The Value of Review
2024 is coming to a close, so it is time for us to do our annual review of all the goings on at Long White Cloud Qigong. It has become a tradition, and one that I think there is real value in. It is a way for us to keep all of you informed about what has happened at Long White Cloud Qigong during the year, and also to give you at least a little insight into what you can look forward to in the coming year.
I find that it is also valuable to me personally. An opportunity to reflect on what has been accomplished during the year, and recognise the good things that have been done. It is so easy during the year to go from one task to another, focusing primarily on what needs to be done next, and addressing the many issues that arise along the way, and not fully appreciate the bigger picture of what is being achieved. It is a bit like not being able to see the forest for the trees. Taking the opportunity to take a step back, or maybe send a drone up for the wider view helps to put everything into perspective. I find it quite helpful when putting these reviews together, to look back at the one from the previous year, and then within the review I also include a little about where we are planning to head for the next year. So it gives me a much clearer sense of where we have come from, where are now, and where we are heading towards.
This context then supports me in making sure that my actions are in alignment with my overall purpose, and to feel a sense of satisfaction from all the effort that I have put in. So… I hope you enjoy reading this review of 2024 at Long White Cloud Qigong, and perhaps it might inspire you for your own annual review 😊.
Travel – Workshops, Retreats, Conference
After a very brief visit and a few qigong workshops in Melbourne Australia at the very end of 2023, in 2024 I finally travelled more extensively again, for the first time since prior to the pandemic. During these travels I ended up running classes, workshops and retreats in Vietnam, Montenegro, Serbia, United Kingdom, Ireland, and USA. It was really great to reconnect with many old friends who I have visited with previously sharing qigong, and also to meet many Long White Cloud Qigong students and instructors in person for the first time, who I had only interacted with online up until this point.
It was also really nice to share qigong walking practices with the people who attended the two retreats we ran during the year. It had been awhile since I had taught these practices, and I really both the simplicity and effectiveness of them. I hope all who attended those retreats are continuing to enjoy the qigong walking practices, and perhaps even teaching them to others.
And finally it was a great pleasure to be able to attend and present at the National Qigong Association USA (NQA) conference held in Savannah Georgia. It was a great gathering of qigong practitioners with a wide range of highly knowledgeable and skilled presenters. If you get the chance to attend another NQA conference in the future, I would highly recommend it! It was also wonderful to see the good work that several Long White Cloud Qigong alumni are doing in key roles within this organization to support all qigong practitioners in the US.
You can find more photos from the classes, workshops and retreats here.
Life Changing Qigong Book
Another significant and quite unexpected development in 2024 was the release of the “Life Changing Qigong” book. The idea for this book came to me as I was travelling and meeting with so many people in person for the first time. As I had that first in person conversation with people, they often chose to describe their experience with qigong to me, and again and again they used the exact same words to describe it. Life changing, life changing, LIFE CHANGING! I couldn’t help but notice the pattern, and the thought came to me that it could be so valuable for other people to hear these same stories.
And so after a huge amount of work over two and a half months by both myself and Tihana, we managed to release the book before the end of the year. It contains the stories of over 100 people and their experience of how qigong has changed their lives – in their own words. We hope that this book will serve as inspiration for people who have not yet tried qigong to make a start, and encouragement for those who already practice to continue. You can find more details about the book here.
Courses
Of course we have continued to run the Small Universe, Inner Fire, and Elemental Alchemy Qigong programs. Each group that goes through these courses is different, and it is fascinating to see the different focuses, insights, and experiences that come up for each group as they go through. Congratulations to everyone who completed one of these programs this year!
Vlogs and Articles
With all the travel and other things going on in 2024, there weren’t many new articles, but there were certainly plenty of new vlogs. Here is a selection of a few that you might find particularly interesting:
- Making the World Better With Qigong
- Do You Have a Dantien?
- How Well Does Your Qigong Practice Fit You?
- Montenegro – Workshops, Qigong Healing, and Tihana!
- Is using intention detrimental within qigong practice
- Qigong Walking Retreat at Gradbach Mill
- Do you naturally have qi?
- Qigong at a Castle
- National Qigong Association (NQA) Conference 2024
- To Retreat, or not to Rereat?
- Keeping Your Blinkers On
You can find the rest by visiting the Qi Life youtube channel here.
Looking Forward to 2025:
It was great to reconnect with so many people around the world in 2024. There is so much value in spending time in the same space with each other, the richness of the interaction, and the personal connections that can develop through this. Now that we have restarted offering in-person workshops and retreats, we certainly want to continue to do this in 2025, and will announce plans for these in-person training opportunities once we have them organized and dates finalized. However, one of the things that really stood out to me from my travels in 2024 is the value of online learning and connection, and the important role that this can play for people as well. This has encouraged me to put even more focus on the online training that we offer at Long White Cloud Qigong going forwards. (You can listen to me talking about some of the insights from my travels, and how this relates to our focus on online training in the coming year in a recent vlog here. You can also read a recent article comparing the benefits of learning qigong in person vs online here).
Arising from this we have three big projects you can look forward to from Long White Cloud Qigong in 2025.
Qigong Healing
The first of these combines a bit of both online and in person learning. I know many of you have been looking forward to the Qigong Healing course for sometime, and while we do not have a specific date for this yet, I am clearing away as many other commitments as I can so that I can really focus on preparing this over the next several months so that we can offer this starting from quite early in 2025.
There will be two separate but interconnected Qigong Healing courses.
- Qigong for Self-Healing. This course will be offered online as an in-depth 200 hour instructor certification program with a format similar to the other programs we currently offer. While to some degree almost all qigong practices could be considered to be self healing, this course will focus on the more direct intentional application of our skill with energy to heal and balance different health issues we may encounter in our lives than is common in other practices. This approach to qigong with its very direct focus on influencing our energy can form a practice on its own, or it can also be combined with other qigong practices to further enrich them. Participants in the course will learn to use this approach to qigong within their own practice, and also how they can teach it to others. Their will be no pre-requisites for participating in this course, we will cover everything needed to practice in this way within the course materials.
- Qigong Healing Practitioner. This course will be offered as a one week in-person intensive study program. We will aim to offer this at a variety of locations around the world to make it logistically easier for people who wish to attend. The course will in some senses be an extension of the Qigong for Self-Healing course, in that we will use much of the understanding, awareness, and skill developed in that course and extend it to be applied in working with another person to assist in their process of bringing balance and healing to their energy system and body. Completion of the Qigong for Self-Healing course will be a pre-requisite for attending the Qigong Healing course.
The process of qigong healing (both self-healing and working on others) can be very valuable. Because of the way it works with mind, body, and energy together, it can often be effective in making changes where other methods may not be successful. So I am very much looking forward to finally sharing this with a broader audience and empowering more people to take an active role in their own healing, and also to learn skills that they can use to assist others in their community!
Further details about these courses will be made available in the coming months as they are finalised.
Live Streaming Qigong Classes
The in-depth 200 hour instructor certification programs that we offer are a great way to go deep into all the details of how to do sets of qigong practices, and also all of the underlying principles and philosophy. Whether someone is actively planning to teach, or just wants to develop within their own practice, these courses provide a way to gain a really solid foundation of both understanding and experience in a structured way, with plenty of interactive feedback through the regular Q&A and group practice sessions, one-on-ones, and final assessment.
However, they are also a really big commitment, both in terms of time, focus, and money, and this isn’t going to be suitable for everyone. For some people just a normal class to attend regularly is the perfect way be supported in their practice and allow the principles and effects of qigong to soak in gradually. It can be great if you can find a local in-person qigong class, but even though awareness of qigong has grown massively in the last several years, and there are more and more people teaching qigong in local communities, for many people in many parts of the world it is still difficult to find a local class that meets this need.
With this in mind, in 2025 we are looking to relaunch regular live-streaming Long White Cloud Qigong classes. This is something I have wanted to do since… probably around 2018, but other than a brief period in the early days of the pandemic and lockdowns, there have always been a variety of other commitments that have made it impractical for me to offer this on a regular basis.
There is a bit of testing and planning to be done first, which will include running some free live streaming classes on an irregular basis as we test out using different platforms, times, formats, etc. But the ultimate aim is to offer regular weekly qigong classes on a subscription basis. You can find more details – including about upcoming free classes on the Live Streaming Qigong Sessions page of the website here.
Incidentally – at the time of writing there are still link recordings of the live streaming sessions we did during the first year of the pandemic on that same page. We may or may not keep links to these older sessions up as we start into producing new ones – we are hoping to significantly improve the quality of the future sessions! In the mean time you might like to check them out for comparison though 😃.
Social Media
2025 is also going to bring changes to Long White Cloud Qigong’s social media presence. For the last several years, my nephew Josh has been in charge of running the Long White Cloud Qigong Instagram account, and I think he has done a great job with what he has had to work with, largely making posts related to previous articles, vlogs, etc. Josh is taking his business in a new direction, now focusing on photography and videography in New Zealand, and we want to thank him for all the work he has done for Long White Cloud Qigong and wish him the best in his new direction. If you happen to be looking for a photographer in New Zealand, you can find him here.
So in 2025 Tihana will be taking over running Long White Cloud Qigong’s social media accounts. This coincides with us also wanting to refocus the type of content we put out on social media. Social media can be such a valuable tool for connecting, educating, and inspiring people, so in 2025 we are planning to start producing more content specifically for the different social media platforms so that we can be more effective at spreading awareness and understanding of qigong. So you can look forward to fresh new informative and inspirational content across a variety of social media platforms in 2025 (we may even look at expanding to platforms such as Tiktok!)
Conclusion
It has been a busy year in 2024, the main highlights being reconnecting with so many of you around the world through in-person qigong classes, workshops, retreats, and a conference, and of course the new Life Changing Qigong book!
We have some really ambitious projects ahead of us for 2025 which will roll out gradually over the first few months of the year – so 2025 is looking even busier than 2024! Our aim as always is to support you in your qigong journey as best we can, and we hope that each of these new initiatives contribute effectively to that.
Yours in qi!
John Munro
Long White Cloud Qigong