So, you are interested in studying qigong? Well, you have come to the right place! Qigong and, in particular, New Forest© Qigong is one of the most complete systems and schools of qigong around. The New Forest© Paradigm contains several distinct schools of Internal Arts. Internal Arts are movement arts where there is more going on in your mind than with physical movement. At Taomatrix, New Forest© Qigong is where it all starts.
There are many different schools of qigong from many other traditions. There are Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist, Muslim schools to name a few. There are also specific qigong schools for music, poetry, sex, caligraphy, medical, mystic states, and many others! qigong schools have evolved for many reasons and purposes. Some of them are very specific, such as aligning your energy with the seasons, some of them for general health and well-being - such as 5 Animal Frolics. Some come from a time 4500 years ago, such as Ching Shen Nui Gung, you can imagine the folks that did that qigong had a very different world view from our own!
Sifu Fey, The Blue Dragon lineage holder (Lamm Loong Pac), has over 2000 Arts to keep alive for the next generation. Now for most of you, that will mean nothing, but for over 750 years, when some arts became lost over time, or when they had moved in a direction that lost the original signal, it has fallen to the Blue Dragon Lineage holder - who held the information and could correct the situation. A formidable task to keep so many signals clean. Sifu Fey looked across the breadth of all the qigong traditions in his lineage and what the accomplished and looked for similarities between them.
The question New Forest© answered was, "How could Sifu access the wealth of knowledge from all of these schools of Qigong so that he could pass on the information, simply and effectively to encourage the same revelations and outcomes contained in all of those original Arts?" New Forest©, simply put, is designed in a way to access ancient this ancient knowledge. It is a precise way to study the foundations of how we think, move, breathe and visualize and how we can access parts of ourselves that have been mostly ignored in our modern age.
Whether you are aware of it or not, how we relate to ourselves - our perception of reality, our health, and our community - are formed in part by our own cultural experience. The one thing that we share across time and cultural differences is this amazing tofu eating, quiche metabolizing, air-breathing, body, and mind that moves across this mudball rocketing through space!
I would ask some questions of you? Are there more people than ever dealing with anxiety, even in the last 20 years? Have you noticed more unhappy people who feel disconnected from their environment, themselves, families, and communities? Do you see an increase in the way people feel separate from their health and well-being? Consider how reluctant we are to use the word "play" as we get older. Yet, if you don't know it, play is one of the single most significant gifts to learning and understanding new information and experiencing happiness. My Grandad in the Panhandle of Texas, never did what he would call Qigong, yet I remember him engaging people, the land around him, and mindfully doing things that I don't see people doing much anymore.
New Forest© Qigong is a "remembering" from people much like us who noticed what was being forgotten. A remembering of that joy that sprouts from experiencing a sunrise or a sunset completely, of playing in the blue sky-covered field without any hurry or worry. Of really relaxing and feeling the nourishment that comes from stillness. The wonder that comes from watching a camp fire under a starlit night and and feeling how the light felt like safety and warmth. Qigong is a way to remember those parts of ourselves forgotten, those parts that enjoyed the life that felt happy and healthy. It is the Art of Astonishment, at what is within us to discover. It is a lovely journey.
New Forest© is not an intellectual understanding; it is an interaction that has to be felt and experienced. Words will only get in the way. All you have to do is: "Play" New Forest© Qigong: you move, you breathe, you visualize, and a sacred precinct begins to form around you - connecting you to feelings and experiences locked deep within every cell of your body and mind.
Taomatrix dedicates itself to the idea and practice of awakening in ourselves a healthy, vibrant, astonishing experience of life. But first, you must learn and practice new ideas, movements, and concepts and drop a few bad habits to get at what is already there! So I hope you will join me in this Art I started many years ago. There is no finish line; you don't arrive; you experience moments more deeply. I still play every day, not because I have to, but because of the simple wonder it reveals to me of being alive, constantly renewed by the simple acts of mindfulness.