Modern life often forces us into our heads, leaving our physical bodies feeling disconnected and drained. In this episode, host Zach Gurick speaks with Qigong master Master Mingtong Gu about restoring vitality through Wisdom Healing Qigong. Drawing from his training at China’s famous medicine-less hospital, Master Mingtong explains how ancient energy practices can help reverse chronic stress and physical limitation. You’ll learn how to shift away from mental distraction and reconnect with your body’s natural healing capacity. Discover actionable principles to cultivate presence, enhance healthspan, and foster deep emotional resilience at any age. It’s time to stop fighting natural aging and start living fully in the present moment.

The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.

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How Ancient Energy Practice Restores Physical Vitality With Master Mingtong Gu

Welcome back to the show, where we are unlocking the secrets to your healthier, happier, and longer life. In a world where we’re more connected digitally than ever before, many of us feel increasingly disconnected from ourselves. We spend our days in our heads, scrolling, planning, achieving, and consuming information all day long, while often losing touch with the wisdom and signals of our own bodies.

Our guest believes that this disconnection may be one of the greatest health challenges of our time. Master Mingtong Gu is a globally recognized Qigong master, teacher, and founder of an amazing retreat center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For decades, he has helped more than 100,000 people across 47 countries reconnect with their bodies, cultivate inner resilience, and awaken their capacity for healing through the ancient practice of Qigong.

He trained in China at the renowned medicine-less hospital. Master Mingtong is bridging a 5,000-year-old healing tradition with the challenges of modern life. His new bestselling book, Coming Home to Embodied Awakening: Reclaim Your Body, Power, and Purpose in an Age of AI, invites us to consider a powerful question.

In an era defined by technology and constant distraction, what does it truly mean to come home to ourselves? We’ll explore the science and wisdom of embodied awareness, the role of presence in health and longevity, and practical ways we can reconnect with our bodies to live healthier, more meaningful lives. Let’s welcome Master Mingtong to the show.

 

  

Master Mingtong, it’s so great to have you on today. I’m so excited to meet you, to learn from you. You have so much wisdom and expertise and experience to share with us. Thank you so much for being here. I know you’re in the middle of a retreat. Thanks for taking time out to teach us for a little while.

Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in and connecting together in the same energy field. It’s an incredible time to dive deeper.

I’m excited to really dive into the things that you outlined in your new book and learn about that. I would love to start. You grew up in such a unique and interesting way, really in post-cultural-revolution China. Later, you trained at China’s medicineless hospital, which is something we do not really hear a lot about here in the West. I’m curious, can you share a little bit about your journey and your story? I know you had an incident when you were six years old as well, but how did those experiences that you had, growing up that way and understanding the medicineless hospital, how did those experiences help shape your belief system and how you see that healing is possible beyond conventional medicine?

It’s a continued journey to discover what is possible. As we all grew up conventionally, mainstream, whatever assumption, whatever ideas, whatever identity or belief system, they all have good value to a certain degree until it’s limiting us. Obviously, our own life experience, including especially childhood, impacts us, informs us more than just informing us. My childhood was really challenging, but honestly, at the time, I didn’t feel like comparing myself with others or didn’t have other reference points. Looking back, that was difficult. I was adopted by my adoptive parents first and then divorced.

I lived with my adoptive mother with two more families and then eventually came back to my birth family. This feeling of separation from a consistent, stable, safe family environment really definitely affected me as a little child growing up and also really growing up in poor conditions. Not like what’s a comfortable life at all. It’s really quite a harsh environment, harsh economic conditions, and the cultural revolution. The whole culture is suffering basically.

One gift that came out of that is I learned to adapt. I learned to be flexible. I learned to be resilient and learned to be independent in a lot of ways. I matured early on. Remember when I was six years old, I started cooking meals for the whole family. I feel that was a blessing. I look at my kids like, “They can hardly do anything for themselves.” A lot of blessings come out of that. Also, I grew up with two diseases, according to conventional diagnosis, incurable, including asthma and sclerosis, and a trauma when I was six years old. All that is like part of me growing up.

Without knowing, it’s like I adopt it basically? I couldn’t go to physical education classes when I grew up. As a child, I avoided anything physically active because my body was limited, my health was limited. I tend to become more mental. It’s like being the best student from every mentor school all the way to graduate school, until I was in the PhD program in mathematics and realised, “No, I’m not the best here. I was not as genius as my teacher at the time.” He was a very successful, renowned mathematician. At the time, I realized math is not my passion anymore.

I discovered a new passion with fine arts, studying photography and the films and the video art. I went to Columbus, Ohio, then. I discovered Qigong in graduate school in fine arts. Honestly, I never heard of Qigong when I grew up in China. It’s absurd. People know Tai Chi. I tried Tai Chi, and it’s too complicated. My house does not have enough flexibility, even though I was young, to do this practice, so I was totally intimidated. I gave up basically until I discovered Qigong in my early 30s and saw a friend here, and we became good friends.

Healing Beyond Conventional Boundaries

Realizing she teaches Tai Chi and Qigong in the US, but she’s not like Chinese. She’s a white woman who grew up in Columbus, Ohio. I was really fascinated and curious about it. I studied with her for a while. She gave me a few books about Qigong history and the medicine at Qigong Hospital. I was totally shocked to discover Qigong has a long history, like more than 5,000 years of history that can be traced back beyond Taoist tradition, Buddhist tradition, martial arts tradition, going to the Yellow Amplitudes. I also discovered medicine at Qigong Hospital in China.

I realized it not only happened in China, mostly underground until like 67, 70 years ago, then became a big phenomenon in China, including the medicine Qigong Hospital where 3000 people, 5000 people coming together. Not just occasionally, but dedicated practice one month at a time, 10 hours, 12 hours a day, and people were able to recover from these incurable conditions. In the beginning, I had my doubts. I considered myself an educated, scientific mind, a rational mind, a logical mind, studying mathematics, all that, because the practice gave me the experience, and I never thought it was possible.

I went to China for medicine, to the hospital to study seriously. Actually, the first time was two weeks, then one month, then three months, then eventually I stayed there for two years, finishing my master’s training program. My own dedicated practice, but also in this community we call the Qi field. Practicing together day and night for a period of time, you start to feel this resonance, this coherency, this presence of energy beyond. It’s just like doing some practice on your own by yourself.

It’s a very complete, different experience. Talking to me about my own practice for about a year on myself, then about probably less than a year in the medicine in Shikun Hospital, I was able to recover from asthma as well as sclerosis. More importantly, I discovered myself, discovered why I’m here as a human being, discovered my true gift of helping others, and then became very dedicated. After two years of deep training, I came to the US to teach 24 years ago.

True healing begins when you reconnect with your body’s innate energy field.

Quite the journey then. Now you’ve taught more than a hundred thousand people around the world in over 47 different countries. I’m curious, based on your experience of teaching all those people in all these different countries from all kinds of different backgrounds, what are some of the universal human longings that you’ve observed, regardless of culture, age, or background? What are some of those kinds of universal longings that we all have?

First of all, I think I left reflecting on my own journey from childhood until I discovered Qigong, and the sweet thing I recognized was my own deeper personal longing. When is longing for happiness at a time? I was a happy child growing up. I discovered joy beyond just happiness. Happiness depends on circumstances. Longing for happiness allows me to discover joy, true joy. We can talk about that later. That’s the first one. Second is, from my own childhood, I experienced separation from my own birth parents, then from family, and then moving from one family to another. That separation really invokes something deeper. Belonging for connection, or then just saying, love.

Of course we all long for love. This is much deeper than just love. It’s like a connection. Sense of belonging. The third one for me was like this trauma, this disease. Also because of that limitation, we always feel limited, isolated because of limited health. We tend to limit ourselves. “I cannot do this. I’m not supposed to do this. I’m not supposed to go to this place.” Continue limiting myself without knowing. At the same time, because of limitations, we’re longing for new possibilities. It’s like the spirit of me, later I discovered, is very adventurous.

A lot of risk-taking, a lot of adventures, and so on. That was not there. It was suppressed in my childhood, suppressed until I came to the US, until I recovered my health, have more energy to fulfill this adventurous longing. These are my three unique ones myself. By working with students from all different backgrounds, I love your question. Realizing the universal longing is very universal, same. One year is for love. Secondly is for joy. We might say, “In the beginning we’re longing for happiness.” That’s fine.

Eventually, it is deep joy. The third longing is for health, definitely for health. Vitality, especially when grown older, especially when we experience absence or limitation of health. We definitely long for that. It is so essential beyond just survival. Every aspect of life depends on health. Without that foundation, we continue to feel limited, no matter how our heart opens, how our mind is creative, our spirit evolves, whatever might be. Health is always number one and important for every single human, whether we realize that or not.

Escaping Mental and Digital Disconnection

Another deep longing as a shield, I think it’s universal, is longing for connection. What I’m realizing is, on one hand, we’re longing for connection with each other. Many of us are longing for connection with Mother Earth, for example, with nature, and longing for connection with the universe, with the source. The deeper missing piece I feel. Not many of us realize that. It’s this internal separation of our own mind and the body. When I look around, not only often, but every single human being, we’re spending most of the time in the mental world, the conceptual world.

With stories, problem solving, data, numbers, knowledge, interaction, rational thinking, all that is in the mental world. What I realized is that the mental world, on one hand, seems important, but on the other hand, it’s not the real world. It’s not the real world. The real world is here. You see the plants behind me and the earth behind me, the mountain, the sky, and this body. That’s the real world. I’m realizing we hardly spend time with this real world. Only occasionally do we go to the real world, come here to nature, to the body, to the tangible connection of true reality here.

Most times we’re so busy in the mental world, so busy in the virtual world, we think that’s real. The reality is that’s not real. I’m not saying it’s not important. It’s important, but it’s not real, by the way. It’s virtual. The mental is imaginary. Conceptually, we constructed our own mental world based on whatever story, history, perception, identities, wishful thinking, problem solving, whatever it might be. Now there’s another problem. We have another word. It’s the digital world. Digital word, I think everybody knows what I’m talking about.

The word Google word, now the AI word, is a word living on the screen, on the internet, in the virtual space that you know has become so real, so tempting, so addictive. It is a simulated world. It’s assimilation based on all assimilation. To differentiate these three worlds is so important. The mental world, the digital world, is now hijacking our mind, hijacking our mental world. What is the implication of that is more disconnection from the real world. I call it the third world. The first world we’re living in is the mental world.

The second world, now we’ve been hijacked, is the digital world, the AI world. The third world we lost is the real world, including the body leaf, sensation, feeling, direct experience. We see the world, so the eye of the body. Hear the world, so the ear of this body. Smell it, so the nose of this body. We touch it, so the hand, the skin of this body. We feel it. It’s the existence of this body. It’s like we’re thinking that we are the mind, we are our identity, we are our stories, but the truth is that’s a constructed identity. The real identity is here. Deep recognition.

Reclaiming Your True Embodied Presence

The most important message I’m sharing with the world is “Without this body, I do not exist as a human being. Without this body, I do not exist as a being. Period. Without this body, I cannot experience life as a human being. Without this body, I cannot experience life as a human. Without this body, my soul cannot evolve in this lifetime. Without this body, my soul cannot evolve in this life.”

With that recognition, with that deep, profound truth, I’m still rediscovering the implications of that, but also awakening to the truth. Humanity right now is facing this crossroads of choice. Either continue the same pattern right now, lost in the mental world, then hijacked by the digital world. We’re losing the true embodied human presence, which is possible only because of this living body.

Without this body, you can’t experience life as a human being. Coming home to yourself starts inside.

I’m realizing this body is more than what we think, more than an object, more than a machine, more than just a vehicle, more than what the science is telling us, more than what our identity is telling us, more than our whole relationship with this body. That, on the one hand, is scary. On the other hand, it is super exciting. If we do not come back to this living temple of who we are, we’re going to lose not only a house, but lose life, lose being a true human. That’s one of the reasons, Zach, I have to write this book. Otherwise I cannot sleep.

Tell us. You’re describing, I’m assuming a lot about your new book, Coming Home to Embodied Awakening: Reclaim Your Body, Power, and Purpose in an Age of AI. How would you define embodied awakening?

Coming back to your question, what is the universal longing? All of these beautiful longing, love, joy, health, creativity, and connection. These five most basic human universal longings, and everything else is an expression of that outcome. The problem is we’re seeking the right thing in the wrong place. That means we’ve been seeking all these beautiful things outside of us with something else, with someone else, and continue seeking and being disappointed. You’re seeking more and being disappointed.

You’re looking for a quick fix, shortcut, whatever instantaneous gratification chasing outside of us, continuing to be disappointed and not being satisfied. Because of that, we disconnected more from the internal who we are, this human embodied presence, human embodied truth inside of us. Because of that, the first part is coming home. Coming home is externally lost. I call this human homeless. If we’re thinking about, like, thinking we talk about spirit, talking about consciousness, talking about mindsets, and everything is just mental, as if this exists as a ghost.

Truly, we talk about the mind, talking about consciousness as if it exists as a ghost. The coming home is like, instead of being lost outside of this embodied presence, coming home internally, to this presence, to this existence, to this true presence of who we are right here. That is the true coming home. That is coming from my experience of healing. I discovered not only is healing possible, but recovering from these so-called incurable conditions is more than possible.

Many have done the work to discover this truth, including myself, but more importantly, in this process, I discovered home is right here inside my body. That’s my home. That’s the home, wherever I go. That’s what true coming home means. When we go inside to this body, then we discover a new relationship with our own body, new possibility, new experience, new truth. The deeper truth of this body is beyond what we think. All perception is really misperception or mistake. Thinking this body is just a physical object, a physical machine, a physical tool, biological, whatever somatic, whatever number, measurement, whatever physical, limited perception.

Often we have these unhealthy relationships, thinking of this body as it’s like, what’s the analogy? It’s like a prison to run away from, to be free from. It’s like a problem to solve, and I do not know what to do with it. Even feel alienated, even hate my own body. No matter what our own history, story, trauma might be, the problem is the experience of the moment right now, your own relationship with your own body. That’s the one piece I’m asking people to reflect on. When we recognize these unhealthy relations to our own body, you’re like, when we perceive this body as an object, what is the implication of that?

When we perceive this body as just a machine, even this analogy is called a rental vehicle. It’s a rental vehicle if you perceive your own body as a rental vehicle. What is the implication of that? For your own health, for your own approach to your body, for your own life. For all other relationships, for example. That’s the second step of embodied awakening. It’s really about being aware of a limited and healthy relationship with your own body. It’s not about, “What to do with the body.” That’s another big problem.

Reframing Aging and Performance Pressure

We do all these practices with exercises, somatic practice, meditations, breath work, all these different techniques, yoga, even Qigong. “I’m doing these practices to fix this problem.” It’s like you perceive your own body as a problem to solve. I do this practice to, like, for some level of performance. Pushing it. This idea, for example, longevity is important, but this new movement is called anti-aging. You fight in the battle with natural aging. It’s like life is about performance, life is about functionality, life is about perfection.

That is very different from the ancient wisdom of embracing the natural way of life we call the Tao, the Tao, the Tao of the body, the Tao of life, the Tao of existence, the Tao of creation. That’s what ancient wisdom teaches us. You can only discover that by connecting with your body. The deeper discovery is that this body is more than what you think, more than diagnosis, more than story, more than template, analogy of whatever you have from your own assumption. Discover energy. Energy is the source of life. Energy is a source of creation. Energy is a source of vitality.

Energy is a source of healing. Energy is a source of joy. Energy is the source of your creativity and fulfillment. Energy is who we are. That is the continued discovery of embodied awakening. Through this discovery, not only do you commune with yourself, be one with your wholeness of yourself, not just the story of yourself, not just the identification of yourself, not just the projection of yourself by others. It’s from the deep experience of who you are.

From that, because energy exists without any boundary. Three truths you discover with energy. One is the energy existing infinitely present in the whole universe. Unlimited. That’s the first truth. The second truth is energy connecting all existence. Our limited perception perceives things as separate. Our concept, the very nature of concept, very natural language is based on separation. Naming it, this is the cup, and this is this. Automatically separates them. The energy in the space right now is invisible. It’s connecting all existence, including the tea inside of you.

 

  

No matter how the physical boundary we create with the cup, temporary boundary. Energy goes beyond these boundaries, connecting all existence. When we work with energy, we go beyond separation, beyond separation based on our own limited perception caused by physical boundaries, caused by intellectual concepts, by mental thinking. When you are letting go of that experience in the presence of energy, it’s inseparable, connecting all of us. Now quantum physics proves that. It is called non-local phenomena. The third aspect of discovery is when you’re working with energy.

Suddenly, this part of you awakens inside of you. It’s not like the energy in the Milky Way. You have to leave the planet Earth and go there together. Its energy exists inside of you already. We’re made of the same source of energy of creation, basically. When you practice movement, sound, visualization, meditation, and so on, you start to feel this energy inside of you, awakening up, opening up, connecting, and you start to feel, just naturally start to feel, feel more joy, feel more connection, feel more creativity, and feel more fulfillment.

That’s the creativity part. It starts awakening. It’s like this conversation we were talking about yesterday in the retreat is about responsibility, the importance of responsibility. We fulfill ourselves, slow responsibility. The source of this responsibility has to connect with creativity. It’s not like an obligation, not like you have to do this. You are obligated to do this, you’re expected to do this. It’s more like a choice. This choice is coming from a deeper energetic movement. Something opened up, awakening inside of you. You just couldn’t help it. In the morning you wake up like, “I have a new idea come to me. I have this new project coming to me. I feel excited about, feel passionate about.”

The rest naturally happens. That’s it. It’s like continuing doesn’t have to be huge. It’s about living life fully. People ask me like, “What do you mean, living to your purpose? What does that mean? What is the purpose?” For me, when you feel connected, then you just naturally have a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose. When you feel fully alive. That’s why I love the title of the show. When you’re alive, it’s like you naturally feel meaningful, naturally feel purposeful. You naturally feel you are doing everything contributing to life.

Releasing Contracted Energy and Chronic Stress

A deep sense of fulfillment starts to happen. Qigong is all about discovering this aliveness inside of you waiting for you. It’s like this energy is inside of you already, but the problem is, life is stressful. Whole life, decades, decades of stress. As a consequence of that stress, is your energy contract. Your body carries all the stress in the body. It doesn’t matter whether you remember or not. It doesn’t matter whether you remember a childhood trauma or not, how good or how bad the trauma in your life might be, but the body carries all the truth. The little truth. That’s why I say this world is real.

The sinking pearl is not real. Sometimes, it’s the reality, but most times it’s off, basically. Coming back to what’s real existing in your body, and part of that, what’s real is stress. That stress creates this energetic pattern of contraction, numbness, pain. Basically, the limitation we’re experiencing. To embrace that truth inside of you, that’s part of the embodied awakening. It’s awakening to that truth. All the stress of life is living in your body. No matter how much you want to think yourself out of your stress, how much you mentally think you want to control the circumstance that is causing you stress.

The truth is, the real stress is living in your body until you deal with it. You’re going to continue to be with you for the rest of your life. When we go inwardly, embracing that truth, awakening to that truth, then you go deeper, discover the energy. You discover the contraction, the discomfort, the tightness, the pain, the disease in the body is an expression of the contracted energy, contracted energy. When the same energy is awakening, opening, flowing, connecting again, then health comes back. Love comes back. Joy comes back. Your internal, everything you’re looking for comes back. The feeling is you become more alive. Four to five. That’s the equation.

I love how you’re describing this. I’ve had those experiences of feeling connected. As you said, when you do have those experiences, you feel naturally meaningful. Life has purpose. There’s meaning in there. You are more fully alive. As you’re saying, the consequences of our stress that we experience day to day, our energy contracts, which our body carries, whether we are conscious of that or not. As you’re saying, and then that leads to pain and discomfort and disease and things. How do we actually, practically move from one place to another? How do we move from that contracted energy into a more fully awakened, alive state? How do we stay there if we are?

First of all, it’s impossible to stay there perfectly as you may want to. It’s good to have that desire. It’s wishful thinking. Let me just clarify from my own experience. It’s impossible. Secondly, recognizing stress is inevitable. No matter how much you want to control the environment, how much we wish for the thinking ideology we have about life should be, should not be, about the world, about politics, whatever, history, whatever is happening right now. No matter how much you want to control the environment, it’s not going to happen the way you want. Spirit.

Embracing Discomfort to Build Real Resilience

Think about how much control you have over your relationship. How much control we have over our kids, for example. How much control we have over the weather, how much control we have over politics, not happening. Stress is inevitable. Avoiding stress does not work. Trying to control the environment you think is the cause of stress does not work. When you recognize that truth, then we can make the choice to go inwardly, going inwardly to feel the stress in the body, feel that truth of stress as part of life. “I have a tight neck, tight shoulders, and a contracted chest. I feel stuck in my belly. Lack of full, full breeze,” whatever it might be. When you notice anything, that’s one big progress already.

When you recognize the next choice, like now what I do with it, and most of the time we want to run away from it. It’s like this insidious epidemic of avoidance of discomfort inside of a body. That’s the number one problem. We’re expecting life to be perfect, expecting life to be comfortable. We’re spending so much time and energy to create something comfortable. Imagine your whole life right now. How many activities are you engaging with this pure expectation to make life more comfortable? Think about that. I can guarantee you 90% of your time and energy is spent on doing that.

By doing that, you’re causing more stress with this idea of wanting to make life more comfortable. The whole technology is based on trying to create the most comfortable life. Absence of discomfort, absence of any effort, absence of any disease even. All this new buy-hack, all these ideas like, wishing some point there will be no disease anymore, I say good luck. That’s not what life is about. When you’re energetic, it’s very simple like this. We are all energy systems. I may call this, relatively speaking, I have my own energy system, which includes the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, including the visible and non-visible.

Stress isn’t just in your head—it lives in your body. Open contracted energy patterns to restore natural vitality.

It’s more accurate to say it’s the energy body or energy field. The physical carries that. Without the physical, that energy will exist in a different way and will not be in human form. That’s me existing as an energy field. That energy field is inseparable from life, inseparable from the earth, inseparable from all the environment, inseparable from the universe, inseparable from all relationships by encounter. You can think of the internal energy and the external energy as inseparable.

There’s interaction happening, exchange of energy happening. All these interactions are based on your choice, conscious unconsciousness based on your patterns, then creating this energetic experience as human beings. In that process, whatever certain stands happen beyond what we expect, beyond what we like, whatever conceptually we define or solve. Our own energy system contracts. It’s fine. Next minute, if your energy system can open again, then you’re fine. The problem is, we’re stubborn. When we identify something is bad, then we keep on repeating that story, and your energy system continues to contract. The first victim is yourself.

You imagine if we’re doing this 24/7. That’s the worst case. Without knowing, we’re ignorant of what’s happening to this energy system. We’re living in the idea of what should be, should not be. We continue problem solving, continue wishful thinking, continue expecting the next solution, next quick fix. We’re not living in this reality, so to speak. They choose some life living in the body. Once you understand these two energy pattern, contraction, openness, then the very basic and most important essential purpose of all our practice is connecting with your body, feeling the body, where is the contraction, learning to embrace the discomfort, instead of avoiding, fighting, resisting, analyzing, wishing for someone else to take your pain away, or using the medication to numb it.

“I can open the energy. I can gently soften the energy. I can love this energy, which is part of me.” Learning self-love, self-compassion, self-care, yeah, self-empowerment, just like naturally happening. All the teaching, all the practice is taking us to this deeper connection, deeper relationship, deeper possibility of discovering this body, discovering who you are directly through the experience beyond all relationship, all assumption, all story, all diagnosis. That’s where the magic happens. Imagine a thousand people practicing together day and night for 30 days, for example.

You are in that energetic space. You’re not in this mindset of diagnosis. You’re not in this mindset of problem-solving. You’re not in the mindset of identifying yourself one way or another. You start to feel the presence, feel the energy, feel your body, and complete in different ways. Over time, accumulating this new pattern, health, or any aspect of life, including relationships, is basically just a habit. We’re living with habits.

When we’re experiencing something limiting, we’re ready for new habits. To change from an old habit to a new habit, it takes time. In this case, the practice makes it possible. You have to do it consistently to make this happen. That’s the beauty of Qigong. Not just thinking about it, not just mentally creating a new possibility or mindset. Nowadays, like so much about mindset, talking about mindset. I’m truly tired of this. Continuously missing this body connection. Deep experience.

Could you just share 1 or 2 examples of stories of people that you’ve worked with over the years that have made that transition and awakened to these energy systems within our body and become knowledgeable around that, and then what happens to their health and to their lives as that happens?

Many stories. I do not know where to begin, but she went from last litre because most current. First of all, when I ask everybody after 30 day of litre, how many years you feel younger, not just conceptually, but the feeling of your whole body, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, the wholeness, your own, direct experience of your own existence from that level, how many youngs, years you feel younger and everybody responded from like five years to decade younger. In this case, you can use the biological machine to validate these markers, biological markers.

Didn’t do that, but we have this machine actually measuring the magnetic energy field in the room and incredible change over the 30 days. It’s like resilience increasing, It’s like sixteen percent, and stress level decreased like ten percent, and then energy level increased another probably like twenty percent, and for everyone, everyone and most of them elders, we have a range of people participating from like 50 to the ‘90s.

An extraordinary thing happened last retreat among 23 practitioners, six of them over 80 years old. I’m talking about very intense physical and energetic practice. Of course, we have a lot of rest time, healing sessions, play time, meditation, and so on. Some of the practices are really challenging even for young people, and these people are doing it. Even though they’re over 80 years old, never missed any session and are just incredibly inspirational. Indicating so many of us, at whatever age it might be, 60, 70, 80s, we pay more attention to longevity, may pay more attention to vitality, even deeply want to discover.

Restoring Mobility and Energy at Any Age

What’s like for the next chapter of life? Could it be 10 years left? Could it be 30 years left? Could it be more than what you think? How to live the rest of life is a big question. I feel so fortunate. Discovering Qigong allows me not only to share this, but I can live much more fully than I would have imagined twenty years ago. This has become not just a concept anymore, but the story I want to share with you is this woman at the age of 71, her name is Mary, came to the liturgy, and she came not because of that diagnosis. The diagnosis was severe.

It’s a scientific diagnosis as a genetic disease in your muscles, especially the lower part of the body, would deteriorate over time. Obviously, she was told there was no cure. Worse than that is her mother had a similar condition. Towards the late part of her life, her mother’s life, she couldn’t move. Spent most years in bed until the last minute. She had that identity already, verified by science that cannot kill this condition. She is interested in exploring energy practice and new possibilities.

Physical revitalization is possible at 70, 80, or beyond. Energy connection stays available throughout your entire life.

She is a psychotherapist and is helping a lot of people who are still very active in her profession. She came to the retreat without expectation of physical healing. In the first week, around nine days, we were dancing in Akiva, and she started dancing with the group, then asked her to walk. Because she was doing the practice most of the time by sitting. Yeah. She couldn’t stand up in perfect balance. She had to alternate between standing for a while, then sitting for a while, do minimum practice, but she was very dedicated. After the dance, after work, ask her, “When was the first time you were able to dance and walk like that?”

She said, “Nine years ago.” She said, “Never expect that could even be possible.” That doesn’t mean after that she can walk 40, dancing 40 freely. That people expect her to be like, “Q should be like this, right?” What happened is she continuously practiced, and I literally challenged her to say, “Now start to walk every day on this path, like about 200 feet back and forth, and without the walker, without a stick.” When they asked her to come with us to the labyrinth, it’s areas. In the beginning, she was using the walking stick, slowly, one step at a time, asking her, “Letting go of the stick.” Everybody was worried. What if she falls?

Whatever, everybody was worried, but she was determined enough to start walking slowly without a stick. In the middle, she fell down. Everybody was like, “Oh my God.” I asked her, “Get up now.” Ask her, “How do you feel?” She’s like, “I’m surprised again. I can get up the way I did.” I said, “If you can get up after you fall this time, then next time you can do it the same way. Now, this time, if you can walk 100 feet, the next time you can do it again.”

What I’m trying to share with you here, healing is not like “Our wishful thinking of miracles.” It’s a miracle already. She made something diagnosed as impossible and now made it possible. The process of making it happen is like the continuous choice we’re facing. If we allow ourselves to fall and to get up, then healing naturally continuously improves, continuously happening. When we’re trying to do everything, avoiding the fall, we continue limiting ourselves. Unfortunately, I’m looking at this pattern.

There’s almost like a universal pattern when we’re getting older. We continuously avoid things, thinking we’ll fall, we’ll be problematic, we’ll be dangerous, we’ll be risky. “I cannot move anymore. I cannot run anymore. I cannot walk anymore. I cannot do this anymore.” Your energy continuously contracts. The consequence is basically easy to predict. No matter how much drug you use, how much biohack you use, how much miracle pill you take, you’re losing your own internal power, internal connection. That connection with the source energy is available no matter how old we are. It’s like to last a moment of breath. When we die, this connection continues in new ways.

What we are doing in Qigong is like you discovering this connection with the source, no matter what your name might be. Why are you still in this body? Why are you still in human form? Why are you still struggling in a human way? Discovering that connection is always available, present. When we return into this body, you just naturally discover that deep connection. That is the embodied awakening. It’s not about leaving the body somewhere to discover the heaven paradox or leaving this planet Earth for another planet wishing for a utopian humanity. That’s the invitation. That is the process I’m inviting.

Thank you so much for sharing that. That really is an amazing story, a beautiful story. As you’re saying, healing is not something that just happens once and done. It’s a process and a continual process and evolution in that way.

That’s the most empowering thing. At this moment we can do it. Next moment we can do it. The rest of life we can do it. Isn’t that empowering? For with the mind thinking, “I have to do whatever takes that as a complete list, a to-do list. Once you finish this and suddenly are out, then so what?” It’s like learning how to live fully in this moment. No matter what the diagnosis is, no matter what your physical limitation experience is, no matter what your history of trauma, whatever it might be, you can do this with Chicago.

Come back to your body, and you can live like this. It doesn’t matter whether they are 70 years old, 80 years old, 90 years old. The beauty for me is like, “I can do this until the last breath of my life. I feel so good about that.” It’s like, I’m like, “I have to do this.” You want to finish something, then move on. No, it’s living. It’s fully alive, fully fulfilled. Life continued to be imperfect. That’s the nature of life, the truth of life. It’s a gift. I can talk more, but I think. We share so much more already. It’s wonderful to share with you, with all audiences.

Thank you so much. This has truly been a gift to spend this time with you and to learn from you. For people who want to dive in or maybe check out your book, it’s Coming Home to Embodied Awakening. You can find that. I know a number of different websites, but MingtongGu.com is probably the best place to connect with you. Is that right?

Yes.

They can find your book anywhere that books are sold.

We offer online training as well in person intensively. We have a really global community connected with each other without any limitation of physical distance. Again, Qigong is accessible for everyone, no matter what your age, no matter what your health condition. No matter what your cultural background, it’s not based on any faith or dogma. It’s really based on your own discovery of who you are. That’s the most exciting part.

 

  

Never bow every day. Accessible for everybody. Can people find out about your retreats at that website as well?

Yes.

It sounds like your retreats are pretty long, extended.

As long as one month. Most people stay whole months actually.

Sounds great. As I said, this has been amazing and such a gift and a privilege to speak with you. Thank you for the amazing work that you’re doing to really bring full life to so many people. Thank you for sharing that with us, Mingtong.

It’s truly my pleasure. It’s like this is the only mission in my life, and deeply fulfilled, and in any way I can help. I’ll be so delighted. Thank you for what you do. Appreciate your presence. Appreciate doing what you’re doing. Thank you.

Have an amazing day. Thank you so much.

—

What a fascinating conversation. I hope you experienced that as a gift. It’s not really every day that you get to speak with or learn from a Qigong master. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. A few things that I’ll just highlight that resonated for me as well was, he shared about these universal human longings that we all have love, joy, which he said a lot of times we long for happiness, but ultimately that leads us to longing for joy, health and vitality, and then connection or belonging.

He shared what he’s called his primary message. I’ll just repeat that because it didn’t really resonate with me either. “Without this body, I do not exist as a human being. Without this body, I cannot experience life as a human being.” I love that. That’s so important that we, as he described, think about the way that we interact with our own embodied selves and with our own bodies. He said another thing that stuck out to me. The number one problem is that we’re avoiding discomfort.

He said, 90% of our energy expenditure goes to wanting to make life more comfortable. What if we just instead embraced discomfort as a natural part of life, and that we could gently soften that energy and learn self-love and have a deeper connection with the possibility of what actually is possible? He also talked about just that this idea of healing is a process that takes time and develops over time. It’s a choice that we can make each day to move into a healthier state.

I hope that you’ll do that. I hope you’ll take a deeper dive and reflect on some of the things that he shared. You can find him at MingtongGu.com. That’s where you can also find his book. You can learn about his retreat center. He has one week to 30 day long retreats there in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Check it out, do a deeper dive. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have an amazing day. We’ll see you back here next time on the show.

 

 

Important Links

• Mingtong Gu
• Coming Home to Embodied Awakening: Reclaim Your Body, Power, and Purpose in an Age of AI
• Reclaim Your Body in an Age of Disconnection
• Mingtong Gu on LinkedIn
• The Chi Center on Instagram
• The Chi Center on Facebook