This article might be a little controversial for some people because it is going to look at what it takes to be a qigong teacher in a very pragmatic and practical way, and in so doing may challenge some of the fanciful ideas that are sometimes held about the process of learning qigong.
I also made a vlog about this topic which you can watch below:
To many people qigong is a mysterious, almost fantastical type of practice, conjuring images of ancient masters with long white beards living in misty mountains. They conceive of it as something with magical qualities that can only be fully grasped by the chosen few, and so they develop mystical ideas of what is required to learn it. Because they view the practice in such a mystical way, they think of having enough understanding to be able teach it effectively and pass it on to others as requiring an almost unattainable level of mastery.
The reality of course is far more practical. Qigong involves a body of knowledge and set of practical skills that can be acquired and developed through diligent and focused study and practice. Of course the field of qigong is vast and there is much that can be learned, and more nuanced understanding and higher levels of skill will continue to develop over a lifetime (or perhaps several), but if it was necessary to know and understand EVERYTHING fully before starting to teach – then we would have no teachers, only individuals fumbling in the dark by themselves.
Guides vs Gurus
This raises the question of what you do need to be able to teach effectively then? It also raises the question of what you see the role of a teacher to be. In my opinion too many people go looking for or expecting teachers to be a guru – literally a dispeller of darkness, or bringer of light – as if they themselves are the source of knowledge. This of course is a misunderstanding, because the knowledge, the light, the principles of qigong are all around us, inherent within natural world we are exposed to in our daily experience. A teacher does not need to ‘bring’ the light themselves, they simply need to direct the learner’s attention to what is already there. For this reason, I think it is far better to think of teachers in general, and ourselves as teachers, as guides rather than gurus. Someone with knowledge and experience that can help to point our attention towards aspects of our lived experience to help us to gain our own understanding of the wonderful world around us and the principles that the universe operates by.
When we start to think of teachers, and ourselves when we teach, as simply a guide rather than a guru, then the responsibility and requirements for teaching start to feel much less onerous. The teacher’s job is just to help the learner to discover what is already there. They don’t need to know everything, but rather just enough that they can point out things that are useful to the learner to help them along on their own process of learning and discovery. Even after a lifetime of diligent study and practice we will not know or understand everything anyway, but we can certainly be helpful to others long before then by sharing whatever valuable and useful knowledge we have acquired up until that point, and in so doing we help each other along on our paths of learning much more effectively than if we were to wait for attainment of some impossible level of knowledge.
Expecting unrealistic levels of knowledge and enlightenment also opens the door for deception from charlatans as well. When the expected level of understanding is essentially ‘unknowable’, then only those prepared to lie about their own understanding and experience, and hold it out to be more than it actually is will appear to be qualified to teach. And of course those prepared to lie in this way often do so in order to take advantage of those who are easily misled. Unfortunately there is a fair amount of that which goes on, which brings any associated practice into disrepute and can distract people from the beautiful and valuable true principles which it may contain and embody. The more we can look at qigong (and any other related practices) realistically as something that is learnable and knowable in practical ways, and encourage others to do the same, the more we will be able to set realistic attainable standards of what is required to learn and teach and help people to look beyond the sophistry of those who wish to embellish and mislead and rather to find the true and valuable essence of the philosophy and practices for themselves.
How can we gain the knowledge and experience to be able to teach qigong?
Because qigong is an embodied practice, meaning that it has real effects that are experienced within the body rather than simply as abstract intellectual concepts, it is important for a teacher to have gained their own experience of the effects of qigong practice on their mind, body, and energy. One of the big misconceptions about gaining this experience is that it has to take a lot of time. This can lead people to think that in order for someone to be prepared and qualified to teach qigong they much have many years, or even decades of experience with the practices first.
But how effectively your practice is focused and directed will play a big role in how long it takes for you to start to experience and understand the effects and benefits of it. The amount of time spent practicing is not a good guide to how deep someone’s understanding and experience of a practice will be. It is true that some aspects of qigong understanding and experience will only unfold over a period of years, but simply practicing over a long period of time will not necessarily lead to that understanding. If the correct principles are not understood, often many details of the practices will remain a mystery, and aspects of awareness and understanding will not be developed, not matter how much time over what period is put into the practice. On the other hand, if the underlying principles of a practice are clearly understood, then the practitioner’s awareness is naturally focused in the right direction to gain their own embodied experience of them much more quickly.
This process of learning the principles which a practice is based on does not need to take a lot of time. Once the principles are understood the process of gaining an experiential understanding of the practice begins to unfold much more quickly. Understanding the principles on an intellectual level and then applying them in practice allows the practitioner to verify and clarify their understanding of those principles by referring to their own embodied experience of them, which will ensure that they can pass them on authentically without distortion due to misunderstanding of detached theory or philosophy, or lack of understanding of the purpose and mechanisms of a practice.
At this point the practitioner has enough to be able to teach others effectively. Of course their experience and skill with the principles and practice will deepen and develop more and more over time as they continue to practice, but this will simply make them a better teacher as they gain more experience. It does not mean that they need to wait until this point before they can begin to share with others and guide them effectively towards understanding the principles and gaining the benefits of the practice for themselves.
Striking a balance
So a good qigong teacher really needs to have both a good understanding of the principles which underly the practices they teach, as well as enough experience of having done the practices to develop their own embodied understanding of their effects and benefits. Didactic learning plays a very important role in gaining the intellectual understanding of qigong principles, and focused structured practice alongside this didactic learning gives the embodied experience to ensure that the principles are understood accurately with reference to actual experience of application of the practices. When these two aspects of didactic study and embodied practice are balanced, understanding and skill develops much more quickly.
The Long White Cloud Qigong instructor certification courses strike this balance. Each of the courses is only 200 hours spread over a period of about 4 months, but by ensuring that theory and principles are taught clearly alongside guided structured practice to explore the application of the theory and principles within the embodied practices, students are able to gain their own personal experiential understanding of those principles and an appreciation of the mechanisms, purposes and benefits of each of the practices they study.
This focused and structured learning over a relatively short period of time can help students to gain a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of the practices studied than may be gained in many years of unstructured, unfocused practice, and invariably when we ask students at the end of a course if they feel they have enough to begin teaching if they wish to, they answer that they have more than enough. You can see some of the comments from students who have completed some of our courses here and here.
This is a great process for any serious student of qigong to go through, even if all they wish to do is deepen their own practice – it can help them to make a huge amount of progress in their understanding and experience of the practices in a relatively short period of time, that otherwise might take them many years, or not come at all. And many of the participants who join in our courses intending to just do it for deepening their own practice find that by the end of the course they have enjoyed the process of deepening their practice so much and feel so passionate about it that they actually decide they do want to start teaching!
We have a couple of Long White Cloud Qigong instructor certification programs starting soon. If this is a process you would like to go through for your own practice, or with a view to gaining the knowledge and experience to prepare you to be able to teach with confidence, you can find the details of the Small Universe Qigong program here, and the Inner Fire Qigong program here.