What Inspired The Chi Project? In 2013 I attended a Wisdom Healing Qigong Retreat for some challenging health issues and what I experienced there has changed my life forever. For many of the attendees, struggling with illnesses considered terminal, Qigong was their last hope for life. As someone there with serious but less pressing issues, one would have thought that it would have been a depressing environment for me, but it was the polar opposite. There were tears and I felt heart-broken seeing the suffering, but I also saw the love, hope and light. We are all connected through a universal web and slowing down to remember this while at the retreat connected me more directly with something bigger than all of us. Our lives are so busy and technology driven these days, we often lose touch with nature, the incredible web of life and the energy all around us. We are losing touch with what is most important and life sustaining. In reconnecting, there is a tremendous capacity to heal ourselves on vast levels in mind, body and spirit.
My understanding of the practice of Wisdom Healing Qigong is that it is based on the idea, backed by science, that everything is energy. We are a more solid form of energy and the space all around us is formless energy. There is a limitless abundance of formless energy. Qigong activates the energy within us and around us for healing. You can call it chi energy, God energy, life energy…whatever feels right for you. I believe source energy comes from God…I have many friends who have a variety of beliefs and names…but we are all talking about source energy/chi. It doesn’t need to interfere with anyone’s religious beliefs. Wisdom healing Qigong (medical qigong) simply works with the energy that is already there and that we are already working with consciously or subconsciously in a positive or negative way every day. Qigong makes us aware of the energy and helps us work with it to our benefit.
At this retreat I saw people with Parkinson’s and other diseases, who looked like they had come in too late and were at death’s door, turn themselves around, start to walk straighter and show signs of health/life coming back to them. Around this time I also met a local woman, Kelli McGowan, who had been diagnosed with Frontal Temporal Dementia at a very young age. We did a no lights, just a simple, tripod/camera, no frills, no budget documentation of her healing journey. You can find the link to that video below.
Meanwhile, I have been going through my own transformation throughout all of this. What I’ve experienced through Qigong myself, along with the healing I’ve joyfully witnessed in others, has inspired me to take action globally, spreading the word and healing.