If you’ve ever walked through a forest and felt a deep, quiet aliveness humming beneath your feet, you’ve brushed up against one of nature’s most extraordinary mysteries: the mycelium network. This underground web of fungi connects trees, plants, and soil in a vast community of communication and nourishment. Through it, trees share nutrients, warn one another of danger, and even “mother” saplings by giving them what they need to grow.

When I practice Qigong, I feel that same hidden web alive around me. Each breath, each gentle movement, is like a signal sent out along invisible threads in the Universe. Not only do I feel it coursing through my body, but I feel my connection to everything around me, grounding me in the present moment.

Qigong is an ancient Chinese practice that combines gentle movements, breathing techniques, and meditation to cultivate and balance the body's vital energy, or "Qi," to facilitate mind-body-spirit healing.

Just as trees use the mycelium network to both give and receive nourishment, Qigong allows us to extend ourselves into the living network of Qi present all around us. When we practice Qigong, we circulate vital energy within our own bodies as well as send and receive that Qi from other people and our environment. This reciprocity keeps us connected to the healing energy of the Universe. It is a reminder that we are never alone, that the life force moving through us is the same force moving through the earth, the trees, the stars.

Why Women’s Health is Often Overlooked: The Silent Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue and Pain

For women, the practice of Qigong is more than simply moving energy—it becomes a way of tending to the hidden wounds we carry. So many of us live with fatigue that lingers no matter how much we rest, with stress that knots itself into our muscles, or with pain that medicine can’t fully explain. Too often, when we bring these concerns to doctors, we are met with dismissal, minimized as “just stress,” or prescribed quick fixes that don’t touch the root. The medical system itself was not built with women in mind—diagnoses often come too late, treatments are modeled on male physiology, and women’s voices are routinely doubted. These layers of systemic neglect and bias leave us not only suffering in our bodies but also questioning our own truth. Beneath all of this lies a deeper wound: the disconnection from our inner wisdom, from the body’s own way of knowing and healing.

And for women of color, these wounds are compounded. Not only are our pain and symptoms dismissed because we are women—they are further silenced, disbelieved, or pathologized because of the weight of racism, colonization, and intergenerational trauma in our bodies, creating layers of stress and exhaustion that Western medicine rarely acknowledges, let alone knows how to heal. Many of us carry inherited memories of displacement, survival, and silence—traumas passed through the bloodline that show up as chronic illness, fatigue, and overwhelm in our lives today. The hidden wound, then, is not only individual but collective–a soul-deep rupture caused by centuries of being severed from our ancestral ways of knowing, our land, and our own bodies.

Healing from Within: How Women’s Qigong Restores Energy and Flow

This is where Qigong becomes more than a practice of movement—it becomes a pathway of repair. Each time we breathe deeply, each time we move with intention, we begin to reweave the threads of connection that were broken. Qigong helps us restore the flow of Qi not only through the meridians of the body but also through the unseen networks of spirit and ancestry. For women, this is radical healing, to remember that our bodies are not broken, but part of a living web that longs to return to wholeness. With every practice, we reconnect to the life force that nourishes us, to the wisdom of our ancestors, and to the vast healing network of the Universe itself.

Just as a forest thrives when its mycelium network is strong, we too begin to thrive when our inner networks are restored. The trees do not rush their healing, nor do they question whether they deserve the nourishment moving silently beneath the soil. They simply receive, give, and stay connected. Qigong invites us to do the same. It reminds us that we are not meant to carry our struggles in isolation. We are designed, like the trees, to be in relationship—with our bodies, with one another, with the earth, and with the great web of life that holds us all.

Step Into the Circle: Join the Free Women’s Qigong Masterclass

This is the heart of the women’s Qigong I teach—a practice of remembering that we belong to this living network, and that healing is possible when we reconnect to it. In the coming weeks, I’ll be offering a free masterclass where we’ll explore these practices together. If you feel called to step into this circle, I invite you to join the waitlist. I only offer these a few times a year. Don’t miss the chance to sign up. You’ll be the first to know when doors open, and you’ll have a space reserved to begin this journey of restoring your energy and reconnecting with your own inner wisdom.