Weekly Archetypal Qigong

Wednesdays 9:00am-10:00am MT via ZOOM

No prior qigong experience required

These classes will not be recorded

No class on the following 2024 dates: April 17, June 5, June, 12, June 19, July 10, July 17, September 4, October 9, October 16, December 25, January 1 2025

5 class pass: $100

10 class pass: $200

Single Drop-In: $25

SLIDING EQUITY SCALE available. 10%, 20% and 40% discounts. Please see my SLIDNG SCALE FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE page for details and discount codes. 

Single Drop-In

The Archetypal Qigong forms in this drop-in class are a unique and potent expression of qigong – these forms are medicinal gestures that allow us to re-member and express the true width of our human being. These forms cultivate energetic and physical harmony, as well as integrate a felt-sense of “soul” in body. Qigong is a one of the 5 branches Chinese Medicine and translates as “energy cultivation” or “working with the life energy.”

Join Sarah every week for a deeply nourishing movement practice that will evolve and emerge based on cycles and seasons, inspiration, and emergent needs of the class and the greater global climate.

We begin each class on the floor, landing and locating into bones, gravity and earth. Letting habitual movement dissolve as a foundation for a deeper kind of practice- one that is less performative, more nourishing and in tune with a truer rhythm.

We then move into an exploration of these archetypal and elemental flows in a deep and medicinal way- rather than a focus on didactic and technical learning (though those aspects will be included). This class is offered as communal practice, sustenance and medicine, and a chance to familiarize oneself with forms slowly over time, rather than in an organized “curriculum”. 

These archetypal forms offer us elegant maps and storylines in motion, mirrors in which to see ourselves clearly at any given moment and potent energetic medicines and balms; Through them, we literally move our way into a conversation with the wisdom, resource and universal memory of the archetypal world -expressed patterns and stories that hold keys to our potential, integration, and creative power. Each qigong form holds a different medicine- what might it be to inhabit and cultivate patterns of surrender, protection, courage, hope, trust, eros, deep yin power, yang beauty, for example? These forms shift us from an ideal into a felt-sense inhabitance of these energies and qualities.

In these forms, we do the work of “making soul with physical ritual”. We not only cultivate energy, right relationship to natural cycles, sensitivity and reverent embodiment, but we commune with the unseen, archetypal and mythic worlds that fund our mundane lives into meaning and alignment.

We “go to the forms” (Qigong Forms) so that we may hear and participate in a greater intelligence, so that we may experience parts of ourselves and our own powers (i.e. humility, risk, warriorship, surrender, letting go, blessing, grace, focus, hope, erotic capacity …) outside of a dependence on circumstance. These forms move us into a direct relationship with the depth of our humanness, which is to say our naturalness, without leaving us to wait for the randomness and unpredictability of circumstances to show us who we are. Rather, we can remember the vastness of who we are through practice and walk that person out into the world to meet life with greater resilience, adaptability and availability. In this sacred courtship, we begin to shift the futures that find us. This work is a deep practice of call and response, of relationship, of faith.

Sarah first experienced Archetypal Qigong through master teacher Shinzo Fujimaki during her Shiatsu Certification and Assistantship from 2002-2006. Shinzo brought traditional qigong forms to life through an articulation of the greater meaning and relationship being expressed in each movement. Sarah did not find this profound expression of qigong again until she met her then teacher Daniel Villasenor in 2013. The forms Sarah teaches in this weekly class are forms she learned in her various Teacher Certifications with the MogaDao Institute in 2013-2014 and subsequent study through 2019 with Daniel Villasenor/Zhenzan Dao.. She carries these forms with great respect and awe for the source, transmission and energetic lineage through which they were given, and the dedication and integrity of her years of sovereign, intimate practice and study of the forms themselves. 

Please note : As of late 2019, Sarah Byrden no longer : endorses study with Zhenzan/Zhenevere Dao, teaches or studies in association with Zhen Dao or MogaDao, operates under the designation of “MogaDao Teacher”, represents, affiliates or endorses Zhen Dao’s teachings as a tradition or entity (MogaDao) in any way.