This is a resource page for qigong videos that will help you cultivate your internal energy, relax, and open up your body. We will look at several different qigong sets from the Energy Arts curriculum, including Dragon and Tiger Qigong, Opening the Energy Gates, the Marriage of Heaven and Earth, and Gods Playing in the Clouds.

Before we talk about specific qigong videos, a quick message about practice mindset:

Start with Dragon and Tiger Qigong

Dragon and Tiger Qigong is a meridian line qigong set, which means the focus is on stimulating the energy flows through your acupuncture channels. You can see the energy field stimulation in this qigong video where Energy Arts Senior Instructor Paul Cavel starts by "stirring his chi" and then brings the hands up and down specific pathways of his body.

How to Learn Dragon and Tiger

Energy Arts produces a complete practice set of Dragon and Tiger resources, including a book, DVD, and poster with all of the moves is an easy-to-reference format. Here's why I think this is such a solid set of learning tools, compared to what's usually out there.

Open up Your Internal Energy Matrix

While Dragon and Tiger helps you stimulate your chi field, Opening the Energy Gates of your body takes you deeper inside, as you try to get the mind to feel into the body. You learn healthy body alignments, that facilitate strong internal energy flow. Physically, your joints feel looser, springier and more connected.

Watch Out for the Swings

Most of Energy Gates is about standing, feeling, and learning to connect your body through exercises like Cloud Hands. In the 3 swings, though, you learn to keep all these internal connections together through dynamic stepping, turning, and swinging motions. Here's why the swings, while challenging to learn, are such an important element to include in your practice.

Go Deeper with Standing Qigong

Some people gravitate towards moving practices like the Swings or even Tai Chi, but there's a certain amount of learning to connect with your own body that can only happen during quiet standing practice. As I mentioned in the Swings class, all of these practices are on a stillness-to-movement continuum. Be sure to include some practice at the stillness end.

How to Learn Energy Gates

Bruce Frantzis' book on Energy Gates is one of the best qigong resources you can buy. I've met people who've had a fruitful qigong practice solely based on the material they started practicing from this book ten years earlier. That said, there are some considerations you want to keep in mind if you work with the Energy Gates book. Here's my advice on making the most of it:

Once You Build a Foundation

In the Energy Arts system, Dragon and Tiger and Energy Gates are the foundational sets because of the way the exercises smooth our your energy and build healthy body alignments. A smooth, stable container is what allows you to amplify your practice consistently, without burning out or having weird side effects. When you've done lots of Energy Gates and Dragon and Tiger, you are ready for the more sophisticated sets.

The Marriage of Heaven and Earth and Gods Playing in the Clouds are two examples.

In more sophisticated qigong sets, you learn how energy moves through the different layers of your body, and eventually your mind.

Check out these qigong videos:

For example, the Marriage of Heaven and Earth primarily deals with opening and closing your joints and lengthening your soft tissues.

There is also some interesting breathing in Heaven and Earth, since the physical movements tend to tug and pull on your diaphragm. It's worth point out that this kind of qigong (and Tai Chi for the most part) use breathing differently than yoga.

You can see all of the components that we've discussed so far woven together into Gods Playing in the Clouds, one of the oldest known qigong sets, that is used in the Energy Arts system as a bridge between practices that develop the body and its energy, into meditation and working directly with the mind.

I have my personal theories on how and why this works. ;-)

For Further Reading

I've posted even more qigong-related articles here in the archives. If you prefer listening to podcasts, check out Qigong Radio.