Inner Foundation: the ground you teach from
Dimensions 1 to 5 of the 25 Dimensions. These are the ones nobody sees.
The five dimensions of inner foundation
1. Your own practice
You cannot teach Qigong from theory. You have to teach it from your own body.
When you skip practice, your teaching thins out into ideas. When you are consistent, people can feel that you live inside what you are describing. Five to fifteen minutes daily is enough to keep you clear. And the practices you teach should be the practices you do. If you teach Spirals of Serenity, spiral every day.
2. Embodied understanding
There is a difference between knowing something and knowing it in your body.
You can know that stagnant Liver Qi produces frustration. Until you have noticed it in yourself, felt the rigidity, cleared it, and felt the flexibility come back, it is a sentence you repeat. Practice the same sequence for 40 days and watch what shifts. That is where teaching authority actually comes from.
3. Honest self-assessment
A good teacher knows their own edges.
When a student asks something you do not know, say I do not know, let me find out. That teaches something more useful than the answer would have.
Know your own wounds too. A teacher who knows theirs can hold space for a student working through theirs. A teacher who does not will project them into the room without noticing.
4. Trust in the intelligence of the practice
Qigong is older than your nervous system and has been tested for a very long time. You do not have to push it.
Offer it clearly and trust that people will respond. That trust shows up as ease in your teaching, and ease is contagious. Anxiety about whether it is working is also contagious, which is the problem.
5. Willingness to evolve
The teacher you are now is not the teacher you will be in 5 years.
The moment you decide you have it figured out is the moment you stop. The teachers who stay alive in this are still asking questions and still getting surprised by the practice.
The next group is Structure and Flow. If you want the practical side of sustaining yourself as a teacher, Qigong for yoga teachers covers some of the same ground from a different angle.
Part of the 25 Dimensions of Sharing Qigong.
If your own practice is the part that has slipped, the beginner exercises are a reasonable place to restart without ceremony.
By Christopher Grant, Great Energy.
Frequently asked questions
How much daily practice does a Qigong teacher need?
Five to fifteen minutes is enough to stay clear. The practices you teach should be the practices you actually do.
What should a teacher say when they do not know an answer?
Say you do not know and that you will find out. That teaches something more useful than the answer would have.
Where to go next
If you have never practiced Qigong. Jump Start Your Energy is a free beginner class. No background needed, nothing to buy, and it is the fastest way to find out whether any of this does anything for you. Most people know within one session.
If you practice and want to go deeper. We teach live classes online every week, and there is a self-paced Introduction to Qigong if you would rather work through it in your own time.
If you want to teach this. Everything in this library is drawn from the Great Energy Qigong Teacher Certification. The frameworks are here in full because they are more useful shared than withheld. The training is where you learn to deliver them.
Keep reading. The rest of the framework library is at the Library, and our longer articles are on the blog.
Great Energy is an independent educational organization founded by Christopher Grant and Daniela Hess.