The Power and Bliss of Qi

Welcome to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Lee Holden. Lee is an internationally recognized qi gong master and Chinese medicine doctor. He’s also the co-founder of the Santa Cruz Integrative Medicine and Qi Center. At the young age of 40, Lee has already published dozens of books from t’ai chi to stress management. With Sounds True Lee has created the audio learning series on Taoist Sexual Secrets as well as a series on Your Body of Light along with a new home study course, Qi Gong for Health and Healing: A Complete Training Course to Unleash the Power of your Life Force Energy. An online version of this program will begin at Sounds True on October 25th. Details about this course and the live events with Lee Holden are available at Soundstrue.com.

In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Lee and I spoke about the self healing qualities of qi gong and also some of the secret qi gong practices that relate to sexuality and the circulation of energy. We also talked about what Lee calls the Inner Smile. Lee also offers a breathing exercise called The Cleansing Breath, intended to help clear tension and stress out of the body.

Here is a very practical and insightful conversation with Lee Holden.

TS: Lee, I’d love to know right here at the beginning of our conversation how someone as young as you has become such an established teacher of qi gong and Taoist healing? Tell me a little bit about your own introduction to qi gong and Taoism.

LH: I actually got started in qi gong quite young. I was using these ancient arts for my school work and especially in sports. I was playing soccer at UC Berkley and got started through my own healing. I had a pretty severe lower back injury and I used this practice as a way to heal myself. Once you heal yourself with something—when they say that you’re not going to be able to play or not going to be able to move for quite some time—it makes a big impression on you. I was about 18 at the time and after that I just got so excited about the practice, I just jumped full on into it.

TS: So give us a little bit of a sense. Here you are, you’re 18 years old and you have an injury. What practice did you discover? What did you do?

LH: I remember that I had done some martial arts training when I was younger—10, 11, 12—and through high school and I remembered one of my teachers breaking bricks and doing all kinds of crazy martial arts stuff and I asked him about it and he said that it was the power of qi. He emphasized that qi and the power of qi wasn’t for external demonstration. I was sort of in awe about what he could do, but he really emphasized about how it was mainly for self healing. Then when I went to school and had this pretty severe lower back injury playing soccer, I remembered this. I remembered him telling me that so I came back to my hometown and got together with him and he showed me a bunch of exercises for healing and it really impressed upon me how we can heal ourselves of our injuries, challenges and all kinds of stuff…you know, kind of tap into our inner healer and our inner resources. From that moment on I just loved this art.

TS: But what specifically did you do?

LH: What did I do specifically? Okay, there were breathing exercises, visualization—visualization not just in the sense of just a mentality of it, but actually moving energy in your body. So it was combined visualization, movement or stretches, and breathing exercises. That’s sort of the secret of qi gong. How do we combine and create the right type of bodily position, action, breathing, and mental state to activate our inner healer.

TS: Let’s just pretend somebody listening to this is suffering from some kind of back pain. It’s a pretty common problem. Give me a sense of how you would work with them.

LH: I do that at my clinic all of the time these days because back pain is so prevalent. What I usually do…there’s usually an emotional or a stress pattern that creates the initial imbalance. In qi gong we think that the energy imbalance happens then the physical manifestation occurs from that. So some kind of emotional stress, mental stress, or stressful life situation will then create some constriction or, in qi gong terms, they call it stagnation like water that doesn’t move. It will accumulate somewhere in the body. It doesn’t have to be back pain. It can be anywhere in the body. Some people carry it in their digestive organs or neck and shoulders. It can manifest as headaches…all that kind of stuff. So then we focus in on that and create a prescriptive set of exercises. So instead of giving somebody a pill to take as a prescription, I’ll give somebody meditations and movements as a prescription to alleviate their problem.

TS: Now, very interesting. You said that in the qi gong view of disease and healing that disease begins at the energetic level and then manifests physically later. Can you say more about that?

LH: Sure, one of my qi gong teachers, somebody asked him once if he ever got sick or had problems. He was giving a lecture on how qi gong helps with the immune system. His reply, which I thought was very interesting, was that he gets sick all of the time but it’s usually just for a few minutes. What he does is that he can sense the imbalance before it actually takes root in our physical bodies. I find that to be really true. You notice that energetically, when you’re sensitive to your system, you’ll notice when you’re imbalanced before it actually has to go through a whole stage of rooting into the physical body and creating a problem. So in a sense you’re just catching it a lot sooner than allowing it to go through its whole course. You’re listening skills and sensitivity to energetics or energy imbalances becomes greatly heightened. It’s not really that you don’t have any problems anymore, you don’t get sick, it’s just that you’re much more resourceful and problems that you do have don’t last as long or they’re much less frequent.

TS: Let’s say that I want to catch illness at this energetic level before it manifests physically. What would I be looking for? What in my body…what kind of sensation or signal?

LH: That’s a great question. You know qi gong, the words qi gong, mean an expertise at working with our own internal energy. And part of that working is a development of sensitivity. You know, pain for example, is a signal from our bodies to our minds to say that there’s something off or there’s some imbalance. And in qi gong, the theory is that if we listen, if we learn to become sensitive and listen to the messages that rise up or bubble up from the body, then the body doesn’t have to talk so loudly in terms of the pain signals it sends to us. We’re able to create a true energetic connection between the mind, the body, the emotions, and spirit. And this integration is really what helps us to stay in balance and balance is the whole key to being healthy.

TS: Let’s talk a bit more about the breath and healthy breathing from a qi gong perspective.

LH: One of the translations of qi too, besides energy or life force, is life breath. The way that we breathe is always a reflection of how we’re feeling. Just by changing the way that we breathe, we change the quality of energy that is circulating in our body. The quality of energy usually refers to some sort of emotional feeling. For example, when someone is sad, they inhale a lot, it’s like they can’t exhale or let go. And when someone’s angry, there’s a whole different breathing pattern it’s almost all exhale without an inhale. When someone’s forcefully exhaling when they’re angry, it means that they can’t energetically take in another perspective, they’re angry about their own situation.

Now when we feel really good, there’s another breathing pattern that’s usually deep, full, it connects to the belly and the lower abdomen, the diaphragm moves, and the chest stays relaxed. Now when we train that, we’re going to be changing the quality of energy that’s circulating in our bodies. So, ideally, we want to breathe in and out through the nose, deep and full into the belly, and with a relaxation that moves through the rib cage and into the chest. And then, from there, we work with the breath in conjunction or synchronized with movement. So the breath is a certain way and we do movement in a certain way and that creates that alignment where energy circulates in a really healthy way.

TS: Now, why the emphasis of breathing through the nose and not the mouth or the mouth and nose?

LH: There are times when you want to breathe out through the mouth, in terms of energetic principles, it’s good to think about what you want to create energetically for a particular breathing exercise. For example, if you’ve had a stressful day, then it’s good to exhale out through the mouth, because it’s a cleansing kind of breath, it’s clearing. So in general, energetic principles of breathing as inhale/exhale through the nose would be a way to tonify or strengthen the body’s energy. But when you exhale through the mouth, it’s a way to clear out old energy. So, it’s a cleansing breath. There’s different techniques that will help create that internal resourcefulness that you’re looking for.

TS: And I wonder, Lee, just as a gift to our listeners right now, could you take us through a brief healthy breathing qi-style exercise?

LH: Absolutely!

TS: Let’s start breathing qi health together right here.

LH: Well, you know, we’ve been breathing our whole lives right? We might as well do it with some skillfulness. One breathing exercise I really like, it’s called the cleansing breath, and it’s a really good exercise to clear stress and tension out of the body. It seems that once we’ve cleared out tension and stress, there’s a natural breathing that follows that’s much deeper and fuller. So, let’s try this. If you can, bring both hands on your abdomen—obviously, if you’re driving, you can go ahead and visualize this without putting your hands there. Get in touch with that belly center. When you inhale, you want that belly center to expand with the inhale, so as you inhale, think of the belly as a balloon, it fills up. Then as you exhale, feel the abdomen move backwards toward the spine. So, inhale and fill up in the lower abdomen. As you exhale, the abdomen moves toward the spine. So, this is deep belly breathing. This is the way children breathe, they breathe down into their abdomens. It means your diaphragm’s moving downward and we’re getting a nice internal organ massage, we’re stimulating all the internal organs as we breathe. Now, at the bottom of your exhale, you’re going to inhale through the nose and exhale through the nose, but now at the bottom of the exhale, go ahead and blow the rest of the breath out through the mouth. So, it’s inhale through the nose, exhale through the nose, then at the end of the exhale blow the rest of the breath out through the mouth. It’s like we’re clearing out the stale, old air that gets stuck in the lungs.

Most of the time, we only exhale about 40%, so this is a really good way to clear energy out and create space and room to really take in a full deep breath after that. So, again to review, it’s inhale down to the belly, exhale through the nose first, then at the bottom of the exhale blow the rest of the breath out and cleanse the stale qi or air out of the body. And then, inhale again through the nose, exhale through the nose, and at the bottom of the exhale blow the rest of the breath out through the mouth. And then you continue for about two to three minutes and it will transform stress into vitality.

TS: Wonderful. So, you called that The Cleansing Breath, meaning that it’s a breath that we would do anytime we wanted to clear stress.

LH: Clear stress, and it’s particularly good to do at the end of the day, even driving home at the end of the day, so you energetically let your work day go, and create a bridge or a transition from work to going home. But, you can do it anytime, even after you’ve had a stressful event, an argument, a challenging situation, or whenever you feel like your mind is a bit turbulent, you can use that breath and it will drop your energy back into your center.

TS: Very good. Now, Lee, I want to cycle back for a second. We were talking in the beginning of the conversation about the view in qi gong about disease and healing and about how a disease can begin in our energy system before it manifests physically. And what has been occurring to me is what about something like, you know, an injury on the sports field, like the one that you referred to, or even just a car accident, there are so many other ways that physical damage descends upon us where it seems like we wouldn’t necessarily know it was in our energy field first. What’s the qi gong view of that?

LH: All kind of different ways where we can have some physical kind of bodily challenge, you know. And wherever it starts, there’s a way in which qi gong can help unwind the tension or tightness. Oftentimes, it comes from, let’s say, emotional stress like we were talking about. But sometimes, it comes from just a sudden impact or sports injury like I was describing. And then we’re really working with the physicality, because then the bridge is from physical to emotional. Because most people when they get hurt, there’s an emotional reaction to it. There will be the emotional reaction of disappointment, frustration with their body—“Why am I not healing fast? Why did this happen to me?”—and then that emotional stress from the physical injury can actually keep it rooted longer. So wherever the original, you know, say force of impact or imbalance occurred, we want to be able to start working with our emotional reaction to it, our stress from it, and be able to rekindle or ignite the inner healer that we have within.

You know, Chinese Medicine is really interesting, it really has its root in preventative medicine and prevention. And the way that it worked in certain communities in Asia, you would pay your healthcare practitioner, like an acupuncturist, herbalist, medical qi gong practitioner, a monthly fee as long as you were healthy. Your fee goes down as soon as you have problems or you get sick, so the goal of the practitioner was to continually figure out ways to keep your energy strong, to continue to put you on the path of health and vitality. And as soon as problems occurred, payments go down. So, it’s the exact opposite of our healthcare system. We don’t pay our doctors anything until we have problems. In terms of Chinese Medicine we say that whatever you focus on, if you’re focusing on sickness, it has a tendency to expand and grow. If you’re focusing on health, then you’re infusing that intention with more energy. So, prevention really kept people strong and healthy and vital. Even when you do have problems, what happens is that your body is already in a state where it’s strong and energetically intact.

TS: Now, you know, I’ve heard that before, that Chinese doctors are paid according to how well they can keep you well. Is that really true, Lee, or is that a legend?

LH: You know, that is really true, and it’s not everywhere, especially now, because even in China now, they’ve really gone to more of a Western medicine model. Even the way Chinese Medicine works there, it’s extremely powerful, but there’s a big integration of the Western world. In theory though, it works extremely well. It’s written through the Chinese Medicine classics, like, there’s a saying, “Don’t dig a well when you’re dying of thirst.” That was an old Traditional Chinese Medicine saying meaning, don’t wait until you’re sick to work on getting healthy, work on health before you’re sick and you continually stay healthy. So, there’s a lot of wisdom there.

TS: Okay, now I know the tradition, the lineage of qi gong that you’ve been primarily trained in, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s through Mantak Chia, is that correct?

LH: That is correct and I started going to Thailand and Southeast Asia, I was a ghostwriter for him, meaning that I helped him write a whole bunch of books. And, at that time, it was easy to go to Hong Kong or to Tokyo or Indonesia as part of my way to Thailand to help out in writing his books. So I got to study with lots of different teachers. And it gave me a really well-rounded background into the world of qi gong, which is really vast. In Asia, there’s 50 million people practicing qi gong and there’s three or four thousand different styles. And, so, what I wanted to do is distill a lot of this esoteric wisdom and bring it back, for my patients or my classes, in a really practical way for our Western world. And Mantak Chia does that beautifully. He takes a lot of esoteric Taoist qi wisdom and makes it applicable to Westerners.

TS: What would you say is unique about Mantak Chia’s form of presenting qi gong? What are some of the unique features?

LH: You know, I just think he’s an excellent presenter and speaker, he’s extremely funny, he’s really genuine, and he delivers the message from his heart. He just loves his work so much and he really wants to share. Some of the wisdom and some of the teachings have been held sacred for such a long time that, for him, he feels it’s time in our modern life that this ancient wisdom come out in a way that’s really beneficial and that all the secrecy and family tradition, it’s time to move past that and really use this wisdom for where we are in our evolution.

TS: So, can you give me an example of what would have been considered a secret or hidden teaching that he’s brought forward?

LH: I think, you know, for example, some of the sexual practices of Taoism were always considered secret. And he brought those out in such a way that was really open, honest, and he took a lot of criticism from other qi gong teachers. The sexual practice and maybe techniques like the Microcosmic Orbit, which are in our home study course, those are usually family secrets or even martial arts secrets. Because people who practiced those developed internal power and strength that gave them an advantage over other practitioners, whether it was a family practice of medicine or a martial arts tradition. So techniques like that were really held in close regard—even still in China, it’s not all out in the open like it is here in the West.

TS: The reason for the secrecy would be to protect your power?

LH: I think there’s some of that, but I also think that there’s a lot of pressure from the government. Because once you become resourceful at working with your energy and working with all of your energy—whether it’s emotional energy, sexual energy, mental energy, spiritual energy. How does it all work together? That’s sort of the question in qi gong. And we don’t want to deny any of those energies their place or power. Having people be able to find wisdom internally meant that they didn’t have to look outside themselves for the correct answers. For China at the time, they wanted people to look to the government for answers, for wisdom. Maybe similar to in the West, the Church would like you to look to them for your connection to a higher source. These practices are really self empowering, as opposed to the focus being external.

TS: Well, because I’m very interested in liberating secrets that will help people find their power, let’s go into both of these, the sexual practices and the Microcosmic Orbit, just a little bit.

LH: Sure and they go well together.

TS: Okay, so give us a brief introduction.

LH: Okay, well, the brief introduction I think, into a bit overview, is something called The Three Treasures of Chinese Medicine. The Three Treasures being the energies in the body, within ourselves, that are most sacred and most powerful. The Three Treasures are stored in the body in different locations, maybe like in the Indian system it would be the chakras, these vortices of energy. The Three Treasures are what they call jing, qi, and chin and they translate to essence, or sexual energy. Qi, the qi center in the body is in the heart center, so this would be the emotional center of the body, so emotion. And then the upper center and the head would be translated as consciousness, or spirit. So we have sexual energy, heart energy, and consciousness and how do we work with all three of those energies?

The sexual practice was designed as a way to harness internal power and strength, because sexual energy in and of itself is neither good nor bad, it just has a strong primordial charge. And that we infuse ourselves with that energy or we cultivate that energy internally as a way to feel connected. So sexual energy doesn’t just mean how we connect with each other in terms of our relationships, but sexual energy as a source of qi or life force, as a source of creative power and a source where we feel connected to our higher power, say. Sexual energy in terms of its energetic components is the force that’s unifying. So, usually we use sexual energy in relationships to create a unity of energy between ourselves and our partner. Most spiritual traditions have some kind of sexual practice whether they just say don’t do it, or it’s a sin, or whether, like in Taoism, they talk pretty openly about sexual energy and how it can transform your physical state or transform a state of feeling closed off, encapsulated in your skin, to more expanded and feeling connected to the universe. So, it has a big component in terms of health vitality, emotional balance, and our connection with each other, as well as our spiritual connection to the divine, whatever that might be for somebody.

Now the Microcosmic Orbit is a pathway of energy that circulates in your body, it’s a meridian pathway. And by moving energy through the Microcosmic Orbit, in a sense it balances or creates an open pathway of communication between those three treasures, between sexuality, emotional energy, and consciousness. And by finding that integration we become, theoretically, more in tune and more harmonized within ourselves.

TS: You said it’s a meridian pathway, can you describe the pathway of the Microcosmic Orbit?

LH: Sure. Meridian basically means a river of energy. And, so, to create that balance, we want to move energy both in yin and yang, meaning that we want to move it in the yin side and the yang side of the body, so that we’re balanced. The yang side of the body is the back of the body, so the meridian starts by moving upward through the spine to the head, then it comes down from the head, down the front of the body, through the mid-eye area, the throat, the heart center, and down to the belly and creates a circular loop. The way that we think of it is that, for example, just as in nature, water will rise up, in terms of evaporating up, and it will form and collect in the sky, and then from clouds it rains back down. It’s the same kind of cycle, so in our bodies, we’re going to create this steaming effect where energy rises up like mist through the spine, collects in the head and energizes the brain, and then washes back down through all of the internal organs. So, Microcosmic Orbit will recycle internal energy and that way it gives you back a lot of vitality that normally is lost if you don’t do some kind of practice like this.

TS: And, so you’re breathing in the Microcosmic Orbit begins in the lower belly and comes up and on the out breath goes down the front?

LH: You can think of the orbit, as if there’s lots of different on ramps into this super highway of energy. Sometimes we start with the mid-eye, in the forehead, and we breathe energy and visualize golden light as coming into the mid-eye, then you send it down on an exhale on the front of the body, and then you’d inhale and draw it up the spine and exhale draw it down and then just circulate. Usually it’s inhale coming upward, kind of like you’re sipping the qi through a straw and exhale you’d allow that energy to go back down.

TS: And what is the result of spending time circulating energy through the Microcosmic Orbit?

LH: A couple of different things. In terms of meditation, I think it really helps to create some stillness in the mind. It’s like an energetic mantra. Because you’re focusing on the energy and the life force in your body, it’s going to help your consciousness to stay rooted, rather than allowing your mind to just wander from thought to thought. So it really helps with that mindfulness and that stilling of the mind. Also, because we’re focusing on energy, again in Chinese Medicine, what you focus on has a tendency to grow and get stronger, so by focusing on energy, your life force is going to grow and get stronger. Energy strengthens in the body. And then by moving it back and forth, or up and down, it helps to create this harmony and balance, because this yin and yang energy of the body, when they become out of balance, that’s when we get problems. So, this creates that internal harmony as well.

TS: And then, just to connect the dots, so to speak, how does the Microcosmic Orbit, and knowing how to circulate energy through it, relate to sexual practices?

LH: Okay, so the sexual practice, for example, normally sexual energy wants to go down and out. That’s a normal pathway. But, what the Taoists said was that you could internally cultivate this energy, meaning that it doesn’t have to go down and out of the body, you can have more control over that energy and use it to bring that orgasmic, blissful, pleasurable energy internally. The whole body is really about being open to feeling good and to pleasure. So, by cultivating orgasmic energy, we’re allowing that energy to circulate and the way that it’s circulated is by moving it through the microcosmic orbit. So, from the sexual center, the energy would rise up the spine, charge and nourish the nervous system, move through the endocrine system by stimulating the glands in the brain, and then wash down through the internal organs. So, the energy was called the elixir, because it had this rejuvenating, blissful quality to it.

TS: And do men and women circulate energy in sexual contact in the same way?

LH: They can and also they don’t have to. But for the most part, the recommendation is to go up the spine and down the front. There are some readings where they say that women can move it up the front and down the back, as opposed to moving it up the back and down the front. They do it the reverse way, because women are more in touch with that yin, feminine energy and sometimes it’s easier to bring it up the front. There are some precautions though with bringing energy up the front, as it can overheat the heart center and create fiery emotional energy. So, that’s why they recommend doing it in the same way, bringing it up the back. In a way, it’s distilling the energy, because it’s going through your nervous system, so your body absorbs and assimilates it a bit better, charges the brain, then it has a cooling quality as it comes down the front, meaning that it cools and relaxes the mind, cools and relaxes the heart and the emotional center and goes back to the belly center.

TS: Women are so flexible, you know what I mean?

LH: That’s right, you know?

TS: Now, Lee, I know we were talking very briefly before this conversation began and you mentioned to me that you’ve just come back from a trip where you were with Mantak Chia and I’m curious, what practices were you doing? What were you working on?

LH: This was a really fun experience, because it was a congress, it was a Taoist congress, and this was a center in Chiang Mai. His teachers from all over the world came—from Europe, from Australia, from America—and we, all of his senior instructors, gave various courses on particular aspects of Taoism. So someone was giving a course on sexuality, someone else was giving a course on internal alchemy, someone else on movement and meditation. And, so it was a coming together of his thirty years of teaching in America and basically just a celebration. It was amazing to see all these incredible teachers from all over the world and sort of how they’ve distilled the information that they’ve learned from him and how they’ve made it their own and integrated it into their life wherever they were.

TS: And what did you teach on?

LH: I taught on movement and meditation, I taught on the Microcosmic Orbit, I was on a couple of panels where they had questions and answers on male sexual energy and the purpose of that in terms of spirituality.

TS: Hmm, I’d be curious to know a little bit about that, that final panel.

LH: The male sexual energy and spirituality?

TS: Yeah, yeah.

LH: That’s the juicy one, huh? This was a great panel, because it was Mantak Chia, and a few of his senior instructors and people were just asking questions. Because in Taoism, sexual energy for men has a big connection to ejaculation, let’s say. So, the theory is that men lose energy on ejaculation. And in Taoism, they separate ejaculation and orgasm, where in the West, we kind of think of those as one and the same. But, not every time we have sex do we want to procreate, we want to be able to use sex and sexual energy for the energetic connection or the energetic positive feelings of it. So, Taoism separates that and allows it to circulate inside. There are lots of techniques for how to do that practice, which we did a whole course with Sounds True on Taoist Sexual Secrets, but for the men’s’ practice, it was a way to separate those two energies and distill orgasmic energy within the body as a way of transforming that energy for higher vibration and for awakening consciousness.

TS: So, what you’re saying is it’s possible for a man to have an orgasm without ejaculating.

LH: Correct, exactly, and to have more than one of those kind of orgasms. It’s kind of been coined as multiorgasmic man, but it’s not really like that. It’s really about this distilling of the energy and having that orgasmic energy circulating inside, so that there’s a continual building of that energy and sort of internal pleasure, both for pleasure and also for awakening consciousness.

TS: Lee, you’re the multiorgasmic man!

LH: Man, oh, there you go.

TS: Okay, I can’t help myself.

LH: Is that why I’m always smiling?

TS: Well, I do actually want to talk about the smile for a moment. Because it does seem like this idea of an inner smile, I know in the qi gong for health and healing course you talk about having a smile that comes through your eyes. What’s the big deal in qi gong about the Inner Smile?

LH: Well, it’s sort of an extension of what we’ve been talking about, because smiling energy is energy that comes from within, that has a positive intent or blissful energy behind it. You can use the Inner Smile, both in terms of self-healing or in terms of feeling connected. And, smiling energy really has to do with lightness and levity. When we don’t take everything too seriously, our hearts are lighter. When we get too serious about things, in Taoism we say that we’re getting stuck in our egos and the way that we think the world should be, rather than the way the world is. And so, with the Inner Smile, there’s a certain acceptance for how things are, just as they are, without trying to mentally manipulate the way we think it should be. And, when we use it for self-healing, we’re taking that Inner Smile and reflecting it into ourselves and channeling that positive energy into our own bodies. So, we all know that laughing and having a sense of humor has incredible effects on our immune system. Well, smiling has the same kind of effect, so we’re smiling into ourselves and really the technique is smiling to all of our internal organs or to problem areas in our bodies to create this shift and transformation in our physiology.

TS: So, to do the Inner Smile, do I actually make a smiling kind of face with my mouth?

LH: That’s a good question. It’s not a posing for a picture kind of smile, it’s more like the Mona Lisa. You smile kind of like you know a secret. It’s a smiling that’s described as it comes from your eyes, almost like you’re watching a sunset and you’re letting that golden light bask onto your face, it’s the smile that would come from something like that.

TS: So, is that something that you just do while you’re driving in the car or something like that?

LH: I think it’s a great thing to do when you’re driving or anytime. It’s a bit contagious, too, that positive energy can be contagious.

TS: Okay, so Lee, it’s obvious to me that you love qi gong, you absolutely love it. I can hear the enthusiasm. And, what I’m curious about is, is there any part of your life, maybe your relationships or business life or anything, where you’ve sort of felt, you know I love qi gong, I practice all the time, but qi gong hasn’t helped me with this!

LH: You know, I think there are lots of different challenges in life, for sure, and the skillfulness with which you use your qi practice can always be more refined or improved upon. How you are in your business life and all your relationships sometimes that is the cauldron where the fire is the hottest. I think, especially in business and relationships, that’s where it’s most noticeable in your everyday life. So, there’s your qi gong practice, that’s your formal practice I would say—you know, you set aside an hour or two and you practice your qi gong. And then there’s your everyday life and how it seeps into your everyday life, but that’s the harder practice where life becomes challenging. The goal is to be able to create that bridge where the flow and the enjoyment and the blissfulness of your practice gets translated into every aspect of your life. And I definitely notice that when I’m practicing my qi gong, the flow and the effortlessness in my everyday life is greatly improved.

TS: I’m curious if in, you know, the last few years, you’ve hit any spots where you thought, “wow, you know, my qi gong practice isn’t delivering what I need right now.” Or have you always felt that you could return to it and it would open up the flow of your life for you?

LH: I think both. I’ve always felt like I could return to it and, at the same time, I’ve felt like, “why isn’t it working better? If I was really practicing well, I wouldn’t have this problem or this challenge with this person, or my body would feel better in this regard.” And I think, you know, I’ve personally pushed the boundaries of my energy a lot over the last two years. I have two local businesses where I’ve started some integrative medicine centers, which is a bit cutting edge in terms of the way we practice, because we have an MD on board and we’re teaching qi gong classes. And we’re doing some things that are a bit cutting edge, so we get some challenging situations from creating that new kind of energy. And, then, having a family and twins especially and all of that, and traveling and teaching and creating DVDs, all of that has been taxing on my personal energy. But, despite the challenges, it has been a joy and a pleasure to just push that and see how far I can take my internal energy. But there have definitely been times where it’s like, “Oh, wow, I’ve overdone it, I’ve done too much.” Last year, I made nine DVDs, started the businesses, had two babies, and did a bunch of traveling, so it was like, “Wow, that was a whirlwind.”

TS: Yeah.

LH: Finding where is the center of the circle—where is that place where I can come back to and be centered and creative and resourceful—is also a challenge. To not get swept up in the drama of everyday life situations, to return to your place of presence and center.

TS: My final question is, we’ve talked a lot about qi gong practice and even some of the view, the map of the qi gong practice. But, what I’m curious about to end is I’d love to know the three Taoist principles, underlying principles, of the qi gong practice that have really been guiding lights for you in your life. Just pick three right now, I won’t hold you to it tomorrow, but right now, the first three that occur to you.

LH: I’ll just pick three of the elements. Let’s say, water, fire, and air, those three, because really what those represent is…relaxation is water. And relaxation doesn’t mean sitting on the couch with the remote, it means being in the flow and being able to stay in a water-like space in your life. You’re going to flow around obstacles and you’re going with a certain flow of your life purpose. And when you do qi gong, it’s all about relaxation, so you’re consciously putting yourself into a flow, in terms of your body movement, and then what happens is it translates into more of a flow in your life where life happens more effortlessly and more enjoyably. So that’s one principle, the water principle.

The fire principle is enjoyment. I think with qi gong practice, we did talk a bit about the heart and sexual energy. Where heart energy and sexual energy are the two most powerful in the body. When we can awaken and send that loving energy or that orgasmic blissful energy and circulate it inside, life becomes more adventuresome, enjoyable, and passionate. And, you know, for me, that’s an incredible practice and cultivation to be able to bring that from within to your external life.

And then energy, qi, when we’re doing our qi gong practice, we’re working with energy. We’re working with the fundamental building blocks of ourselves. Whether it’s our body, whether it’s emotion, whether it’s consciousness, everything is built on that internal energy. It’s incredibly empowering when you can touch on the fundamental parts and building blocks of who you are, because ultimately, when we look and reflect on what our life’s about, it’s that discovery of who we are and energy and qi is fundamental to answering that question.

TS: Wonderful, thank you, Lee. I can attest that Lee Holden is one of the most energetic authors that I’ve ever worked with and one of the most productive. Here from Sounds True, we’ve released a new home study course with Lee called Qi Gong for Health and Healing and it includes six CDs of teachings, five DVDs of different qi gong practices, 34 illustrated reflection cards that have different Taoist principles that you can sit with and contemplate, along with a 127-page workbook. Lee’s also taking this Qi Gong for Health and Healing home study course and bringing it online. Beginning on October 25th at Sounds True, an eight-week online course, Lee will be appearing two times to answer peoples’ questions about qi gong for health and healing. You may be working with a specific health challenge or simply in the preventative way to keep yourself healthy, and this eight-week online course will address all of the different aspects of emotional qi gong, spiritual qi gong, and physical strength.

Lee has also created, just in the last couple of years here with Sounds True, two other audio learning courses, one on Taoist Sexual Secrets, along with co-author Rachel Abrams, the author of a book, The Multiorgasmic Woman. And then, also a series called Your Body of Light, which are exercises from the qi gong tradition. Maybe say, just a moment, Lee, about Your Body of Light and what that focuses on.

LH: Okay, yeah, Your Body of Light is more of how qi gong and meditation work together. This has to do with, it’s a little more esoteric practice. It kind of picks up where the physical and emotional practice of qi gong leaves off. It gets really into the spiritual side, how do we use our qi and our qi gong practice to answer questions like what happens after we die, what happens to our bodies, what happens to consciousness, and it starts to bring the extension of our own personal energy into a larger context.

TS: And then, finally, one more item that Lee has been working with Sounds True on, in the spring of 2011, he’ll be leading a qi gong trip to China where you’ll be able to do a qi gong morning evening practice, as well as taking a trip to China. And if you would like more information on any of these programs, the online course with Lee Holden or the trip to China, it’s all available at soundstrue.com.

Soundstrue.com: many voices, one journey.

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