profoundly, encouraging mental & physical strength training. Come join us and start your Qigong journey today!