Tag: QIGONG

Find your peace with Qigong

Hannah TelluselleLeave a comment

Have you ever seen a group of people in a park, moving in slow motion with a flow like the breeze? Then you might have encountered Qigong practitioners.

Qigong comes from Tibet and China and is practiced on the same fundamentals as Chinese Medicine, where each motion corresponds to an organ and its meridians, together with a natural element and an emotion, that we seek to balance. Qigong can both be practiced to invigorate ourselves and to relax after we have released stress. It’s said that some practices were invented in the Shaolin Temple and therefor is the foundation of Martial Arts. After some practice, you learn to feel energy in your hands and can even direct energy or withdraw, if you’re very advanced. Some old practitioners have even used Qigong as part of surgery techniques in the Philippines. I have both received healing and given healing. It’s simply a matter of removing stagnant energy blocks and invite more energy to flow. Nowadays, there are tons of videos online that shows and teaches Qigong, but as always, the best way is of course in person with a renowned master. The master takes on adepts or students that he teaches. Eventually, they will continue the master’s teachings and achieve mastery themselves in initiated lineages. So, always ask who the teacher’s teacher has been!

I was first introduced to Medical Qigong in 1995 through a co-worker I had a brief relationship with. He noticed my stress and anxiety and took me first to get acupuncture. I received this weekly for a couple of months by a Chinese doctor, working together with Master Marcus Bongart in the south of Sweden. He has been taught his qigong in direct lineage with the Wu family. Soon, I was recommended to start practicing and learned the program called Six Secret Words. This is a series of motions that each target one of the organs and I soon learned it enough to be able to practice it at home too. I did this, as well as tried Luohan, regularly for 20 years! At the first instructed workshop however, my Kundalini began rising when Master Marcus stimulated my spine and I had a strong reaction, where I felt I needed to defend myself and suddenly felt like I was 12 years old again. This only lasted for half an hour or so, but it would take some weeks for me to gain trust enough to feel good about continuing. Luckily, I could talk about it with both my co-worker and my teacher, so I pushed through. But it wasn’t until I felt my inner child returning in Portugal 2019 that I understood what had transpired and was behind my reaction. 

I also learned how to meditate by doing the Microcosmic Orbit, that aims to move energy up the spine and down our front through breath and visualization. I had never meditated before and the first times, I could hardly sit still for more than 10 minutes, less focus on my breath as long. But with time, this became easier and I could increase my concentration, at least sometimes! I began adding affirmations to my gather of energy to become instead of a mantra, with focused breathing.

While Qigong is founded on Taoism and not directly opposed to Christianity, I began to feel awkward about it and stopped for a while. In 2015, however, I found Lee Holden Qigong online and decided to try his 7 minutesroutine. It provided me with immediate relief and with no strings attached in relationships, or anything feeling like power dominance, it became better for me to let go of the other series and try his programs instead. I have done this off and on since then, that is, for another ten years, making my practice experience now come to 30 years! I also practice 8 pieces of Silk Brocade since 2023, which feels wholesome and like a good resource.

Practicing Qigong to me, is like taking an internal shower, a mental and emotional reset with a physical clearing. 

Once when I lived in Honolulu in 2011, I prayed and directed energy, blessing and placing my hands on the kidneys of a young woman, scheduled for a transplant and was calling the ambulance. I continued until they came and surprisingly to all of us, she came back to the YWCA already the next day, with a placed shunt, and no need for a transplant any longer! Several months later, she was still healed.

If you’d like to watch me practice some Qigong, you can see that on Instagram. To learn from Lee Holden, find him on holdenqigong.com and his Master Mantak Chia at mantakchia.com

To listen to this blogpost as a podcast, find The Source Podcast on YouTube, Apple and Spotify.

Celebrating 20 years of Hula, and more…

Hannah TelluselleLeave a comment

This year, it’s been exactly 20 years since I first started practicing Hula dancing in Hawaii. It also is 30 years ago since I began with Qigong, first for Master Marcus Bongart and then Lee Holden, and about 25 years ago, I began with Yoga for Anette Larjard and a Swiss Mordern dance teacher named Melanie. So, I thought I’d share what this has taught and healed in me.

Qigong has taught me, how to meditate, and how to move with mindful intentions to balance my inner organs and their attached emotions, according to Chinese Medicine. A way to work with energy, and to find center.

Yoga, was a way to become better friends with my body and learn how to move in pace with my breathing. Nowadays, I practice yoga at home, to stretch, and to develop strength and flexibility, as a foundation for dancing.

In 2004, I hadn’t danced anything more than out on clubs, for almost ten years, when I saw an ad in the paper, where I used to go practice, where they offered West African dance. I did this for about two years, and it enabled me to become much more precisely attuned to rhythms, as well as losing up some of my physical (and perhaps mental!) rigidity, while also releasing stress. It was raw, but grounding.

During the fall, I made my first visit to Hawaii (Oahu and a short stop on Big Island), where I saw Hula being performed at the beach at sunset in Waikiki. It totally mesmerized me and I started to feel a longing to grow long hair, wear long dresses, and dare to adorn myself with flowers. I had just had a white lily behind my ear at my mother’s wedding a year earlier, and this became the natural next step. To pause, reflect and grieve after her passing. Thanks to renewed student loan, I went back to study spring semester 2005, and found a small ad with Hula-classes, offered on evenings at University of Hawaii, Center for Hawaiian studies, and went. Here, Kumu Jared Kukaho’omalu Souza, shared how Hula is taught and its Uniki-process, where a historical layer is embedded. It became a meeting with a different culture, but mostly a meeting with my own pretences of wanting to look a certain way, where I learned eventually to become instead. Dancing Hawaiian Hula, enabled me to reclaim the power of my voice through chanting, as well as to move more softly and slowly, letting go of my harsh body language. I also started to walk slower, when I returned to Sweden. At home, I continued to practice by watching a DVD from the Merrie Monarch Festival, did my own choreographic interpretations to Swedish folksongs, and performed a couple of times, as well as led beginner’s workshops.

In 2010, I returned to Hawaii, to finish my Master’s degree, and was able to attend another Halau Hula, with another initiated Kumu; Marian Ka’ipo Park, who has performed at the Merrie Monarch. In this group, we also went on several excursions with ceremonies, and listened to the stories of passed on monarchs, besides learning various choreographies and using implements. And in 2011, I became a member of Unity Church in Honolulu and participated in their group as well, including performing at Christmas and Easter. In Honolulu, I also tried Ecstatic dancing, which I find to be a way to connect back with the tribal motions, we do at clubs, but with more improvisations and variations.

I continued my practice back in Sweden, held some more workshops and a couple of performances, but mostly on my own. Dancing Hula, enables me to step into a Hawaiian feeling for a moment, to float in tune with the ocean’s waves, and to tell stories with my hands. Still learning and still discovering things to improve! I also took classes in Jazz and Modern again, and performed in the dance school’s recitals.

In 2014, I began dancing Isadora Duncan for Kathleen Quinlan in Stockholm, Sweden, which brought me home to myself and my aspirations as a young girl to dance ballet, but with more freedom of movement, more emotions, and more spiritual mysteries, than. In 2019, I continued dancing with workshops and classes on Zoom on occasion, for Lori Belilove and her dance company members. Thanks to dancing Isadora Duncan, I’ve gained more sensuality, as well as gotten a stronger posture and expression, developing my solar plexus into what it was supposed to become, returning to being my true self, and reclaiming my inner child’s joy. But really, becoming more woman.

More about my journey, can be found in my books here.

Does practicing yoga and qigong make you more creative?

Hannah TelluselleLeave a comment

It’s time to debunk a myth. Practicing yoga or qigong, doesn’t make you creative. Most kids, grow up without ever practicing either, and still are creative. I wrote short stories, and my brother took apart and put back together computers, when we were young, and we never practiced neither yoga, nor qigong, and neither did our parents. What makes us creative, is usually an urge to express and release anxiety, a way to understand our impression, answer questions and ponderings about life that we distil into art, or a wish to solve a problem with an invention. It’s even said that: “Necessity is the mother of all inventions.”, meaning that when we face an urgency, we become more creative, whether that is to fix something broken, or to make a meal only with what we already have at home. Did Einstein and Picasso practice yoga or qigong? No, but physical exercise can make you feel more relaxed and in a flow, I’ve noticed. Just like taking a nap can.

I practice qigong, to balance my enery-levels, such as to remove feelings and impressions of negativity, to pull myself together if I feel I’ve gotten into a slump, and to find clarity, so that I can be more focused and concentrated, which in turn may help during my creative pursuits, meetings, work, or studies. But, I’ve never come up with any ideas, during, or directly after, practicing neither yoga nor qigong. I might feel the urge to remember something that I need to do and write that down, since this sometimes surface.

Music and dance though, let me connect with what’s in my heart, propelling me into for example, writing poetry. I’ve developed my creativity, through advertising school and related work as a copywriter, as well as through taking dance-classes in various styles, at least off and on, since I was a little girl beginning with classical ballet, making it possible to assemble my own choreographies. In fact, this year marks the 30th anniversary since I started with Qigong and the 20th since I started practicing Hawaiian Hula (and I’ve done Yoga regularly for 22 years and danced Isadora Duncan for 11 years)!

To learn more about creativity, you can order my book here, or contact me for a coaching session, where I will help you be a sounding board with questions that enable you to find your own best answers!