Energy Management
Learn the Foundation Skills of Qigong
Develop Energy Mastery in this unique 14-month online course.
Qigong means energy work or skill in using energy.
If you are yet to have a felt experience of energy and energy flow as a natural, everyday part of life, the idea of reaching energy mastery might not even make sense.
But if you have read this far, you probably haven't dismissed the idea of being able to influence your own energy as 'woo woo'. And perhaps you would like to learn more.
The first two modules/eight weeks of the Energy Mastery course will teach you the skills you need to become aware of your energy through body awareness, breathing and relaxation practices.
You will discover the old habits and conditioning that can cause tension and stop energy flowing freely. Then you will learn to generate and circulate energy, and to use this in movement, walking and working.
Being able to generate an energy flow is the fundamental skill of Shaolin Cosmos Qigong that sets it apart from gentle movement exercise and makes it powerful in helping you clear tension, stress and illness.
Discover: Relaxation, Breath and Body Awareness
The first four weeks of the Energy Mastery course explore alignment, breathing and relaxation. You will learn techniques to increase your awareness, let go of old habits and enter deeper states of relaxation.
This part of the course is all about developing awareness of energy in states of stillness. With these skills in place, you will have a strong foundation for the mind and energy practices that come later in the course.
Energy Mastery 1: Discover consists of four hour-long recorded classes to take in your own time, with permanent on demand access and support by email. Price £79.
Circulating: Generating Energy Flow
The next part of the Energy Mastery course, starting Wednesday 1st February, will focus on the skills of generating an energy flow and circulating energy.
If you want to learn to experience energy flow and be able to use it in everyday life, this part of the course is ideal for you. And if you are already experienced, you will be able to go deeper into your practice, refine your skills and develop your awareness and understanding even further.
Book Energy Mastery 2: Circulating Energy and join classes live online, every Wednesday 7-8pm in February, or take the four classes in your own time using the recordings. Price £79.
After the first two modules, you may find you have enough to work with, or you may want to develop your skills further. With this course, you can pick and choose modules and dip in and out as you want to.
Mastering energy is mastering self.
Rather than just getting through the day, week, year or life we start to embrace all things that come our way.
With the mastery of energy, we learn how to heal ourselves, situations, relationships and others.
We get to experience life as a ‘meaningful flow of energy’. We feel connected to something beyond ourselves. You could say we become at one with everything.
As human beings we are resilient by nature, often able to adapt to demands and conditions.
We also waste a lot of energy as result of our conditioning, thoughts, emotions, actions, beliefs and automatic reactions. As you develop your energy skills, it will become clear where your energy is going and how you can use it differently.
Qigong for More Energy
A lot of people find qigong because they want or need more energy. Maybe they feel tired most of the time, they have chronic tension or pain that depletes their energy, or they need more energy to deal with a stressful job or home life.
A 'Golden Exercise'
There are certain qigong exercises that are really good for restoring energy. One of these is Carrying the Moon. It is known as one of the 'golden' exercises of the 18 Lohan Hands (a set of 18 qigong exercises passed down from Bodhidharma at the Shaolin Temple). Carrying the Moon is a beautiful exercise that helps to release tension, reset the nervous system and restore emotional balance.
This video takes you through the form of Carrying the Moon:
Mind and Energy Skills
Doing Carrying the Moon at the physical level (just doing the movements without using any skill of mind or energy) will have some benefits. But qigong becomes much more powerful when you include mind and energy skills, including:
- Entering a Qigong State of Mind, also known as entering Zen
- Generating an energy flow
- Allowing energy to circulate
- Coming to stillness
Relax, Release, Restore
In classes with Fully Alive, you will learn these skills step by step, to supercharge your movement practice. You then only need a short 10-15 minute qigong practice to release unnecessary tension and restore your energy.
Once you have the foundation skills of qigong, you can use any of the qigong forms you know to rebalance your mind, body, energy and emotions. You can start to explore the ways they affect you, and the different outcomes they have.
Spread and Depth
In qigong classes, we talk about spread and depth of practice. You might only ever practice a few different forms, and find they are all you need. Your practice continues to deepen as you refine your skill.
You might wish to broaden your practice to include more techniques, as you increase your skill level - bringing in spread as well as depth. What isn't recommended is spread without depth. This is when someone may learn lots of different forms, but without knowing the mind and energy skills that would take their practice deeper.
Coming Back to Basics
It is also useful come back to practicing qigong at the form level now and then. We don't want to get into a habit of always practicing the same way, and that includes always going into a deep state.
Practicing at the level of physical form can increase our body awareness and relaxation, as well as allow the mind to focus. This can prepare the way for deeper levels of training including
- Cleansing (letting go of stress, tension, old habits and conditioning)
- Building (gathering or increasing the amount of energy you have available to you)
- Nourishing (increasing the quality of energy)
Learn More...
All our weekly classes include mind and energy skills along with physical practice to improve your health and increase your energy levels. Beginners are always welcome.
Or you might want to try our Level One online course, which takes you through the techniques and skills of qigong step by step.
And you can find more form video clips on our social media channels:
Reduce Stress, Gain Confidence
Many people practice Tai Chi and Kung Fu to reduce stress.
As well as helping to manage stress, practicing an internal martial art like Tai Chi or Shaolin Kung Fu will increase your confidence and to help make life flow more easily.
Tai Chi and high-level Kung Fu are internal martial arts because they focus on training mind and energy. These aspects will inform the way the external physical form looks.
In classes we practice responding with ease and flow, without getting disrupted. This practice will also allow us to change how we respond to situations in everyday life.
We may start to notice that we have alternative ways to respond to things, that reduce our stress levels and make things easier for us.
When something stressful happens and we are disrupted, we can use the tools and techniques we learn in class to relax and release any unnecessary tension. With practice, returning to a state of balance becomes easier and more natural.
Applying what we learn in class to everyday life takes the practice from a fun, relaxing, rewarding hobby into something far broader, that can really change the way things happen in our lives.
So our Shaolin Arts or Tai Chi practice becomes a way of living more meaningfully every day, with the confidence that comes from knowing we have more choice over how we respond.
This is not something we need to work out intellectually. We just do the practice, and things will naturally start to change in our lives more widely. Life can seem easier and we feel more peaceful. We may also find that we have more energy, because we are using it more efficiently.
Learn a practice that really will change your everyday life. Find out more about our classes:
Optimise Your Immune System Talk
Listen to Tim Franklin, John Millar and Clara Apollo discuss how qigong can support our immune system. There are simple, easy things we can do to reduce the accumulation of stress and allow our bodies to function well.
How to save time and increase energy
Our lives can be full of demands.
Overwhelm and burnout are common. How can we save time and increase our energy? How can we make more time in our lives to do all the things we want or need to do?
If you want to make more time for yourself, it's worth thinking about how you spend your time and energy. Maybe you're spending half an hour scrolling through social media every day.
What's nourishing you, and what's depleting you? Can you make any simple changes to save you time and energy?
It's so easy for our time to be taken up with things that don't really add any value to our lives.
If we want to increase our health and wellbeing, we can make that a priority and give less time to something that's less important.
Making time to practice qigong for a short amount of time every day can bring about positive changes - having more energy, being able to deal with stress better, increased balance and mobility, and a clearer mind.
Perhaps you already have a practice, but things aren't changing as quickly as you would like. Regular practice is key.
When you learn how to use your mind, body and energy efficiently, qigong practice only needs to take 10-15 minutes. It can even be for just 5 minutes if time is limited. Daily practice has a cumulative effect.
As our practice develops and our awareness increases, it can become clearer where we are putting our energy. We notice more, so we have more freedom to choose.
Energy Management with Qigong
Do you find your energy levels go up and down through the day? Do you find your energy gets depleted in certain situations?
Qigong practice can give you techniques for energy management to use throughout the day, maintaining and enhancing your energy levels.
Sometimes we might want to increase our energy or focus, perhaps if we have something we need to get done. Sometimes we will want to feel more relaxed, especially when we are practicing in the evening before bed. At other times we might want more of a balance between being energised and calm.
It's useful to know how to adjust our practice so we can make it work for what we need at that particular moment.
We can use qigong as a tool for energy management by learning some simple techniques.
This is a clip from the Qigong for Vitality, Flow and Calm class, every Friday, 9-9.30am.
If you're interested in learning some skills to help you manage your energy, you can book a class here, or contact us for more details. You are welcome to join, whether you are a complete beginner or have done qigong before.