So you’ve decided you want to give qigong a try, or perhaps you have already tried it out and decided you want to develop a consistent practice. There is a certain amount you can do, just exploring practices for yourself, maybe watching videos on youtube, and maybe even reading some books about qigong. This is a healthy phase to go through, as it will start to give you an idea of what you like and don’t like, and perhaps even the specific type of practice you would like to explore further. At some point though, you are probably going to want/need a teacher, to help support you in your practice and develop a deeper understanding of what you are doing.
In this article we will examine 7 things to consider to help you find a qigong teacher that is right for you 😊.
1. Where to look
This is a good place to start, as you need to know what teachers are available to you first before you choose who is the best fit for you.
There are quite a few places you can consider looking to find a good qigong teacher. A good place to start is to look around you local area to see if there are any classes being offered locally. You could try a google search with qigong and the name of your city or town and see what comes up. You could also try visiting or contacting local gyms, community centres, and even yoga studios to see if they have any classes on offer. If you want to cast your local net wider you could contact people like acupuncturists and massage therapists in your area to see if they know someone who is offering classes. There is a lot of benefit of seeing what is available in your own area first before looking more widely. You may be surprised at the gems of teachers that are tucked away inconspicuously doing their teaching in local communities – you often won’t find them online, you find them by word of mouth or happening to be familiar with the venue they are teaching from. In addition to this, even if the local teachers you find aren’t suitable for you, they may be able to point you in the direction of other teachers, and it is always great to start to build contact with others with shared interests in your community, as you may be able to share things and support each other in the future.
If you have been looking at different practices online, you may find that some of the people who have made videos, or written books, offer classes or courses that may be suitable. Looking each of them up individually will let you discover what each has to offer. Another place you might like to look is online directories. At Long White Cloud Qigong we have a directory of certified teachers organized by country or region here. You could also check if there are any qigong associations in your country, such as the NQA in the US. These organizations will also often have a directory of members that you can look up, and this can be a good place to look further for a suitable teacher. Otherwise, doing a broader internet search and seeing what classes and courses come up will let you know what there is for you to choose from.
2. Type of practice
The next thing you will want to consider is the specific type of practice that is being taught. Qigong has a rich history extending over thousands of years, and during that time many different types and styles of practice have been developed. Some of them are quite similar to each other, others are vastly different. A good analogy I often use to describe different types of qigong practice is that of food. There are some recipes for the same dish that are almost the same as each other, and it would take a very sensitive palate to notice the difference, and others that are vastly different, both in nutritional content and flavour. You can think of qigong practices and styles like this as well. Sometimes practices will have quite different purposes – that would be like the nutritional content, other times the purposes may be the same or similar – but the ‘flavour’ of how it has been put together is quite different.
It is important to find someone who is teaching practices that a suitable for you, both in terms of whether the purpose of the practice meets your needs, and whether the overall ‘flavour’ is to your liking. Some teachers offer a broad range and different qigong practices within their teaching, making it more likely that you will find something to your liking within their offerings. Others have a more limited “menu”, which is fine as long as what you would like to learn is on it.
As a newcomer to qigong it can be a bit bewildering to navigate all the different practices and styles on offer. I think it is important to remember that you don’t need to know all of what is out there, or even try all of them, you just need to find something that meets your needs and that you like, and within all the variety available, you are sure to be able to do that. So if the practices you find initially aren’t quite what you are looking for, you might want to look a bit further until you find something that is the right fit for you.
3. Formats offered
Another important consideration is the formats of teaching offered. If you find that for you learning in person is really important – then that is going to influence your choice of teacher a lot. You will want to limit your search to classes that are offered locally, or possibly to include workshops and retreats that you could travel to without too much difficulty. If you haven’t tried learning online before though, I would suggest not being too hasty to write it off as an option for you. I looked at the pros and cons of online and in-person teaching in a recent article which you might like to check out here. Many people find that learning online is a very effective and convenient method for them, and the even find that they get a similar sense of energy practicing in a group online as they would when attending group sessions in person.
Beyond the choice of online or in-person, there are other aspects of teaching formats that you will want to consider. If you are primarily wanting a teacher to lead you in regular classes for the experience of the practice and for the community that comes from that, then a regular drop in class might be just the thing for you. On the other hand, if you are wanting to go deep into the practice and really develop an understanding of the underlying principles within it, then a teacher offering workshops or structured courses might be more suitable for you. These types of formats are generally better for developing your knowledge in a comprehensive methodical way.
4. Teaching style (general, traditionalist etc, language used)
The overall teaching style of the teacher is going to be important for your learning experience as well. Different teachers may have quite different approaches to teaching the same practices, some of these differences may be minor, and other might be quite major. I mention just a couple of examples of different approaches to teaching.
One teacher may take the approach of just demonstrating the practices and have you follow along, without really explaining anything – just leaving it to you to have your own experience and possibly develop your own understanding of what is going on within the practice from that. There is a lot of value to this approach to teaching. Sometimes when we think we already ‘know’ what is going on within a practice it can dull our sensitivity to our own experience, and we may miss many valuable insights. In fact even within Long White Cloud Qigong’s comprehensive 200 hour instructor training programs, which are very much focused on helping participants to really understand the principles behind the practices we focus on – we have portions of the course where we focus on just doing the practices without a lot of background information or theory. We allow ourselves to have our own experience first, and then follow this up with an understanding of the underlying principles which further enriches our experience of the practice.
On the other hand another teacher might primarily teach in a more lecturing way, with little time put on doing the practices together within the classes. Perhaps they demonstrate briefly, but then leave it to you to continue to practice as ‘homework’. Quite different approaches, both with their merits – but how suitable they are for different people will vary a lot.
As other examples of different teaching approaches: One teacher may talk a lot while demonstrating practices, while another demonstrates silently and discusses the practice verbally either before or after the demonstration. One teacher may rely purely on visual learning, while another may use touch quite extensively for helping students to understand details of movement and posture. And so on… Each of these differences in teaching style will make a big difference to your learning experience.
5. Life experience/area of focus
It is well worth getting at least a little understanding of the life experience and the area of focus of a qigong teacher as well. Having at least some similarity of life experience can make many aspects of communication much easier, as we have similar reference points from our experiences that shape our understanding. For example, if you are mother of children, there are lots of things that another mother of children will just be able to understand more quickly and easily and therefore be able to communicate about more easily as well. You won’t have to fill in as many details for their to be true understanding on some issues, as you would need to with someone who does not have that shared background experience. In a similar way, someone who has been an athlete, more readily understands the mindset and challenges that other athletes face in their lives. Someone who is a veteran and has served in the military has a vast reservoir of similar experience to other veterans that can open channels of communication.
These life experiences can also shape the areas of qigong application that a qigong teacher may choose to focus on as well. Someone who has experienced many health challenges may naturally focus their teaching a lot on the health benefits of qigong. An athlete, former athlete, or martial artist may focus their teaching very much on enhancing physical and mental performance. Still others may have experiences that shape their approach to qigong very much towards the more philosophical or spiritual aspects that can come from the practices. And some teachers focus may expand to encompass all three of these areas, and they may be able to guide their students towards whichever application is most suitable for them. It is well worthwhile seeking to understand these aspects of a teachers focus at the outset of your interaction with them, so that you can see how well their focus aligns with what you seek to get from your qigong practice.
None of this means that we need to only learn from people with life experiences of focuses that are exactly the same as ours (you won’t find such a person anyway, we are each uniquely different). We can certainly learn from people who are quite different from ourselves, and in fact we may sometimes intentionally seek out someone with a very different background from ourselves precisely because we think there is something valuable for us to learn from that. But it is also worth at least considering what degree of ‘alignment’ there is between our experiences and focus, and how this might contribute to, or detract from our learning.
6. Personal characteristics
The habits, attitudes, and even beliefs of the people we mix with regularly can have a significant effect on us. They tend to ‘rub off’ on us over time. This is something it is well worth paying attention to in every area of our lives, but is particularly relevant in the context of learning qigong. Within qigong we focus on some sometimes quite subtle aspects of how our mind and body function. We tune into these subtleties by becoming aware of and starting to consciously interact with and direct our living energy. Within a learning environment we open ourselves up to being more strongly influenced by this subtle energy from those who teach us than we usually would in other situations. This can play a valuable role, as it allows the teacher to guide and direct us as we develop our awareness and skill with energy in ways that go beyond just physically demonstrating, or verbally describing principles and practices. Their energy can have a significant effect on the quality and flow of our energy.
The living energy of each individual person carries their unique qualities and characteristics with it. So… while taking in the main learning of how to direct our energy from our qigong teacher, we are also likely to absorb some of these other characteristics of their energy as well, and it is a good idea to make sure those characteristics are something we are comfortable exposing ourselves to and possibly being influenced by.
7. Try before you commit
Learning qigong well can take a significant amount of time, energy, focus, and even money, so this last point of consideration is the one that brings all of the others together. Is there a way that you can ‘try out’ a qigong teacher before making a bit commitment? If there is, you can use this process of trialling to answer all of the preceding questions more fully. You can see whether the location and format of the teaching is suitable for you, you can try the specific qigong practices to see if you like them, you can get a taste of the teaching style of the teacher and also get an understanding of their background, personal characteristics and so on. When you have answered these questions well for yourself, you will be able to be much more confident in your choice to go deeper in working with a particular teacher.
Some examples of ways that you could try before you commit could be – in the case of a local class, attend just one or two classes to begin with to see how you feel. You could also look up videos of practices that someone teaches and try these in your own home before even going to a class. For people teaching online they might have a range of free materials and even courses that you can try with know obligation before deciding to go deeper into more comprehensive training with them.
You might get lucky and find that the first teacher you investigate is a good choice for you, but if not, and you do find that you end up trying out working with several teachers before you find the one you want learn from – nothing is wasted. The effort is well worthwhile in helping to ensure you are on a path you are happy and comfortable with and heading in the direction you want to go in. Spending this time looking around and trying different teachers in the beginning saves you far more time than if you go far down a particular path of learning and then discover that it is not really for you. Experiencing the teaching of a variety of different teachers will also give you context and perspective on your practice as a whole, helping you to understand it even better than if you have only ever had contact with a single teacher.
Getting Started
If you would like to get started in your search for a good qigong teacher, I have a couple of suggestions that might be helpful for you. We have a directory of certified Long White Cloud Qigong teachers on the website, organized by country or region. You might find a teacher near you that is a great match for what you are looking for! We also have some great free introductory qigong courses that can give you a good background understanding of qigong practice, not matter which qigong teacher you end up working with. You can find those courses in the links below:
Introduction to Qigong Theory and Practice
We also have free videos of a variety of the qigong practices that we teach at Long White Cloud Qigong, which you can find on this webpage here. And… just recently we have started to offer regular livestreaming qigong classes which you can access from anywhere in the world. You can find them here.