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Heart Song: Qigong and Meditation for Fire and Summer

Live Online Course

With Mimi Kuo-Deemer

May 25th, 2025 - June 14th, 2025

How can the song of our heart shine brightly, even when internal or external energies become chaotic, draining, or challenging?

How can we help our hearts feel more attuned to life’s rhythms and resonate more fully with our experiences?

These questions lie at the core of Daoist and Buddhist practice, and finding answers to them is a courageous commitment to turning inwards, listening and learning from the body’s deepest truths.

Join meditation, qigong, and internal martial arts teacher Mimi Kuo-Deemer for a month-long journey into nurturing and liberating the song of your heart.

Guided by Mimi, we will explore the heart and its three allies in Chinese medicine and qigong: the small intestine, pericardium (heart protector), and triple heater.

Each week, we will focus on one of the four organ and meridian systems associated with the Fire element and its corresponding season, summer.

Through insightful discussions, guided meditations, contemplative practices, and Fire-themed qigong, Mimi will help you cultivate a heart that meets life’s complexities with greater ease, openness, and resilience.

Together, we will harmonise the heart’s song, strengthening its capacity for insight, wisdom, and compassion – allowing it to sing freely and fully in the world.

Join this *Live* 4-part series with Mimi to receive:

  • Practical Tools for Heart-Centred Well-Being: Learn how to use meditation and qigong to nourish and support the heart, especially during times of anxiety, hurt, or emotional turbulence.
  • Deepened Understanding of the Heart’s Allies: Gain insight into what supports or challenges the heart’s companion systems—the Small Intestine, Pericardium, and Triple Heater – and how to care for them.
  • Fire and Summer Qigong Practices: Discover a series of qigong sequences designed to care for, protect, and regulate your physical, mental, emotional, and energetic well-being, aligning with the Fire element and summer season.

Module 1 - Calm and Tranquil: Rebalancing Your Heart's Fire

In Chinese medicine, the heart thrives in a state of calm and tranquility.

Yet, for many of us, modern life often feels anything but serene, leaving us navigating our days with mounting stress and anxiety.

This first module explores how to support the heart’s innate desire for steady peace. We’ll delve into practices that help rebalance and nourish the heart’s energy when it feels dysregulated or disturbed.

Through discussion, Heart-themed qigong practices, and time for reflection, we’ll begin to cultivate a deeper connection to this central organ of Fire.

Module 2 - Clear and Pure: Sorting Out Your Small Intestine

When clear judgment feels elusive, or your heart feels muddled and indecisive, Chinese medicine and qigong point to the small intestine as a key player. This organ helps the heart discern what is pure and impure – whether in food, thoughts, or experiences.

When this function weakens, the heart becomes overwhelmed by non-essential “junk,” clouding its clarity and vitality.

In this module, we’ll explore practices to strengthen the small intestine, supporting the heart in its role as a wise and loving ruler.

Together, we’ll cultivate clarity and insight, allowing the heart to govern with confidence and compassion.

Module 3 - Shielded and Safe: Reinforcing Your Heart Protector

In Chinese medicine and qigong, nervousness, anxiety, and fear arise not from direct blows to the heart, but from a weakened heart protector, or pericardium.

A strong pericardium shields the heart, allowing it to remain open and resilient even in the face of life’s challenges.

This week, we’ll focus on qigong and contemplative practices to nourish and fortify the heart protector.

By strengthening this vital shield, we’ll help the heart’s song resonate with courage and compassion, even in a world filled with fear.

Module 4 - Regulating and Relating: Tending to Your Triple Heater

In our final week, we’ll explore the Triple Heater, the most mysterious of the Fire element’s functions.

Though it has no physical form, the Triple Heater plays a crucial role in regulating both internal and external relationships. Internally, it harmonizes interactions between organs; externally, it governs how we connect—or disconnect—with others.

Through qigong practices and contemplative insights, we’ll tend to the Triple Heater, fostering balance and harmony within and around us. Mimi will also share how these practices can help our heart’s song remain steady and resonant, even during turbulent times.

Praise for Mimi's Teachings

“Mimi’s way of teaching is incredible. She has a way of translating such deep and profound wisdom in a way that is accessible to both a beginner and a Westerner. Not only is it accessible, it is meaningful, powerful, and impactful yet delivered in a sweet and light way that does not bog one down with the enormity of it all.”

“I am so grateful for Mimi’s wisdom, warmth, and informed teachings. Learning Qigong from and with her has been transformational and fills me with strength and hope.”

“Every aspect of Mimi’s teachings is precious for me. What I value especially is that she embodies everything she teaches, which makes my practice with her whole and wholesome, essential, pure and beautiful.”

“Mimi’s classes are unlike any other I’ve taken online. She is truly a gifted teacher and I thank her so much for sharing her knowledge and guidance.”

Live Online Course Details

Live Interactive Sessions

Mimi will lead our weekly Sunday sessions, to include insightful discussions, guided meditations, contemplative practices, and Fire-themed qigong. Each class will also include time for students to ask questions and receive support from Mimi.

Daily Qigong Practices

In each module, Mimi will offer a recommended qigong practice to continue developing the techniques learned in that module, to be practiced for 10-15 minutes daily. These practices are designed to care for, protect, and regulate your physical, mental, emotional, and energetic well-being. Mimi will also offer weekly journaling reflections on the organ meridian systems.

Total Accessibility

All ages and experience levels are welcome, including beginners and first-timers. Options will be given for those who wish to do the practices seated. For those with injuries, suggestions will also be offered on how to best work safely and mindfully.

Lifetime Access

All teachings, meditations and Q&A's will be recorded, published and archived on our interactive course platform. Video recordings will be permanently available for you to come back to as many times as you like in the future.

Schedule

Photo - Alarm Clock - Schedule

Dates & Times

Module 1: Sunday, May 25, 2025 9:00 am PDT / 12:00 pm EDT / 5:00 pm BST / 6:00 pm CEST (90 mins)

Module 2: Sunday, June 1, 2025 9:00 am PDT / 12:00 pm EDT / 5:00 pm BST / 6:00 pm CEST (90 mins)

Module 3: Sunday, June 8, 2025 9:00 am PDT / 12:00 pm EDT / 5:00 pm BST / 6:00 pm CEST (90 mins)

Module 4: Sunday, June 15, 2025 9:00 am PDT / 12:00 pm EDT / 5:00 pm BST / 6:00 pm CEST (90 mins)

Replays will be posted in the days afterwards for those who cannot attend live.

About Mimi Kuo-Deemer

Mimi Kuo-Deemer is an author and teacher of meditation, qigong, and internal martial arts (6th generation Baguazhang). She champions a balance of playfulness and precision, and never underestimates the value of wise, goofy people. A long-time dharma student of Sangha Live’s founding teacher, Martin Aylward, she also co-leads retreats with him at the Moulin de Chaves. 

Born in upstate New York, Mimi has lived most of her adult life overseas, in Beijing, London, and now Oxfordshire, where she lives with her husband and their dog, three cats, 8 chickens and 60,000 bees. She enjoys writing – her two books include Qigong and the Tai Chi Axis (2018), and Xiu Yang: The Ancient Chinese Art of Self-Cultivation for a Healthier, Happier, More Balanced Life (2019) – and creating online qigong practice videos and DVDs.

Her teachings draw inspiration from nature, the Dao, and the wisdom of Buddha Dharma. She particularly enjoys discovering and sharing ways we can nourish and support our vitality for our own welfare, and the welfare of all life. Click here to learn more about Mimi Kuo-Deemer.