What Qigong Taught Me about Being Precise with Words

in my two-plus decades of teaching writing, I’ve taught my clients and students about the importance of finding the precise word, or as they say in Paris, “le mot juste.”  Yet, last week at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies I received a deeper level of the teaching myself.

I spent five days at Omega in Rhinebeck, NY, assisting my qigong master teacher, Robert Peng (on the sixth day I taught a writing workshop to staff members). I felt thrilled to be invited to assist my teacher and, of course, I wanted to do my absolute best.

When Robert asked me to lead, “Three Treasures Standing Meditation,” I experienced a couple of hours of panic and procrastination. But when I got down to the work of committing the words of this meditation to heart, I discovered, in a deeper way than I ever have before, the true power of precision when it comes to word choice.

I experienced quite directly how a sufficient word is not the same as a precise and perfect word. In this post, I’ll share some of the words that made a difference—and took me and, perhaps, the students I led, to a deeper place than the approximate words I’d been using earlier.

The Lead Up to Training

Leading up to the workshop, I asked a few friends who’d assisted before about what to expect. Should I be prepared to lead all of the practices taught in the Master Key (or Qigong Empowerments) training or just certain ones?

The consensus was that my fellow assistant Bethany and I would likely be asked to lead “Four Golden Wheels.” This is my favorite practice and the one I teach in both my writing class and the qigong class I recently began offering in my backyard on Thursday mornings.

We might be asked to demonstrate some of the other practices during the training, but likely with video or audio accompaniment. It sounded from experience that it was unlikely we’d have to know all the words to these other practices.

Still, I felt a niggling doubt. What if Robert asked me to teach “Three Treasures Standing Meditation”? It’s a beautiful practice but I find it much harder to meditate while standing. Therefore, I practice it infrequently and rarely teach it. I did lead it on the Zoom call I led last year, but I had a “cheat sheet” with the words printed out in a big font to help me remember the flow.

Leading up to the July training, I practiced the meditation some more, and even taught it in my morning qigong class a couple of times. Yet by July, I still did not know the words by heart… maybe I wouldn’t need to.

Preparing for Flow

As I packed for my trip, I had second thoughts. What if Robert asked me to lead Three Treasures? I searched for and found the unopened CDs of the Master Key Series on my bookshelf. (In the past I’ve used the videos, rather than just audio, when inclined to accompany my practice with instruction.) Luckily, I’d purchased the CDs on a previous trip to Omega, and my car is old enough to have a CD player!

I packed the CDs and played “Three Treasures Standing Meditation” over and over for 85% of the four hours of my car ride throughout Rhode Island, Connecticut and a bit of New York State. Boy, were there a lot of words! Good ones. The meditation read like a beautiful poem that offered an experience.

But I found myself missing entire lines, mixing up words and leaving out important details. I realized it would take a lot to memorize it, word for word. There were so many places to accidentally forget a direction, misplace a line or use the wrong words!

Four Golden Wheels

On the third day of class, I enjoyed leading the morning practice that opened our day—Four Golden Wheels—which helps us experience our connection to vitality, love, wisdom and Spirit as we empower these energy centers by connecting to Heaven Qi, Earth Qi and Humanity Qi.

In this four-part practice, we begin by grounding and relaxing the entire body through qigong shaking, a practice that’s become quite popular on TikTok (so I hear). Here’s the first part of the practice (which I name qigong bouncing in this video, but is referred to as qigong shaking in this particular practice):

In every “Get Your Writing Done” training, I lead the class through this practice at the beginning of our time together, as a powerful way to open to creative flow.

Likewise, I often lead the writing group through the next two phases of “Four Golden Wheels” — “Swinging” (imagine swinging from the moon!) and, during our mid-writing break after an hour, I often lead “Blessing,” another beautiful flow that gets us in touch with gratitude as we spread the Universal Qi throughout our energy centers and entire body. The creative muse loves gratitude!

It’s rare in the writing class to get to the fourth practice, “Channeling”—the most challenging of the four, but still fairly straightforward. I practice it several times a week and always include it in my backyard qigong class on Thursdays.

Fast forward to leading Four Golden Wheel at Omega:  I felt energized and playful leading this practice, which made it fun. I felt confident because of all the hours I’d put into practicing and teaching it. My teacher was pleased and offered helpful feedback for improvement (“Make clear the transition between inhaling Universal Qi and exhaling the Qi down the Central Meridian.”). I’m sure there is more I can improve, but I imagine my teacher wanted me to focus on one improvement at a time!

My Mistake? (or There are No Mistakes)

After the feedback, I laughingly shared that I spent close to four hours studying “Three Treasures Standing Meditation” in the car by playing the CD on repeat. You can probably guess what happened next!

Yup. An invitation to lead the much harder meditation I’d been listening to, but had nowhere near memorized! I said I could try, but mentioned I did not have all the words. Robert responded, “You can practice today.” (We had the whole afternoon and evening off on Wednesday.) “Every word is very important. I chose each one carefully.”

Robert reminded me to practice with the words and motions in sync.

Now the pressure was on. Consciously, I did not feel ready to volunteer for this responsibility! However, at some level, I must have known it would take me to a new level of understanding and

from the meditation practice—otherwise, why would I have mentioned it, right?

The Preparation

After lunch, as my classmates went for hikes in the woods, strolls in the flower garden, naps or trips into Rhinebeck and the surrounding rolling hills, I returned to our classroom, having printed out the words (thank you, Omega Guest Services!).

As I stood on the podium, I looked at the previously filled—now “empty”—chairs and felt the loving presence of each student in the class, several of whom I’ve known for a few years. Others were new friends I’d met during this particular training. I felt a profound connection and knew that this supportive group would not judge me. I felt the support of my teacher, Robert, his wife Dongmei, and my fellow assistant Bethany.

My heart opened to the practice, to the various people, to myself and to these potent forces of the universe that we access during the meditation. I felt uplifted and had a sense I could do this! It became clear I had something to offer my classmates once I learned the practice by heart and allowed the beautiful words to carry us through.

I remembered all the other years I’d been in this special classroom (Stillwater) learning qigong. And I thought about the many qigong masters who had practiced Four Golden Wheels for hundreds of years or perhaps millennia. My heart filled with gratitude and awe at the gift of this profound practice handed down from master to students throughout time.

WOW!

I asked for guidance and support and began.

The Power of Precise Wording

As I dove into the words, I realized just how powerfully they served as guidance and instruction. The wording of each sentence showed a profound mastery of the English language.

Each sentence invited a focused experience. The practice begins with specific instructions on how to stand and hold the body (Starting Posture) and how to use your imagination to get the precise stance (“Imagine you are standing on a tall stool.”) Each metaphor brought ease and grace.

Patterns and Repetition

One thing that helped me memorize the meditation was the pattern followed in each of the five main phases of the practice:

• We always begin with moving into the posture.
• We imagine some metaphor (Qi expanding like a beach ball, for example).
• We inhale and exhale while paying attention to a specific area of the body and visualizing.
• We connect with the Qi (universal life force energy) in specific ways (absorbing certain Qi, for example)
• We experience a fusing and empowerment of the energy.

The straightforward, clear verbs, like “imagine” and “pay attention” and “feel” immediately guide us easily into the experience.

Each phrase offered clues to evoke nuances of posture through specific verbs and expressive adverbs, such as “gently stretch your head,” “inhale as you lift your shoulders,” and “rest your tongue.”  When I used a slightly different word, “place your tongue” instead of “rest your tongue,” or “raise” instead of “lift your shoulders,” I noticed that some precision was lost because of my error.

When I accidentally said, “hands” instead of “palms,” how to place the hands became less clear. My teacher’s meticulous word choices truly guided each student and made it EASY for each person to flow into each step.

The specific wording also took us very slowly through the practice, paying attention to every small movement, and syncing the breath with each movement.

“A pillar of dazzling light.”

My teacher had underlined certain phrases and words to make clear which words to emphasize. Many of these were especially inviting and spot-on metaphors. Certain ones were so inspiring, I felt myself lighting up and imagined my fellow participants experiencing something similar during many of my favorite phrases:

• “Your life is blessed by the universe!”
• “…like a pillar of dazzling light”
• “Smile and allow the feeling to spread everywhere!”

My Oops

And, yes, I did forget a line—”palms facing outward.” Not only did I forget the line, but my palms faced inwards, as we do in a different posture for a different practice! Oops.

While my eyes were closed in meditation, Robert gently turned my palms to face outward. I added the line, albeit a bit later than intended.

After this experience of commiting the words to memory and heart, I found I had a new relationship with the meditation. I realized I could go much deeper than I had been (and take my students deeper), just by paying closer attention to the specific words. Each word carries information and a vibration or frequency that contributes to the experience. I imagine that, over time, this relationship to the meditation will continue to grow.

During the training, I noticed that, at times, I dove deep into the practice and other times I found myself focusing just on saying the correct words. The next day, my fellow assistant Bethany Ryker led the meditation and made a similar observation about how the concentration on correct wording can get in the way of embodying. I’m confident that as we practice more and teach it more, it will become easier to embody the words more fully.

Having enjoyed the meditation so much more deeply, I now am excited to teach it to my students this Thursday. I even shared it with a couple of people I had met during lunch on the day I procrastinated. They shared about their polyvagal theory workshop. I shared about my simultaneous excitement and trepidation in preparing to lead Three Treasures.

The following day, these new friends were curious about how the meditation went. Then they asked me to share it. I led them through it, this time, palms facing outward!

Here’s Qigong Master Robert Peng talking about the benefits of Three Treasures Standing Meditation.

And here is Robert leading the very beginning of this beautiful meditation.