Are You Still ‘Doing’ Qigong?
As I’ve often shared, people come to Qigong Training for many reasons — stress, curiosity, health, healing, but there’s a common thread. Students tell me they feel captured by the practice, as though something in them finally exhales. There’s a sense of coming home, of returning to themselves.
For many, it happens quickly. They take a class, attend a workshop, and feel a pull to go deeper. They want to understand more, learn more, do more — and that’s the kicker. To go deeper, you have to become more.
Not intellectually. Energetically. Embodied.
How to Move from Doing Qigong to Living Your Practice
Embodiment only comes through practice. You can’t think your way into it — not through books, podcasts, or theory. You have to devote yourself to practice. That’s the turning point: when Qigong Training shifts from something you do to something you live.
But right at that threshold, subtle resistance often arises. It’s not laziness or lack of readiness — it’s conditioning.
In the Western world, we’ve been shaped by a culture of achievement. From an early age, we’re taught to measure worth through doing — productivity, performance, visible progress. Stillness can feel uncomfortable. Slowness can feel like failure. Even our spirituality often gets filtered through the same lens — meditating “better,” healing “faster,” reaching “higher.”
So often, students approaching the deeper path unconsciously carry that programming. They treat practice like another goal to achieve. And while, if teaching or sharing Qigong is your intention, proficiency and competency is essential — but the practice itself doesn’t respond to pressure. It responds to presence. Not perfection, but sincerity.
Qigong Training: The Progressive Realisation of a Worthy Goal
This is where the real shift begins, from an outer-driven mindset to the inner rhythm of being. From doing for validation, to being in devotion.
When that shift happens, practice stops being a means to an end and becomes a way of life. It’s not about what you accomplish, it’s about who you become.
Earl Nightingale said, “Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy goal.” Success isn’t a finish line, it’s a movement. A process of becoming. That’s what the path of Qigong is, a living, breathing process of progressive realisation. Not striving to achieve more, but awakening to more of who you already are.
We often carry the old paradigm of achievement into our spiritual path and measure progress by the wrong metrics:
How disciplined we are.
How balanced our life looks.
How “good” our practice appears.
But Qigong doesn’t recognise those measures, it works in the unseen. It shifts our inner frequency long before the mind can understand what’s happening.
When we chase outcomes, we keep ourselves in the vibration of “not enough” that we’re trying to release. When we surrender to practice, we return to truth, presence, patience, and trust. That’s where the real transformation happens.
The Turning Point in My Qigong Practice
I know this because I went through it myself. In the first five years of my Qigong Training, I was constantly learning new forms — collecting them, really. I studied with different teachers, travelled for workshops, filled notebooks with techniques and theory.
It was exciting, expansive, and deeply fulfilling on one level. But underneath, there was that striving, the sense that if I could just learn one more form, I’d finally “get it.” I was also chasing worthiness and acceptance, believing that if I studied the next technique or learned from a particular teacher, I’d be seen as credible. I even completed an entire degree in Complementary Medicine, thinking it would somehow validate my path. Ultimately I just ended up with a $40K debt!
One day, something clicked. I stopped chasing more.
Wisdom had been unearthed within me, just be with what you already know, Nicole. That’s when everything changed. The practice began to breathe in me, not because I was doing more, but because I was present with what was already there. Qigong became a devotional practice, not something outside to master, but something within to remember.
Mentorship for Qigong: Move from Doing the Forms to Living the Practice
That’s my invitation to anyone who feels that pull to go deeper. The next step is about committing — to yourself, to your growth, and to your practice.
Mentorship provides a space for exactly that. A place to deepen your practice, explore your inner rhythm, and refine your understanding with guidance and support. It’s a living apprenticeship, where your growth is actively nurtured, and where the wisdom of the practice can take root in daily life.
Through mentorship, you step fully into your own potential. You learn to trust your body, your energy, and your intuition. You begin to move, respond, and create from that inner alignment, for yourself first, and naturally, for others. You’ll notice subtle shifts — how your energy flows in your body, how your awareness guides your choices, how presence becomes your default.
It isn’t about perfection, comparison, or external validation. It’s about showing up consistently, embodying what you already know, and letting Qigong move through you. Mentorship isn’t a shortcut to “getting it right” — it’s the next step in taking your Qigong Training seriously, in a way that transforms your life from the inside out.
If you feel that pull to go deeper, the next step is simple — commit to yourself. Step into mentorship, bring your practice fully into your life, and allow the guidance and support to help you grow, embody your strengths, and live your Qigong Training in alignment. This is where the shift from doing to being truly takes root.
