How Qigong Saved My Life
Back in 1996 I was diagnosed with CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome).
This wasn’t the first time I had been diagnosed with a chronic illness.
Several years before in 1988 I had been diagnosed with clinical depression.
Finding myself unexpectedly ill set me on my journey to find solutions to illness which didn’t involve having to take medication, which didn’t agree with me in terms of the side-effects I noticed, or my growing philosophy of ‘well if I’m ill, there must be a reason, and I’d like to find out what that is, and solve it from there, rather than cover it up with medication, or prop myself up with supplements’.
Making Progress... and not
After working with counsellors after the depression diagnosis, I thought I was on my way to getting better, and whilst in some ways I was, in other ways I wasn’t, but I didn’t know it, because as I was to find out, illness - and the journey back to health - really is a journey of self-discovery, where we peel back the layers to ourselves one layer at a time.
Getting tired
In 1995 I started to notice I was getting more and more tired for no seeming reason, and no matter how many early nights or restful weekends I had, the tiredness kept growing, until one day I walked into work and quit my job on the spot. I just couldn’t go on.
Little did I know how long it would take me to get well, and what I would have to go through to find the answers to truly heal. It’s one of the reasons I am so passionate about my work, because now I help people short-cut their journey back to health a hundred-fold. What took me 10 years I can show people how to do in a few weeks or months. But I believe I took the ‘long’ route so I could learn how to help people take the short-cut.
A long road
After the diagnosis in 1996 I searched and searched for answers. I read books, went to workshops and saw therapists, but even after 4 years and 140 different therapies, nothing was really working, and I was still exhausted most of the time. I was still unable to work, and was quickly depleting my savings just surviving.
One day, lying in bed with another ‘CFS crash’, unable to barely move, I asked myself ‘what would I do if I only had 6 months to live’.
The answer came quickly. I would do that world trip I had been dreaming of.
But how could I do that if I could barely walk some days? I didn’t know, but I knew that if I didn’t do it now, I may get worse and never be able to do it at all. So I made a decision that day to sell my house and travel round the world on my dream trip.
I put my house on the market and it sold in 2 weeks. I took it as a sign that I was on the right track (although later really regretted the decision from a financial perspective).
Somehow I got myself sorted and set off round the world, still searching for answers as I visited places I’d dreamed of, like the pyramids in Egypt, and route 66 in the USA. Sometimes I would have to stop in one place for weeks at a time, crashed out with exhaustion. But I kept going, went to some amazing places, and experienced some fascinating healing therapies such as a Mexican pyramid healing and an Ayurvedic Panchakarma retreat. By this time, my therapy tally was nearly 2oo, but I still had symptoms, and nothing was bringing me to that point of feeling I had turned a corner.
Turning Point
And then one day, right near the end of my trip, just before returning to New Zealand, I met my first Qigong teacher, and I had a life-changing moment. In one hour I went from barely able to walk to having renewed energy.
What happened?
He showed me how everything is energy (Qi) and how I was BLOCKING my Qi (energy) which was why I was so tired. I was using my energy to hold in my energy, which was why I felt like I had no energy.
The key thing here is to understand I ‘felt’ like I had no energy. The truth was, I had HEAPS of energy, but I was BLOCKING it. But I didn’t know I was doing that.
And to be even clearer, the energy I was blocking was my EMOTIONAL energy. I was using all my energy to block my emotions, but I didn’t know I was doing it.
What emotions was I blocking?
All the pain and hurt I had unknowningly suppressed from childhood: anger, hurt, disappointment, rage, upset, fear, sadness, grief, loneliness… all the emotional pain from a multitude of ongoing experiences which I had unknowingly stuffed down inside.
In that one session my life transformed. I knew I had found the missing piece of the puzzle. This was it. Finally I had the answer.
Do you know what a relief it is to find an answer you have been searching for, for over 15 years?!
The real work begins
I immediately began training in various Qigong techniques for clearing trapped emotions which are stored inside the body. One of these techniques was the Inner Smile meditation, which clears negative emotions from inside the organs where they are stored. It’s so obvious once you understand why you say things like ‘I was livid with anger’ – of course anger affects the liver, which affects digestion and fat storage, amongst other things.
Slowly over the next 6 years I used these techniques every day on myself, and I started to truly heal myself from the inside out. I learned how ‘depression’ is the ‘de-pressing’ of emotions, and how anxiety is an overload of emotions. I learned how to feel and process emotional energy, and how to clear it from my body-mind completely. I learned how to not be afraid of my emotions, how to welcome them, how to understand their deeper meaning. I learned how if I had symptoms it was a build-up of hidden emotions, and how to identify what emotions were hiding underneath the symptoms. Later, having become so proficient in learning how to identify, manage and clear emotional energy, and how to clear chronic illness by doing so, I founded the Emotional Alchemy Academy, dedicated to teaching people to how to become the master of their emotions.
I trained in several Qigong techniques for clearing emotional energy and unblocking Qi, including The Inner Smile, 6 Healing Sounds, Chi Nei Tsang and Fusion of the Five Elements. I did over 10,000 hours of training and personal application, and became a fully certified Universal Healing Tao Instructor.
Something else
And then I came to a point where I knew I needed something more. I needed a new teacher, and I was clear I wanted to meet an authentic Chinese master of wisdom. I had no idea where or how I was going to meet this master, but I was adamant I would. I had visions of myself climbing mountain peaks in China to meet this teacher.
And then he turned up on my back door. Not literally, but almost. He turned up in New Zealand. And I met Master Yuan Tze.
As soon as I met Yuan Tze (he prefers not to be called ‘master’) I knew I had met a person of extraordinary wisdom and attainment. When you meet someone like this you just ‘know’. The energy in the room was palpable.
Laws of Health
He told me that whilst I had done great work on myself, getting myself well, reducing stress etc, that I still had much to learn. He told me that we all have to learn the ‘laws of life’ and ‘laws of health’, and that once we’ve learned them, we have to learn NOT TO BREAK THEM, because it is the breaking of these laws which brings dis-ease and unhappiness.
I knew that I wanted to start training with him, and immediately started to do so. This was in 2009 and at the time he was teaching a method of Qigong called Zhineng Qigong developed by Master Pang Ming. It was very different from my previous Qigong, and I immediately could ‘feel’ Qi much better than before. I embarked on his 8 level teacher training, completing it by 2012.
Ren Xue Yuan Gong
And then in 2012 Yuan Tze launched his own school of Qigong called ‘Ren Xue Yuan Gong’. Ren Xue means ‘the science of how to be a human being’ and Yuan Gong is the Qigong system within this school of wisdom. I embarked on his 6 year teacher training program, which completed in 2018, becoming one of the first teachers to be certified in this system.
As you will read elsewhere on this website, Ren Xue and Yuan Gong, along with Yuan Ming Medicine, are tools you learn to change your life in extraordinary ways. You are not only addressing your health – you are evolving your consciousness, because it is only by uplifting our mind as well as our body that we can truly grow and improve.
Learning with me
Over the years I have taught many workshops on all 3 schools of Qigong I have trained in, including Chi Nei Tsang, the Universal Healing Tao, Zhineng Qigong and now Ren Xue Yuan Gong. I have taught in-person workshops and classes around New Zealand and overseas, as well as online group training programs.
You can browse through this site to find something which suits you, and I am available to teach by arrangement in businesses and private tailor-made workshops.
Qigong is one of the medicine of the future, here now for those who are ready to step up and take greater responsibility for their health and wellbeing. The techniques are super simple, it just takes a few moments in your day to use them to maintain your health, prevent illness, or if applicable, reverse illness. The power is in your hands if you are ready.
