Qigong is a very visual art-form, especially when it comes to the exercises. The best way to learn these is to watch someone else perform them and then guide you through them.
There are many home-study courses that offer visual, audio and written teachings, and our personal favourites are those provided by the Spring Forest Qigong Centre. This is based in North America, but they have students all over the world, including a large number here in Australia.
Their courses are broken down into several levels, which means that absolute beginners can start from the bottom and work their way up, while those with a little more experience can jump in wherever they feel comfortable.
Qigong for Health
This course is also known as the SFQ Fundamentals course and is where you should begin if you are new to Qigong. This is where many Qigong students began their practice, taking their first steps on a long road to becoming an expert, a master and even a tutor. The Small Universe meditation, which is also available as a separate guide, comes bundled with this course, and you’ll also find a huge number of Qigong exercises, including:
- Moving of Yin and Yang
- Breathing of the Universe
- Joining of Yin and Yang
Qigong for Healing
If you have signed up for online learning with the Spring Forest Qigong Centre and you have worked your way through the SFQ Fundamentals course, then this will probably be your next step. In the first course you learned a lot about healing yourself, and in this course you will learn about how to heal others, covering everything from:
- General pain
- Migraines and headaches
- Weight control and weight loss
- Digestion problems
- Kidney or liver problems
- Gall stones and kidney stones
- Depression and stress
- Autoimmune problems
- Cancers
And much more. In fact, if it causes you pain or distress, then you can use Qigong and the teachings on this course to eliminate it from your body and from the bodies of others.
The visual aspect of this course, as with the previous course, comes in the form of a DVD, and you will also get a CD guiding you through something known as Energy Breathing Guided Meditation.
24-Step Awakening the Master Within
There is a course titled “Qigong for Advanced Healing” that you should look to take after the two courses mentioned above, but there are no DVDs and no videos on this course. However, once you work your way through this and then though some other guided mediations, techniques and exercises, you can move onto the 24-Step Awakening the Master Within course.
This is a huge level 5 course, teaching you how to open your third eye, to unlock your potential as a Qigong master and to finalise your training. This extensive course contains a wealth of written material, video files and audio files, covering all of the following and much more:
- Find your purpose in life.
- Improve your confidence.
- Unlock the power of your senses.
- Discover your sixth sense.
- Open your third eye.
- Be more compassionate.
Qi-ssage Healing
This is a level one course that you can take along with or following the SFQ Fundamentals course mentioned above. This will make you a better healer, introducing you to more advanced techniques that you can use on yourself and on others.
Qi-ssage Healing was created by Master Chunyi Lin as a way of combining massages common in Traditional Chinese Medicine with Qigong teachings that focus on the flow of energy. It basically provides you with simple techniques that apply pressure to energy points in the body, helping to remove blockages, improving your well-being and eliminating pain as a result.
This course comes with a CD and a manual, but the most comprehensive teachings are included on the DVD, where you will find video guides from Master Lin himself.
Youtube Videos
The Spring Forest Qigong Centre also has a Youtube channel, where you can learn a little more about them, about Master Lin and about Qigong. They tend to save the best stuff and the most comprehensive teachings for their courses, but this is a good place to start if you want to learn some simple Qigong exercises and meditations. There are also some very useful techniques here, many of which you can find in the Head-to-Toe Body’s Repair manual, which is a one-off course that is similar to the Qi-ssage Healing course outlined above, albeit not quite as comprehensive.