People often ask how I got into Qigong healing. Frequently, my answer begins with a story about my son.
When you witness a profound healing, it makes you pause. Sometimes those pauses can change the direction of your life.
My son had a difficult time in elementary school. He had a sharp mind, sensitive heart, and an extraordinary amount of energy.
If someone asked which kiddo was mine, I would respond “The one bouncing up and down!” He was always moving, crawling over and under chairs, touching things. He was kindhearted and sensitive, curious and aware. Often his amazing heart was overlooked because his energy was so big.
Other children would react to his antics, sometimes in equally big ways. With so many sensitive kids setting each other off, teachers struggled to maintain a calm classroom.
In 5th grade, an incident at the Halloween assembly changed everything.
In a gymnasium filled with 400 students, my son was being particularly expressive, when another child reacted by punching him in the stomach.
My son was shocked and upset. He had never been physically assaulted before, and didn't know how to process what had happened.
None of the teachers had witnessed the incident, so he turned to a nearby teacher to ask for help. Rather than listening to him, the teacher assumed he was making it up or had instigated the situation. He was dismissed and told to sit down and be quiet.
He reached out to several other teachers for support. None took his side.
Not only had he been physically hurt, but the adults he trusted had failed to hear him or acknowledge what had happened.
After that, something in him seemed to shut down.
He fell into a deep depression. The child who had been in constant motion no longer wanted to go to school or engage with other children. He had lost trust in his teachers and in the world around him.
At home, he began spending hours alone in his room, reading. He read the 7-book Harry Potter series ten times in a row.
During a moment of clarity, he explained why. Books transported him into another world. He could disappear into the fantasy and escape the feelings he was experiencing in life. He wasn’t simply reading. He was hiding in books.
My son seemed perpetually sad and quick to retreat to his room. One day he said something that stopped me in my tracks. “Mom, I just don’t understand the point of life”.
He wasn't really asking a question. He was expressing something much deeper: he couldn't see a reason to be here.
My mommy alarm began screaming. I took these words seriously. Although I couldn’t imagine my ten-year-old ending his life, I worried what might happen if those feelings continued unchecked into his teenage years. I knew we needed help.
My husband and I found a parenting therapist who helped us begin changing the dynamic in our home. We made sure he felt seen and heard. We focused on rewarding good behavior and empowering him to choose his engagement. We started chore charts so that he had responsibilities and could feel necessary in our family. This therapy was wonderful, but did not cause a shift in my son’s depression.
We tried bio-feedback, a brain-training technique. This modality gave him tools for managing his emotions and the instant feedback of how those tools affected his brain waves. It was interesting and helpful for managing big emotions. Yet his underlying sadness remained.
Then I called a woman who does Medical Qigong. I had heard about her for several years. At that point, I was willing to try anything that might help my son. She did not work with children in-person. Instead, she worked with their energy remotely, communicating with a parent before and after the session. She agreed to work with my son’s energy on a Tuesday at 1:30pm, while he was in art class at school.
After the session, she called and shared her findings.
The Qigong practitioner explained that my son’s Metal element was out of balance in his energy body. In the Five Element framework of Chinese Medicine, Metal is associated with the emotions of depression, grief, and sadness. She described her observations as consistent with the loneliness and disconnection we had been seeing in him. He had lost connection with himself and the world around him.
She was able to rebalance his Five Elements and harmonize his energetic body.
I was curious about what this would mean for my son.
Then came the moment I will never forget. That afternoon, as he came home from school, I could hear my son from a block away. He was skipping down the sidewalk, whistling!
He was smiling. He was chatty and wanted to talk about his day. It was a remarkable change.
After witnessing his withdrawal for so long, I was stunned by the difference. The Qigong healing had shifted something, allowing him to reconnect with the joyful, expressive child I knew was still inside of him. He had found his way back to his own light. He could take up space as himself again.
Today, nearly a decade later, we have not witnessed the slightest return to depression.
Whistling expanded within him, to a blossoming of musical expression. He now sings and plays guitar too. He loves connecting with others. While he still loves reading, he no longer uses books to escape from life. I see a young man who loves being alive, engaged, and present.
That experience opened a door for me, drawing me in to learn Qigong healing. I wanted to understand this work and the miracle that I had witnessed.
Today, I approach every session with the same hope that I carried that day as a mother. I hope that something might shift, leading a client to reconnect with themselves and begin to experience life more fully.
I will always be grateful for that Tuesday afternoon and for the Qigong practitioner who brought my son back to himself. That day changed the course of my life, his life, and rippled outward in ways we can only imagine.
