089 - Tap into Your Inner Power: Discover the Secrets of Qigong and Tai Chi with Lee Holden

In the halls of UC Berkeley, Lee Holden's life took an unexpected turn. A vibrant soccer player, he found himself at a crossroads after an agonizing injury. Modern medicine failed to heal his pain, pushing him to seek solace in a world of ancient secrets and mystical energy. Little did he know, this path would lead him to a remarkable transformation. But what happened next? How did Lee unlock the power of qi and shape his destiny? Stay tuned as we unravel the astonishing twists and turns of his journey.

In this episode, you will be able to:

·       Embark on a journey of turning challenges into stepping stones for success.

·       Be motivated to pursue your passions, brushing aside any doubts and skepticism.

·       Delve into the world of Qigong and its potential to enhance health and wellness.

·       Uncover the mystery of the human body's energetic capabilities.

·       Appreciate the vital incorporation of heart-centered practices for overall tranquility and joy in contemporary life.

My special guest is Lee Holden

Lee Holden exemplifies the essence of vibrant living. As a young college athlete, he encountered a potent blend of Qi-gong, Tai Chi, and acupuncture that shifted his life trajectory completely. From then on, an ordinary life wasn't in the cards. Charting a unique path, he chose to apprentice under Grandmaster Mantak Chia and absorbed ancient wisdom within the context of modern living. His mesmerizing journey, which took him from being a student in Berkeley to a much-loved teacher and therapist, led to collaborations, national television appearances, and a growing online community. His knack for distilling complex concepts into easily digestible lessons continues to motivate people to invest time and effort in their consciousness and discover their inner vitality.

For more from Lee Holden: https://www.holdenqigong.com/

The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Introduction to Lee Holden, 

00:01:11 - Taking the Road Less Traveled, 

00:03:26 - Meeting Montauk Chia and Discovering Qigong, 

00:08:05 - The Value of Following Your Heart, 

00:14:39 - Getting on PBS, 

00:15:36 - Surprising Success, 

00:16:55 - Taking a Risk, 

00:19:01 - The Benefits of Qigong, 

00:24:54 - Recognizing Our Energy, 

00:28:59 - Overcoming Financial Challenges, 

00:30:41 - The Power of Reframing, 

00:31:52 - Surfing Through Life, 

00:33:05 - Dealing with Imposter Syndrome, 

00:35:42 - Eastern vs. Western Wisdom, 

Please help these messages spread and share this episode with a friend!

Transcript

00:00:00 - Jolie Downs
Today we are talking with Lee Holden. Lee has spent over 25 years devoting his career to helping others learn the powerful principles of Qigong, meditation, and tai chi. In collaboration with Grandmaster Montauk Chia, a qigong expert, Lee has worked to bring ancient Taoist Chi Ching to Western culture. His work has popularized qigong through books, classes, workshops, video courses, online programs, and American public television. Lee not only conducts training and certification programs in traditional and medical qigong, but he is also a licensed acupuncturist and a stress management consultant for individuals and corporations such as Apple and Threecom. I am really excited to learn more. Lee, thank you for joining us on Thriving After 40. Please, could you tell us more about your story and getting to where you are today?

00:00:55 - Lee Holden
Oh, my God, thank you so much. It's just a pleasure to be here. Yeah. My story, it started a long time ago, and I kind of took the road less traveled after college and even during college.

00:01:09 - Jolie Downs
Okay. Even during college. How so?

00:01:11 - Lee Holden
Graduated. Oh, go ahead.

00:01:12 - Jolie Downs
How so? What do you mean? During college, how did you take the road less traveled during you know, it.

00:01:16 - Lee Holden
Happened from an injury. So I was a soccer player playing collegiate soccer at UC Berkeley oh, wow. And studying psychology and just having a grand old time. And then I had an injury. I jumped up in the air, somebody took out my legs, and I landed on my tailbone, and I was just sidelined. I was hobbling around campus for about a month. I did all the Western medicine things. I got the cortisone shots. I took the painkillers, and the pain didn't go away. In fact, man, I just got stomachaches from taking the medication.

00:01:51 - Jolie Downs
Right.

00:01:51 - Lee Holden
And when I was little, I studied martial arts, and I remembered a martial arts teacher of mine, he broke a stack of bricks, kind of like the bricks behind you. He broke this big stack of bricks. And I was like, how did you do that? And he said, the power of qi. And he picked me up by the lapel of my shirt, and he said, you know, son, qi is not for hurting people, it's for healing. And I was like, suddenly I remember this guy saying this to me and hometown, and he gave me acupuncture and showed me qigong exercises, and I was better in, like, a week. I was just, like, blown away in a week.

00:02:30 - Jolie Downs
So all of the Western didn't work, but then in a week with this that's amazing. That's actually incredible. It was wait, after a week, did you go back to playing, or did that take you out of playing?

00:02:42 - Lee Holden
No, I went back to playing. I was back playing soccer in two weeks.

00:02:45 - Jolie Downs
Wow.

00:02:46 - Lee Holden
A week. I was, like, 75% better. Two weeks. I was 90% better and able to play. And the doctors were just like, what did you do? And I was starting to show my teammates like Qigong exercises and my friends at Berkeley, and I started using it when I got stressed out for midterms and finals. At that time, I met Montauk Chia. He was coming into town. The other thing, I was dismayed with the Western Psychology program. I was like, Man, I am in year two. I have not learned one good technique on how to make people feel better emotionally after two years. Know professional training. I wouldn't say professional undergraduate training. I was so I was just kind of like, God, what's this all? And what I like to do is I go to the Spiritual Bookstore in downtown Berkeley. I'll always remember Shambhala books and the incense was flowing out the door, and it was like, whoa, what is this mystical place? And I started reading books by Montauk Chia. I picked a few of them off the shelf. Transform stress into vitality was one of them. And I was like, this sounds promising. This sounds like what they're not teaching me here at school. And in fact, I bought that book. I walked out of the bookstore and on the telephone pole, montacchia in town tomorrow.

00:04:06 - Jolie Downs
Wow.

00:04:08 - Lee Holden
So I went. So I was like, the universe is talking to me. I'm going to go to this workshop. And luckily for me, I had no money to pay for it. I couldn't afford the workshop because I was a poor college student. So I came to the workshop, hey, I really want to come. Can I work for you guys? Can I help out in any way? And they were like, sure.

00:04:28 - Jolie Downs
I love that you did that brochures.

00:04:30 - Lee Holden
And pamphlets and things like that. Ever since then, my junior sophomore year of college, I started working for him.

00:04:41 - Jolie Downs
That's fantastic. And what a great story, because how many times do we have something that we really want to go to or we know is going to impact us and we don't have the money, we don't have the ability, and we give up on it? And you didn't. You went there and you tried. You made the effort and you got in and you got what you needed from it.

00:05:00 - Lee Holden
Clearly, it was a good lesson. Too often we in our own mind say, oh, I don't have the money. I'll wait till next time. If you don't ask, it's always a no. So I kind of was like, you know what? It can't hurt to ask, so I'm just going to go and ask. And I was very humble, and I was just really excited. And every experience with Montauk Chia was really interesting because I trained with him for those two years as he was coming back into town. And one summer he had summer retreats in upstate New York. And I got one of my friends really into Qigong with me, and he and I drove my parents van all the way across country, and we spent a month with Montak Chia training in Qigong during the summer between my junior and senior year.

00:05:49 - Jolie Downs
Oh, very cool. So this was a life changing experience, really.

00:05:57 - Lee Holden
That injury was a catalyst for me, and I just couldn't figure out why more people aren't doing it, because it works so well for me. And I started researching, why aren't more people doing it? Do people think it's weird? Do people not know what it is? It sounds funny, and it's really an accessible practice that helps on so many different levels and layers. Whether you're in pain, whether you have tension, whether you're stressed out. It has so many solutions to modern life's problems. So as I graduated, I thought, here was another turning point in my life where I could have gone into Silicon Valley and gotten some great jobs, because in the late 90s, people were making all kinds of money, including my friends. They're like, you got to get a job in Silicon Valley. Look at all these stock options you get. And I was like, yeah, you know what? I'm going to go to Thailand and write books for Montauk Chias.

00:06:49 - Jolie Downs
I became, yes, okay, that's free.

00:06:54 - Lee Holden
It was like Karate Kid scenario.

00:06:56 - Jolie Downs
Yeah, but okay, you're working for free. But I would imagine that whatever you got out of that experience has likely carried you through your lifetime today. Am I wrong on this?

00:07:06 - Lee Holden
Oh, my gosh. The value of what I got from that was way more full of riches than money. Just the experience of being traveling all over Asia. Not only did I travel and train to meet Montac Chia, but I also would go know every time you fly from California to Thailand, you go through China. And so I would stay for two weeks and train with Chinese masters as well qigong and Tai Chi and acupressure acupuncture, and then go to Thailand and study with Montauk Chia for two or three months and write his books with him every morning. What I would do is I'd wake up at about 05:00 a.m.. I'd go over to the master's house. We'd train for a couple of hours, then we'd have breakfast, and then I would take his workshop, maybe with 100 or 200 other students, and I would take these workshops, and then I would take notes and write it up into an organized fashion that then later would become content for his books.

00:08:05 - Jolie Downs
To me, this is true wealth. I'm so fascinated by this. I would love to know. I mean, I can only imagine all of the things that you learned during that time, but is there one piece of advice or learning from that time, from your master that sticks with you that you think other people should hear?

00:08:23 - Lee Holden
Man, so much I mean, there's so much wisdom. One from that time was like, just continue to follow your heart. One voice that I didn't listen to was, oh, you're training to get certified in Qigong? Well, you're never going to be able to make money or make a living doing that. You're learning all these weird esoteric practices. How is that going to help you be a responsible adult? And I just discarded that. Not necessarily discarded it. I listened to it and used it as motivation to integrate and create a whole business around helping people feel better.

00:09:05 - Jolie Downs
Yeah, well, you ignored the voices that were in fear and listened to the ones that were inspiring and impassion. And that is not easy to do, I have to say, but so worth it. And so thank you for proving the beauty of that in your story.

00:09:21 - Lee Holden
It took fortitude. It took something special. And I just said, you know what? I'm going to get good at what I love to do, and if I get really good at it, then it's going to be valuable. At some point this work will be valuable. And since then I've had two or three healing arts clinics combined with Western doctors. We had an integrated medicine center. I've had eight shows on eight national shows on public television.

00:09:48 - Jolie Downs
My goodness.

00:09:49 - Lee Holden
Yeah, since 2006 to now. We have a show on public television called Your Fountain of Youth and it's airing all over the country and written a few books and have a big online community of people practicing Qigong with me daily. I had class yesterday and a live class and there was 500 people on a live amazing all and feeling great.

00:10:16 - Jolie Downs
Yeah. You seem to be doing okay, Lee. I don't know.

00:10:18 - Lee Holden
I'm doing okay. And I love know. I think it's important too, because here's what modern life often encourages to do, is we spend more time focusing on a device than our own consciousness. We invest more in our finances than our own internal energy. And the dividends that those pay aren't nearly as beneficial as the ones of self care, self work, self exploration. Not to say that those should be discarded, but the self care and the self work should be prioritized alongside the other responsibilities of life. Because when we are working on ourselves, we become our best version of ourselves and we truly can live more vital, vibrant, happy and fulfilling lives.

00:11:11 - Jolie Downs
Completely agree. I think that's mean. So we talked about being in Thailand, doing the writing with the master, learning from the masters, learning from the other Chinese people in a variety of different areas that you kind of just fulfilled your education there. And that's fascinating. And then we talked about all the success, I mean, your shows, your programs, your live courses. There's a lot that happened in between there, though. How did you get there? I'm sure in the beginning it was difficult. Tell me a little bit of something about that.

00:11:44 - Lee Holden
It's funny. So I remember. So I finished college. I started doing these trips back and forth to Thailand. While I was in Thailand, I also studied with some healing arts masters. So I learned Thai massage. I learned acupressure, Asian style shiatsu. And then I would come home, and I would give treatments to people out of a chiropractor's office. And pretty soon, I had just a thriving massage therapy practice. And then I was teaching qigong and tai chi at local health clubs. Of course, the people that came to my classes were in Silicon Valley, so they started inviting me to their wellness days, and the companies started inviting me, know, do workshops on stress management. So I started all of a sudden, I'm starting to figure out how to explain it to people in Silicon Valley. Then I started working with athletes. So at my local fitness club where I was teaching qigong, olympic athletes were coming their training before the Olympics themselves. So I started giving treatments to them, and they started referring me I had really good success with them, so they started referring me to other Olympians, and then I could put on my pamphlets and brochures, hey, this works for the Olympic athletes. And all the other athletes wanted to come. So all of a sudden, I was now working with people individually. I was teaching maybe 2025 classes a week and giving, let's say, eight massages a day. So I was very busy, but I was working really hard, and I was trading with this acupuncturist, and she would put needles in me and leave the room. And I'd feel amazing. I'm like, whoa, that's really, you know over the next few years, I studied know formally and got my master's degree in acupuncture and opened up acupuncture clinics both in Silicon Valley and in Santa Cruz, California.

00:13:45 - Jolie Downs
Oh, so fascinating. So that came after, and it was an added value.

00:13:50 - Lee Holden
Exactly. And somewhere in between know, I was teaching people qigong exercises, but they weren't remembering them. They wanted to go home and do their practice on their own. So I said, you know what? I need to make some DVDs. And I thought, I just got so inspired, because right here in my hometown of Santa Cruz, California, is a redwood forest with this beautiful stream running through. And I said, wouldn't this be great if I could just I want to be in the water doing these exercises, because a lot of qigong and tai chi movements have water metaphors and nature metaphors. This practice came about by people mirroring the movements of nature in and through their own bodies. And so I built this little plank, and we put it in the center of this beautiful stream. And I got some friends of mine who are professional videographers, and we filmed it. And luckily enough, one of my clients, she worked as a distributor, and I helped her with her back pain. And she said, you know what? Send it off to PBS and just see if they'll take it. She was like, don't get your hopes up. Nobody gets on PBS. You have to be a bestselling author, but let's just pitch it over to them, and PBS said, you know what? We're going to try it in San Diego, California. Let's do one show. And most likely it won't work, but if it does, we'll try it in a few other stations. Well, fly down to San Diego in the big studios. I was really shocked and surprised because it was like huge cameras. It was like a professional, almost like newsroom. We did this pledge drive, and it just pledged through the roof. Everybody pledged that night on the show and immediately went up and became a national show available to all the PBS stations all across the country.

00:15:34 - Jolie Downs
How exciting was that? Tell me about that moment for you. What was that like?

00:15:39 - Lee Holden
Well, it was so exciting. And not only that, the producer at the local station, she's like, she was such a naysayer. She kept looking at Qigong, what is this? Nobody's going to do this. She kept just saying, Son, you know what? Don't get your hopes up. And besides, you're on right after Wayne Dyer, and everybody's going to pledge his show, and nobody's going to pledge your.

00:16:01 - Jolie Downs
And that's pretty big.

00:16:03 - Lee Holden
She had this piece of paper, I remember, and she's just looking at it with a confused look, and she goes, you know what? This can't be right. Your show out pledged wayne Dyer show. That just never.

00:16:16 - Jolie Downs
Feel good. What did you learn from that experience? Was there any lesson that came from that?

00:16:21 - Lee Holden
I think just one was just believe in yourself. Do it from a place of inspiration, and the results will follow. Try things. Yeah, maybe it would work. Maybe it won't work. There was also this idea, because when I made these DVDs, I didn't already have a market. It's not like I had a built in market. I said, people are like, no, first get your market down, then go make the DVDs. And I said, you know what? I'm inspired to do this. I took all my life savings. It was about $20,000, and I invested in these four DVD titles. Now it just went completely national. So it didn't go like a few stations. It went to about 100 stations. 105 stations around the country were starting to air it. I was getting, I would say, 40 to 50 phone calls on my home phone number, because for the first month, we didn't have a website. So you're just like, who's this Lee Holden guy? They would Google my name, and all you got was my home phone number.

00:17:26 - Jolie Downs
So I was getting calls, oh, my goodness.

00:17:28 - Lee Holden
Arkansas and Colorado and the east coast. And I was just talking to people. Yeah, and they were ordering DVDs.

00:17:37 - Jolie Downs
That's so fascinating, boys, just to think about, like, coming on the home phone, too.

00:17:43 - Lee Holden
People were so confused. Sometimes they were actually watching me on TV and talking to me on the phone at the same time. They were, like, screaming in the other room.

00:17:53 - Jolie Downs
The guy from TV is on the.

00:17:54 - Lee Holden
Phone and then grandma would come over and talk to me about her problem and then it was a riot. So it was quickly my distributor who got me on PDL, got her website together and we had then a legitimate business after that. But for the first month it was chaos and just super fun.

00:18:16 - Jolie Downs
That's incredible. And what I love about it is that it really was that you were doing what you loved, you had this passion, you were doing it with all of your heart and because you were doing that, you just kept growing. People kept coming to you, you kept expanding, you kept getting these new opportunities and then it just exploded. I think that's beautiful. I'm curious because Qigong is something that I've actually been very curious myself and I've dabbled a little bit here and there. I know that it's good for you and I've had this interest, but I also hadn't made it a regular part of my life, right? And it's something that I would like to and so what I'm curious is what would you say, someone say some like me who would like to make this a regular part of their life, what would you say to get them to do that?

00:19:01 - Lee Holden
And Jolie, you are not alone. I mean it is like this is all of know in our heads. We know there's certain things that we want to do that are good for us and that we just haven't taken that step to put it into action. And Qigong is a great choice because it's efficient. It gets you to desired destinations within yourself very quickly. Meaning if your goal is to lower stress, wow, does it do that really quickly? If your goal is to increase energy, it is the energetic practice and science that has been worked on for the last 4000 years. So it's got a long history for really cultivating Qi, which is energy. And so I always call Qigong the exercise form of less stress and more energy because it's exercise, it's stretching, it's mindfulness and movement and it's flowing practices and you get that all, let's say in a nice solid 45 minutes practice. So it makes it very efficient because we don't all in modern life have the time to go to the gym, a yoga class and a mindfulness meditation practice. If we could do something synergistic all at once in a short amount of time, that gives us those results, great. It is powerful. So what I've done is I have a 30 day challenge and it's only seven minutes a day. And so it's like sign up for the 30 day challenge, try it for just seven minutes a day, that's the amount of time on your snooze button. And just get into a habituated pattern. You'll see that after those seven minutes I feel energized, I feel good. And then of course then I have condition specific things. So let's say you might just pick. Okay, I have upper back and neck pain. I have Qigong for upper back, I have Qigong for low back, qigong for anxiety, qigong for better sLeep. So you can kind of target what, one maybe you want to do for your specific.

00:20:56 - Jolie Downs
Very interesting.

00:20:57 - Lee Holden
And then you're like, if it makes you feel better, you're more likely to practice. So just like me, when I got those exercise for my low back and it got healed, I was like, I want to do this every day because Qigong is for prevention.

00:21:11 - Jolie Downs
No, that's fascinating. I mean, I knew that Qigong was really good for energy and just kind of building that energy and flow and movement, but I was not aware that it was so good for pain, to be honest with you. And I suffer some pretty bad back pain myself. I go to a chiropractor, I'm really very interested in this Qigong for back pain. Amazing.

00:21:31 - Lee Holden
For back pain, because it's gentle. Now, whenever there's pain, there's some blockage of what we call energy. So in Chinese medicine, we call pain Qi stagnation. Just like water, if it doesn't flow, it gets stagnant, and then it gets unhealthy. So what we do is free up the Qi. When the chi is freed up, the physiology improves. So blood flow improves, the way the nerve current, the way the alignment of the spine is. And the beautiful thing is you're doing it for yourself. You don't have to have somebody else do it. It's great to have a team of people working on your chiropractor acupuncture. Yes. But we want to be empowered and do things for ourselves that will activate the innate healing power in our bodies. Can I tell you how this medicine started? Fascinating.

00:22:20 - Jolie Downs
Yes.

00:22:20 - Lee Holden
So the way back in ancient China, in these communities, you would pay your Qigong master, your Qigong doctor, or your acupuncturist, but the way you paid them, you paid them almost like a monthly fee, and their job was to keep you healthy. As soon as you had pain, as soon as you got sick, you stopped paying them until you were better.

00:22:42 - Jolie Downs
Oh, my goodness. That is fascinating. What if it worked that way?

00:22:48 - Lee Holden
And here, nobody gets paid unless you're sick or in pain. So everybody's motivated to everybody's motivated by sickness. We got a great medicine. We do, we have great technology. We do a really poor job of preventing problems, because nobody's going to get paid if we're preventing problems. So wellness, true health care, which is prevention, vitality, these aren't things that aren't studied. If you go to your doctor and say, I feel great, but I want to feel better, they're just going to be like, Sorry. So people have called for it themselves. That's why yoga, meditation, acupuncture, massage, herbal medicine, these are booming industries in the United States, called on by the people, not by the and so we really need to take charge of our own health and healing. And I'll tell you what, nobody wants to get stuck in the Western healthcare cycle because it's full of pitfalls and side effects and everything else. If you can prevent problems, that is gold.

00:23:58 - Jolie Downs
Yes.

00:23:58 - Lee Holden
And when we talked about value, your health is so much more valuable than money in the bank.

00:24:05 - Jolie Downs
Yes, it is the value. Without it, there's nothing.

00:24:10 - Lee Holden
Yes, exactly.

00:24:13 - Jolie Downs
There is so much here to unpack and there's so much that you learn in this realm. I'm sold 100%. I'm going to do your 30 day program. 100%. That's going to happen. I'm curious, what else have we not talked about that, you know, based on being in this profession and knowing this world that you feel everyone should know, that most people don't know.

00:24:35 - Lee Holden
Number one, you're not just a body. You are you know, it sounds a bit mystical and this is what the mystics from the east have been saying for thousands of years. And now it's what the scientists are saying. Now it's what the doctors are saying, not all of them. But the research is definitely in that we are much more complex than just a physical body. Your heart is way more complex than just a pump that circulates blood. And the research about your heart, for example, is that it has an electromagnetic field that extends about twelve times, extends out your body about 12ft. So we can measure you Jolie from 12ft away. Your heart will have an electromagnetic signature that says that's you it's like a fingerprint 12ft away from your body. Brainwaves are the same. The heart is much bigger than the brain. And so everything is energy inside of you. And if energy is optimized, then physiology works way better. So I think that's what I would like everybody to recognize is that their power and their potential is way more vast than we've been taught. And that has been ingrained in us from a Western mindset.

00:25:54 - Jolie Downs
And it's important to know that it is scientific. I mean, it's being proven in the science community in the Western world. And we have the studies that show the energy and the studies that show even what happens with our energy when we're meditating and how that impacts our aura, if you will. So I find that and I think I am glad that you brought that up because really most people aren't considering the fact that we are energy. It is just this body and there is so much work to be done in that field besides qigong. What do you feel helps with your energy?

00:26:30 - Lee Holden
Being positive thinking, positive thoughts, positive emotional energy. So lowering, I mean, just one lower stress and be happier is going to really shift our energy. Because what is an emotion? I mean, we can't do open heart surgery and see how much love is in there. It is invisible. It is energy. And so if people say, I don't know if I believe in energy, I was like, do you have feelings? Well, yeah. How are you feeling? Well, I'm frustrated. Well, can you show me your frustration? Let's see it. Put it in your hands and show no, you can't. Thoughts are energy. I mean, life is ruled by energy, whether it's external, like gravity. Gravity is an energy electromagnetism. Look at our technology. All you have to do is see a cell phone, and I could call across the world through invisible fields of energy. Well, we're similar. We are energy. And our energy is very powerful. And in Chinese medicine, we say the energy moves first, the physiology moves second.

00:27:35 - Jolie Downs
Okay, that's really interesting. Now, so we've talked a lot about your successes and how you've skyrocketed through your career. And I'd love I mean, we all have challenges. We all have difficulties. What is one of your greater challenges or difficulties that you've had in your life that you've had to deal with, and what did you learn from it?

00:27:58 - Lee Holden
Some of the bigger challenges have been also the greatest gifts.

00:28:02 - Jolie Downs
Right.

00:28:02 - Lee Holden
And I think as soon as you start to recognize the nature of yin and Yang, that sometimes things seem like they're a big challenge and like, oh, my God, this is the worst, most awful thing that's happened. And yes, maybe it is, but what is the opportunity? What's on the other side of that? So I'm thinking of this injury when I played soccer. If I didn't get injured, who knows? Maybe I don't end up doing Qigong and going to Asia and things. Like know, funny enough, just recently during COVID and I was about to buy a house, it was like a dream house. And I had a second house that I was going to have my parents live in. And it had a pool, so that all the kids I have four children. Speaking of challenges, everything went through. Everything was great. And then the last day, the company that was going to give me the loan pulled it out. They said, you know what? We're canceling a bunch of loans because of COVID And so then they canceled it on me, and I was bummed. And then the owners of the house sued me, and I lost $40,000. I was like, this seems really unfair crazy. Now I'm like, oh, now what am I going to do? Right before I had my two year old, I have a two year old, two year old on the way too small of a place that I'm living in, and I just lost $40,000 and the house of my dreams. And I just said, you know what? I'm going to just kind of really think about, hey, what's on the other side? Yin turns the yang, yang turns the Yin. And I came over to this person's house. I was going to rent it from him. It's a beautiful house. And I was like, wow, the rent is very expensive, but it's going to be perfect for. Our family. And I just asked him, hey, would you ever consider selling your house? And he was like, sure, I own it free and clear, so I'll just sell it to you. I'll be the bank for you. You know what was weird? The rent and the mortgage payment were identical.

00:30:05 - Jolie Downs
Oh, my goodness.

00:30:07 - Lee Holden
All of a sudden I'm in this beautiful house for sale by owner and it was just like bing, bang, boom. And I remember thinking before that I was like, I just really have to reframe this. I have to really put my sights on what the opportunity is because I might miss it. If I stay in frustration or agitation, I'm going to see how quickly I can get out of this space where I felt, poor me, life is unfair. I got so many things happen. And I just kind of really did a lot of work around that and then it just popped through the other side into a really beautiful opportunity. That was a recent one.

00:30:43 - Jolie Downs
That's a perfect example too, because it is a superpower that reframe, I believe. I believe it can carry you through life. Anyone can learn it. It's something that you develop with practice. But learning, I mean, just talking to people with these stories, this is what I've learned and it was so beautiful. If you take that time when you're in that moment of difficulty or challenge and you take the time to learn from it and reframe it, what good is here for me? What kind of gift is in front of me that I'm not seeing and trying to take that and run with it in that way, all of a sudden the gift comes. It is there. It's when we sit in that victim, like you said, when you sit in that victim of woe was me, where we can't find the gift and then it is bad. But if we take the time to learn, there is no YinYang, there is no bad. Your good comes from all those moments. And it's this amazing life lesson that can help you surf through life.

00:31:43 - Lee Holden
Yeah, that's good. And I love that analogy and metaphor of surfing through know, being here in Santa Cruz, there's lots of surfers, but it's really the waves of life. And sometimes what we find ourselves in is just getting pummeled by these waves, like, oh, man, here comes another one. I can't get the altitude to get up on the board and ride the energy that's available. And I really feel like Qigong helps us to get that altitude. We need tools and techniques, whether it's qigong or meditation or yoga or breath work, something that gets us up and out of the stressors that seem to be heavy and weigh us down. And that takes a lot of self work. But once you get there, it feels so much more liberating, so much more freeing. And now instead of fighting against the current, the current is your friend, and you're riding with it, and it's way more joyful.

00:32:35 - Jolie Downs
Yes. It's a completely different experience. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. That's good. And that's what I hope everyone could take away, is the power of the reframe. Yeah. I was also curious because you've done a lot of things that really put you in the public eye. I mean, you've had eight television shows. You have these video programs. You have these online courses, 500 people. Have you ever had impostor syndrome? And if so, how did you deal with it?

00:33:05 - Lee Holden
Meaning, like, what am I doing?

00:33:07 - Jolie Downs
Who am I? Right? Yeah. Did you hear those feelings?

00:33:11 - Lee Holden
It's interesting because I was having so much fun in the beginning, and it was so impactful to me. My mode of thinking was, I just want to share it. I was like, hey, guys, this works so good. I was just so excited. I was like a golden retriever as things went know, number one, what I'm teaching is an Asian art. So you go to China, and all the parks in China are filled with people doing Tai Chi and Qigong in the I really for me, it was important to go to the source and learn from people there doing it, not just necessarily here studying it. I wanted to just really immerse myself in this culture so that I could feel like I could speak with authority. And then also what was important to me is study with a master, like one on one, to really up my skill level. The third thing that became important was to be able to establish my own style, my own language, my own way of talking about it, because I wasn't just trying to reach the people who were already interested. I was trying to trailblaze a new audience of people who had no idea what Qigong was or what meditation was at that time, or tai chi or energy work or breath work. I was kind of pioneering this, and it was exciting to me to really introduce this to people. As I started doing it on TV and teaching it more and having bigger audiences, I felt like, oh, yeah, I wanted to turn it over to the masters or to somebody else who was teaching it. But what I found was that everybody had their place. If you want to study more esoteric practices, then I would refer to my teachers. If you wanted to study with somebody who learned it from the masters, who's figured it out in a way that makes sense to Westerners and modern life, then I felt like I developed an expertise in that particular realm.

00:35:13 - Jolie Downs
That's really interesting. It occurred to me that really growing up, your education was very Western focused, and after college, you got this really strong Eastern focused education. I was curious, were you ever given a piece of advice when you were younger that you actually had to relearn? That was not good advice. Advice and you had to relearn because of learning the eastern philosophy of things.

00:35:42 - Lee Holden
I feel like modern life just in general doesn't necessarily give us good advice. I think if we look around at our society we see a culture that's stressed out, that's anxious, that's sLeep deprived, that's wired and tired, that's fatigued, that has all kinds of health issues and that doesn't really tune into what our heart's wisdom is telling us. So we're a culture that comes from the head, which is great. It's just only one part of this picture though. So we have lots of responsibilities. We do things that we don't like that creates stress. We feel self centric and not connected to our communities. We feel that selfish and that disconnects us from nature and the planet around us and we just see that that path is not leading to a thriving individuals or thriving world around us. So I think there's just more. I think that we don't have to discard it. I think we just need to bring in more heart, more connection. I think the energy of the heart has a wisdom that the head doesn't have, that these two centers, the wisdom of our hearts and the wisdom of our heads. When integrated, we become more fully functioning human beings. That yes, for example, we can use technology for very positive ways and we can get out of survival mode and into our heart spaces so we're happier and healthier and more in service, more kind, more compassionate and when we're kinder and compassionate, we're happier. That is just true. When we're self centric and we just want to take for me me, we're not happy people. We're stressed out. And so stress is a mode in our nervous system that connects to survival and when we're in survival mode, it will override happiness. You can't be happy and stressed at the same time. We are chronic stress. I'm speaking of this like low grade chronic stress in survival mode and it'll directly override our heart energy. So I think if we can lower stress and get more into our heart spaces we will feel a sense of peace within ourselves and a sense of connection to the world around us.

00:38:07 - Jolie Downs
Yes, absolutely. I feel this really strongly because I feel like I was there in that low grade stress level of just living. It was just like this low buzz that was just always on inside and I've gone through this process of all of these heart centered practices and learnings and through those years and it is and it's this peace inside and it's a completely different way of living and it's so wonderful. You're right. If there's anyone could be doing anything just going into those heart centered practices and focusing in those areas absolutely life changing.

00:38:43 - Lee Holden
Absolutely. And I think people just don't know how good they can feel. I mean, we just are like yeah, I'm stressed out, I got the kids. I got work, I got responsibilities. And just like this kind of low grade energy and this might all be true, but take time to invest in yourself, especially to invest in your energy. Because the wisdom of the heart leads you to different places than the wisdom of the head. It'll lead you towards happiness. It's just a direct connection. It's like, what's going to make me happy today?

00:39:11 - Jolie Downs
Yes.

00:39:12 - Lee Holden
So in your daily plan and schedule, plan things for yourself that are fun, that make you laugh, that are connected to your community, that engage and uplift your family or just something for you. Go out in nature and spend 30 minutes doing something that uplifts you and you will be a better, more well rounded, more energized person.

00:39:37 - Jolie Downs
100%. Life can be better. That's the message. Thank you. Let them know.

00:39:44 - Lee Holden
Life is better on Sheen.

00:39:46 - Jolie Downs
Exactly. So is there a book or a talk video movie that you've listened to or read that really impacted your life, that you feel other people should bring into their life?

00:40:01 - Lee Holden
Man, there's so many. Let's go to an old one. The Tao te Ching is just a beautiful, beautiful, ancient book full of, you know, Taoism is one of the world's great religions, but it's not a religion as we think of a let's call it a spiritual philosophy about life. And the De Ching is just written by somebody called Lao Tzu, which means old, wise child. So it's kind of a play on words. Even the author didn't give his real name. It might have been written by a few people. But Lao Tzu, old, wise child, the wisdom of an experienced elderly person with the heart and the playfulness of a young child, and then the first passage of the Te Ching, the Tao that can be told is not the real Tao. So I just love this. Like, hey, we're going to write you this book. But whatever, we stay it's not really it. So go out and have your experiences and gain your wisdom by actually doing it. The words are just helping us navigate. Like a map on a trip. It'll help you navigate, but you actually need to go on the trip yourself.

00:41:15 - Jolie Downs
I love so much. I have to say, this whole talk has fascinating me in so many ways. And I would imagine it's probably fascinating to other people. So if they want to know more about you or work with you, what are their options? How do they find you? What can they do with you?

00:41:30 - Lee Holden
Beautiful. Come see me@holdenchigong.com. Holden Qigong. So H-O-L-D-E-N-Q-I-G-O-N-G. That's the hard part. Q-I-G-O-N-G spells. Qigong. On the website, we got all the condition specific. I have a video class subscription, so you just can log in and come to class with me three times. A know everything from that to the teacher training. We also have a great YouTube station, lots of free content, holding Qigong, and that's where you can find me.

00:42:03 - Jolie Downs
Perfect. And are you working with individuals and companies still? Are you doing corporations?

00:42:07 - Lee Holden
If corporations mainly working with individuals.

00:42:09 - Jolie Downs
Okay.

00:42:10 - Lee Holden
Mainly with online trainings workshops. We have some live events coming up here in California. Week long retreats. I'm working on a book. I've finished producing a docu series.

00:42:24 - Jolie Downs
Oh, what's your docu series?

00:42:26 - Lee Holden
That's on Gaia. It's called superhuman experience. If you type in superhumanexperience IO, you'll see the docu series. Basically, I traveled all around the world looking for individuals with extraordinary abilities.

00:42:39 - Jolie Downs
I love this so much. I'm going to check that out.

00:42:43 - Lee Holden
Superhumanexperience IO.

00:42:45 - Jolie Downs
Very cool. All right. And then other than that, I'll have in the show notes these links as well, for people to find. But other than that, I would love to ask you my last question.

00:42:57 - Lee Holden
Okay, perfect.

00:42:58 - Jolie Downs
What are you sure of in life?

00:43:01 - Lee Holden
I am sure that we're here to be our best selves, to live in this heart space where we're feeling connected to life joyful, compassionate, blissed out in really in this beautiful space. I think we're here to experience this heavenly place on Earth.

00:43:27 - Jolie Downs
Yes, I completely agree. Thank you so much for your time, Lee. I've loved our talk. I appreciate it.

00:43:33 - Lee Holden
I really appreciate it. Thanks, Jolie.