"This qigong set is known for its powerful preventative and healing effects by working with the chi of your acupuncture meridians and your etheric body.”
We get a lot of comments that come into our office. Many send in their thanks for the work and for our instructors teaching tai chi and qigong. I wanted to share an email we received recently and to again thank my instructors for their commitment to teaching.
I would encourage those thinking about becoming instructors in qigong, tai chi or longevity breathing to go for it. Attending an instructor course can be one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and to be of service to others. And for those who have certifications but are not yet teaching, just start a small class because even working with a few people can make a huge difference on those peoples lives (plus your own training will improve dramatically when you have to teach others).
Teaching tai chi and other Taoist energy arts provides people with the tools and practices to face the journey of life:
I would like to thank Bruce Frantzis and his senior instructors for dedicating their lives and talents to communities all over the world. I work as a full time volunteer with the Sisters of Charity in the city of Juarez, Mexico, the twin city of El Paso, Texas. Juarez is widely reported to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world due to an escalating drug war, with approximately 3000 people murdered in 2009. Read More
Most people in the west just know about hatha yoga—very few are aware that China actually had an entire Yoga system. As Indian hatha yoga was classically a bridge to meditation (see previous article link here), Taoist yoga or what we call Longevity Breathing Yoga was a preliminary practice for other Taoist energy arts, including qigong and the three internal martial arts of tai chi, bagua and hsing-i as well as Taoist meditation.
What Taoist energy practice you started to learn or ended with was often determined by the teachers that were around you and your own interest in a subject. What makes Longevity Breathing Yoga unique (or any of the Taoist energy arts for that matter) is the incorporation of the 16 neigong (internal energy techniques) into the movements and postures.
Most teachers and masters of tai chi rarely teach the 16 neigong in the West, either because the students are not ready or because they were never taught the complete system themselves. I’ll write more posts about the neigong later because it is at the core of all energy arts and the concept of cross-training. In this posts lets connect many of the Taoist movement forms.
The main function of many Taoist movement forms such as tai chi and qigong (chi gung, chi kung) is really to get your mind fully conscious in your body. You can see how this would be really beneficial as you move deeply into meditation. Read More
The term cross-training is used frequently in the West. Sometimes it refers to cross-training an employee but more often than not it is in relation to increasing athletic performance. Wikipedia definition is:
Cross-training in sports and fitness refers to the combining of exercises to work various parts of the body. Often one particular activity works certain muscle groups, but not others, cross-training aims to eliminate this.
In the west fitness cross-training is associated with the popular physical or impact type exercises. So if you are a runner you might benefit from lifting weights. Within mixed martial arts, cross-training involves learning different martial arts systems so that you are prepared for anything in combat. I did this type of training extensively when I was younger.
What is interesting is the Taoists have been cross-training for thousands of years, finding connections between movement arts, healing and ultimately meditation. In these series of posts I want to talk about Taoist Cross-Training because it can accelerate your path in energy arts and meditation… Read More
A lot of people don’t know this about me, but when I was young I was an avid reader. I could read a 500-page book in a day and a half or two and actually digest it. Then, I went through a long period where I didn’t read at all, especially not in English.
I didn’t particularly like fiction when I was young. In fact, I almost exclusively read non-fiction with two exceptions. I actually really liked Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, which is about the French Revolution. In junior high school, when I was 12, I picked up the book The Hobbit on a Friday afternoon and I had read the entire Lord of the Rings series before the weekend was out.
Even still, I really didn’t care for fiction. I still find most fiction novels boring as hell.
One of things that I did when I came back from China, at some point in the 90’s, was pick up the book Dune by Frank Herbert because a friend of mine said that it was really cool. I found that there are many ideas in Dune that mirror those in Taoism… Read More
Tai Chi Master Bruce Frantzis in Seated Meditation
I am responding to a common question that was asked to me about why you would put one hand in front of or on top of the other in qigong or meditation positions where this is required. Read More
Is the Tai Chi tipping point on the horizon or not?
Everybody who has been involved in tai chi in the West for the past 10-15 years has known that tai chi is probably going to reach a tipping point were it really reaches the masses; where tai chi really becomes known to the public rather than being some strange exercise that hippies practice.
The simple fact still remains most of the public know little of the tremendous benefits of tai chi, how tai chi works or how to learn tai chi. Lets connect Malcolm Gladwell, Swami Vichinanda,Jane Fonda and Bruce Lee with the Tai Chi Tipping Point… Read More
Recharge for the Solstice and New Year (photo by: Wolfgang Staudt)
Welcome to my new blog!
I will be posting and writing frequently here on a wide range of topics from tai chi to qigong, taoism and buddhism, meditation, current event and other things that I feel called to share and that I think will be useful for you.
Right now I am in Hawaii on Maui. Life is great and I am happy to be resting from a long year of teaching.
Monday was the winter solstice and the day before had parties on Maui to celebrate the solstice as was the custom in many traditional cultures throughout the world including the TAOISTS of Ancient China, Native Americans and the Hawaiians. Read More
One of the most important qigong sets that I teach is called Dragon and Tiger Qigong (chi gung or chi king).
The subject of Dragon and Tiger Qigong is appropriate for many reasons, but primarily because I see it having tremendous value in terms of the looming healthcare tsunami. It is one of the best qigong sets to learn to work with your etheric body and while in China I was taught it by an extraordinary woman… Read More
Having taught tai chi and qigong to more than 15,000 students, I have come to a deep understanding of seven distinct stages that my students have gone through in learning and adopting tai chi into their daily lives. Read More
There are traditionally five levels of credentials and competence for tai chi masters. Contrary to popular belief tai chi does not have black belts or other obvious visible signs of competence. Nevertheless, in China, there is a long-established hierarchy of learning and teaching in tai chi that progresses in five levels. Read More
Yoga in the Mountains (Photo by: 
