The Seven Foundations of Practice
Every practice we teach falls into one of seven categories.
Breathe. Activate. Warm Up. Stretch. Flow. Posture. Rest and Meditation.
That is the whole list. It is short on purpose, because it is meant to be carried in your head while you are standing in front of a room, not looked up afterward.
Why a teacher needs this
Most people learning Qigong collect movements. They finish a course knowing 40 practices and still cannot build a class, because a pile of movements is not a class any more than a pile of ingredients is a meal.
The Seven Foundations are what turn the pile into something you can work with. Once you know which category a movement belongs to, you know what job it does. Once you know what job it does, you know where it goes.
There is a line I use with the certification students: without breath there is no Qigong, only choreography. The same principle runs through all seven. Each foundation is doing a specific piece of work on the body, and a class that skips one leaves that work undone.
The seven
Breathe. Breath is the gateway to Qi. Deep, rhythmic, abdominal breathing calms the mind and moves energy. Smooth even breath underneath every movement and every meditation. Practices here include Abdominal Breathing, Cleansing Breath, Wave Breath, Two Gate Breathing.
Activate. Wake the system up. Tapping, brushing, slapping, sound, acupressure. These break up stagnation and invite aliveness back into a body that has been sitting still. Shaking, Tapping, Sound, Laugh, Brushing Down the Body, Bing.
Warm Up. Open the joints before asking for bigger movement. Circulation comes up, the nervous system gets a heads-up, the Qi starts moving freely. Magic 5, Open the Gates, Meridian Qigong Warmup.
Stretch. Clears stagnant energy and makes space for vitality. We stretch the way cats do, gently and often, through soft spirals and waves rather than through effort. Eagle Side Stretch, Heavy Elbows, Spiral Palms, Pulling Water from a Well.
Flow. Continuous movement, and it runs on surrender rather than effort. This is where the practice starts circulating energy and lifting the spirit. Swimming Dragon, Quan Yin Paints a Rainbow, Flying Dove, Cloudy Hands.
Posture. Alignment is not cosmetic. Soften the knees, root the feet, lengthen the spine, and the body becomes a vessel that can gather, store and radiate Qi. Embracing the Tree, the Dragon, the Leopard, the Tiger, Core Strengtheners, Horse Stance.
Rest and Meditation. Stillness is where the Qi settles and the practice gets absorbed. Skip it and you have exercised. Include it and you have practiced. Infinity Breath Meditation, Metta, Inner Smile, Qi Washing, deep relaxation.
The thing most people get wrong
They treat this as a checklist and run it top to bottom in order.
It is not an order. It is a set of categories. Plenty of practices sit in two of them at once, and the sequence of a class is a separate question with its own answer, which is the Five Elemental Class Design Framework. How those two fit together is at the two questions every class answers.
A class is not a collection of practices. It is a journey through the seven foundations, in an order that serves the people in front of you.
Where this comes from
The Seven Foundations are taught in the Great Energy Qigong Teacher Certification. If you are new to the practice itself rather than to teaching it, start at what is Qigong or with the beginner exercises. We have also written about the foundations of healing Qigong and why Qigong is so powerful on the blog.
The wider case for this approach is on the blog at Unlocking Great Energy: a modern approach to Qigong.
Great Energy also runs the Autoimmune Recovery Method, Daniela Hess's root-cause work for moving an Autoimmune condition toward remission.
Frequently asked questions
What are the seven foundations of Qigong practice?
Breathe, Activate, Warm Up, Stretch, Flow, Posture, and Rest and Meditation. Every Qigong practice falls into at least one of these seven categories, and many sit in two.
Do you have to do the seven foundations in order?
No. They are categories, not a sequence. The order a class travels is a separate framework, the Five Elemental Class Design arc.
Why do teachers need this framework?
Because knowing forty movements does not tell you how to build a class. Once you know which category a movement belongs to, you know what job it does and where it fits.
Which foundation do people skip most often?
Rest and Meditation, usually because the class has run long. It is the most costly thing to cut, because it is where the practice gets absorbed.
Where are the seven foundations taught?
In the Great Energy Qigong Teacher Certification, developed by Christopher Grant and Daniela Hess.
By Christopher Grant, Great Energy.
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.