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Listening to Our Ancestors: Qigong and Meditation for Metal and Water

On-Demand Course

With Mimi Kuo-Deemer

Available Now!

Attune to the deep ancestral wisdom that exists within you and all around you.

When we look at mountains and rivers, what do we see?

In Buddhist and Daoist teachings, the elements within nature are our ancestors – just as much as our parents and grandparents.

We have many insights to gain from listening to our ancestors, but attuning to these channels of transmission requires a willingness to put aside conventional patterns of attention and thought. This is where intentional movement and embodiment practices can help.

Join meditation, qigong, and internal martial arts teacher Mimi Kuo-Deemer for a self-paced journey into ways we can listen to and learn from our human and non-human ancestors alike. With Mimi as our guide, we will move from the conceptual into highly experiential and embodied practices from qigong and meditation.

Together we will explore Chinese understandings of the energies of Metal and Water, which correspond to the seasons of autumn and winter and are reflected in the voices of mountains and waterways.

When we listen to the wisdom of these voices within our own breath, blood, and bones, we access deep inner resources of courage and strength quietly bestowed by these ancient teachers since time began.

This course was previously run live. It is now offered as a self–paced programme that you can work through as your daily life allows.

Across four self-paced modules with Mimi, you’ll learn:

  • How to use meditation and qigong to support listening to the wisdom of our human and non-human ancestors
  • How a connection to our ancestral energies can be rich resources for cultivating qualities such as courage and inner strength
  • A series of Metal and Water qigong sequences that help us embody ancestral teachings

Module 1: Listening to Ancestral Mountains

Mountains hold the accumulated energies of the past.

Ancient Buddhists and Daoists viewed mountains as enduring links between heaven and earth, representing places of great spiritual power. Ascending mountains elicits the courage and determination to overcome ignorance and delusion.

In the first module, we start listening to the wisdom of our ancestral mountains using practices from qigong Metal forms and mindfulness.

Module 2: Listening to Ancestral Waters

Water is the source of our ancestral energies, known as essence or jing (精) in Chinese medicine.

Like rice filling a bag, jing resides in and moves through the blood, giving our body its particular shape. When we lose touch with this ancestral flow, we feel stuck or stagnant.

The second module helps us tap into the movement of ancestral energy within us through qigong Water forms and meditation practices.

Module 3: Listening to our Human Ancestry

Honouring our familial ancestry can be enriching but also complicated.

We may miss our blood relatives terribly or not know who they are. We may feel ashamed of them or angry at things they have done. Regardless of our relationship, we have inherited our birth from them.

In the third module, we explore how to meet our human ancestry with wisdom and compassion through Metal and Water-themed qigong practices and meditation.

Module 4: Listening to the Ancestral Heart

The Chinese character for “to listen” is ting (聽). This character includes the radicals for the ear, clear eyes, and the heart.

When we listen, we learn to hear so that it can be seen clearly and absorbed into the heart.

In the final module, we listen to what we have learned from our human and non-human ancestors, welcoming their teachings into the domain of our hearts. We will learn a set of gentle qigong Fire forms and meditative practices to support this, and Mimi will offer guidance and encouragement on how to continue practising these and other forms from the course.

Praise for Mimi's Teachings

“I have never felt better physically or better equipped to calmly and steadily handle life since starting classes with Mimi. Her manner is clear, calming and fun. It is also deeply knowledgeable. I feel that I have a lifetime of nuance and deepening.”

“I can’t express enough gratitude to Mimi. In her classes, I’ve rediscovered a spiritual centre, a springboard out of hopelessness.”

“I cherish and truly look forward to each class. I am drawn to your integrity, vast knowledge and experience, your respect to authenticity, traditions and your students. For me, your classes just stand out among others!”

“Mimi’s classes are keeping me together when everything goes apart. I’m much more calm and more energetic. It’s given me strength to go further, even if it’s a bad day ahead. It’s hard to describe exactly what it’s doing, it’s just beyond words. But it leaves a visible print in my actions and my life.”

On-Demand Course Details

Teaching Sessions

Each module is a full teaching session with Mimi — a grounded talk and a complete guided qigong practice for that week's element. Watch them at your own pace, and return to them whenever you wish.

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 15-20 minutes daily (or as often as you can) during the month.

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 question-and-answer sessions are recorded, captioned and archived in your course space. The video recordings are permanently available for you to come back to as many times as you like in the future.

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.