In Zhineng Qigong we are encouraged to live with an open heart and open mind & in today’s Qigong podcast – Hunyuan Qi Therapist and Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner, Heather Bourne discusses the art of healing with love.

Heather believes that healing is connected to love – in Hunyuan Qi Therapy and Qigong we are to connect heart and mind, because once separation occurs we sometimes fall ill or fall victim to stressors, because we forget we are one. When we are aligned with our heart, mind and body, we create wholeness – a sense of peace, compassion, kindness and love for yourself that you can reflect to the world and share with others.

In Qigong, love isn’t just a feeling or sentiment as it’s portrayed in most of society (often quite a selfish thing) as Heather explains. It’s a reflection of our inner being or our true self. When you have an open heart and love through the basis of Qigong it becomes a mirror, so if you love a person it reflects a certain quality within you helping you to love yourself.

When connecting with the Qi field, Heather found that it’s an opportunity to be present with an open mind, another key principle of the Qi Gong practice. When we have an open mind in Zhineng Qigong, we are often at a place of objectivity, we place ourselves in the shoes of others and realise that there’s no judgement for others’ lived experience. We see others as ourselves, we become one and begin to see things from their perspective leading to a more compassionate relationship with one another, led by love – and then as Heather describes it, miracles and healing can occur.

Qigong and love together create a holistic approach to healing that emphasizes unity and harmony. By practicing Qigong with love, we not only heal ourselves but also contribute to a broader sense of oneness and compassion.

 

In Zhineng Qigong, we are all encouraged to connect from heart to heart and mind to mind. But what does it really mean? According to Heather Bourne, the essence of Hunyuan Qi therapy is love. So when you can see the other person as you, there is no longer separation. Your judgment disappears. And when you open yourself to this, miracles happen. Let’s hear what she has to say. Say, my

name is Torsten Lueddecke, and this is the Wisdom Qigong podcast. Heather, you are a TCM doctor, is that correct? Yes, a TCM practitioner. Yes. And you’re based in Basel, Switzerland, and you’re also a Hunyuan Qi therapist. And you discovered something very exciting, which you shared with me, that you said the essence of Hunyuan Qi therapy, from your perspective, is actually love and healing with love. And it goes

so far that you are working on your new website, which is going to be called something like “The Art of Healing with Love.” And I thought this was going to be a perfect topic for us to talk about. So please give us a little bit of background. What makes you think that the essence of healing is love? Okay, so maybe I’ll give a little bit of background on

where this idea came from. From a young age, I was always having these visions of how the world can be a better place. And it was always like I had this vision of a tsunami, like a wave covering the earth and the universe with love. You know, it was like this tsunami of love would solve all the problems, you know, would solve the wars, would solve the hunger,

the pain of the world. And this was kind of a vision I had. And yeah, it stayed like that. It stayed in the background, and then I did my studies and had a very scientific education, a scientific background where spirituality and science didn’t mix at the time. So it was difficult for me to combine these concepts because spirituality was already very present in my mind. But because of

my scientific background, it was difficult to talk about it or even mention it to people I was working with or interacting with. And then I made my own path in a way. So I, I explored various spiritual paths, including shamanism, meditations, different kinds of meditation, and reconnected with this vision, actually, of what is the essence of life, what is the essence of our interactions, of what we do

as human beings. And I, I came to the, the realization that love is the essence of what we do and what we share, and it’s also the way we heal. For me, love… So it’s difficult to talk about love because love is a very broad word. It’s used in so many different contexts. I love cheese, and I love you, and it’s the same word. But love, as I

talk about it—when I talk about healing with love—really comes down to the essence of what we are, and it comes to the essence of oneness. And I think healing also means becoming one. And so you cannot heal without love. Love is the force that brings us together. Love is the force that makes us one. And love is the force that creates and co-creates. So from that point of

view, I think both are very intertwined—healing and love. And so that’s where it all stems from. I think I get, yeah, I get some of the idea, for example, and I cannot heal. I think love is a precondition if I want to support someone. Otherwise, it’s just some techniques that I do. But if I’m coming from a loving point, then, you know, obviously my focus, my intention, my

energy is with that person that I’m working with, that I would like to heal as a practitioner, a doctor, or a therapist. So I think that alone makes a lot of sense. But I think you take this a step further by saying that the act of loving is the healing process. Right, right. So how would that show up in your practice? First of all, it’s a state of

mind. It’s a state of being. It’s when you can connect. We talk in Zhineng Qigong and in Hunyuan Qi Therapy about connecting heart to heart and mind to mind. We become one. So that’s the, let’s say, the words, the concept. And physically, for me, it really feels like my heart opens up, and I can encompass this being, this person, or this group of people as me. I am

this person. I am one with this person. And that brings in a lot. When you can see the other person as you—not even as a part of you, because “part of you” still implies separation. When you can see this person or this group of people as you, there’s no longer any separation. The healing is done because separation is what makes us ill. Because we’ve forgotten that we are

one. We’ve forgotten that we are the same. And so it brings in, when you do that step of opening your heart and physically feeling the, let’s call it the Qi field, being connected to each other and becoming this one Qi field, everything disappears. Everything, every separation idea disappears, and you become very compassionate. This idea of compassion, you know, it’s no longer this person and they’re ill. Your preconceptions

disappear, your judgment that you may have, or even your ideas of why are you ill, what have you done, what are you not doing right—all this disappears. And you’re just in this state of oneness. And when you can open yourself to this, I think miracles happen. Really. Miracles happen not only for the person you’re with but for yourself, because you’re one, of course. Um, so, yeah, so in

concrete terms, for me, it’s going into the healing space. So the practice with this mindset—open heart, connected. And then when the person is in there, it’s okay, we are one. It’s not your problem; it’s our illness, our problem that we are together, we are healing. And I never see, you know, it makes the patient-practitioner relationship very, very eye to eye. You know it. We’re both part of the

journey; we’re both part of this healing process. And as I heal you, as I help heal you, you help heal me. And this is the beauty—really the beauty of this work. I think this is a very advanced state of being that you have achieved. Yet, I don’t think many people can say that they are at this place because we all know that in Zhineng Qigong, open heart, open

mind is a necessity in order to get anywhere and to work with people. But so often it’s just words, and we forget what it really means. And when I look at myself and talk about it, if we really practice that, we no longer have these thoughts of no wonder he’s ill because he’s doing this and this wrong, or if he only did that or understood that, then he

would be better. This is automatically coming in as a judgment for me, at least. And what you’re suggesting here is it’s not about the other person because there is no such thing as another person. It is me, right? This is oneness. And so there’s no point in being judgmental here or even having these thoughts come up. From a logical mind, it makes total sense because I can only

have influence over. I can’t influence something external. Now if there is a rock somewhere in the mountain and I’m standing 1000 km away, how am I going to, you know, lift that rock? But if it’s the same, if I am that rock, then obviously I’ve got power over it. And if I am that other person, then obviously I can heal that other person compared to if it was

a separate entity from me. So I think it makes total sense what you’re suggesting here. But it’s, yeah, but as I said, you know, most people aren’t quite there, which is probably the reason why your tsunami idea of love isn’t already in place in this world. That’s why it’s so great to talk to you about that. And I think what helps me, and it’s an exercise and a

challenge. It’s a challenge exercise when someone triggers me. Okay, if I hear in the news or if I hear of someone doing something that I find, obviously with my judgment mind, unfair, not correct, not right, the exercise is to put yourself in the shoes of that person. Say this is someone who has been born, had parents, had an education or not. And it could be you. It could

be you being born in that country, in that place with those parents, with those conditions. How would you have evolved? How would you have evolved if there had been a war in your country, and you saw horrible things happening? Who, how would you be shaped? Which kind of person would you become? And so that really helps me to become more compassionate, to really, just make that extra effort

to step back from the judgment and say, okay, this could be me. This could be me. And this person has parents, maybe has kids, has a family, has. We are just human beings on this planet going on the same journey. So, yeah, let’s try to be more compassionate to each other. Understand that everyone comes from somewhere, has a history, and has a reason for being the way they

are. And we never know the person you encounter on the street. You know, you might have some prejudices or instinctive reactions about how they act or what they do. But it’s important to always catch yourself when you have these moments and right out of this judgment and say, okay, you don’t know half of their story. So, who am I to judge? Yes, we have a way you can

discover Qigong. So, at the Zhineng Qigong Students Hub, we know that understanding Qigong is very important and also that Zhineng Qigong in itself has various nuances that people can’t easily comprehend. So, we’ve approached it in the style of a video game. On this page, discover Qigong. You can select your character, so you can either be a beginner, a practitioner, or a holistic healer or self-healer, and you click

on your character, and it takes you to these different sections. In these sections, you can explore the nuances. And when you click on a card, all of the resources pop up, and we’ve made it really fun, and not many people know about it. So if you are interested, have a look and discover Qigong. No, it’s a good point. I mean, most of us run around the world thinking

that everybody else is kind of an idiot because they don’t act. And the way that we would act, and we constantly compare that, and by putting, you know, trying to put ourselves into their shoes, trying to understand or trying to imagine that their life was very different than ours, which is the reason why they act in a different way. And then also knowing that they might just think

the same thing about us; they might just think how we act and it doesn’t make sense and isn’t the brightest way of doing things. So, yeah, it goes. It goes both ways, I suppose. Right. Yeah. Now, I’d like to. But I’d like to touch a little bit, though, on the topic of love, because you said earlier that we use the word in very, in various ways. You said,

I love cheese, and I love you as a person. And I think there’s a big misunderstanding about love as a way of being. Because very often we mistake love for something which is actually quite selfish. It’s about how someone or something makes us feel. So, for example, if you say, I like cheese, you know, I love cheese, I think, let’s just go to fish. I love fish. You’re

not saying you really love the fish because if you loved the fish, you wouldn’t have taken it out of the water in the first place. Right. And fried him frightened. What you’re really saying is, I love the way the fish makes me feel when I eat it. And often we use the word love in the same way with other people. So, you know, for many of us, when

we say we love our partner or we love someone, we don’t really love that person. If you’re honest, it’s about how he or she makes us feel. That is what we love. Because if we really love that person, we would totally give them freedom. Now we would want them to flourish not so much in the attached way that we usually practice love. Because for us, it’s often about

that person in my life. So it’s about us rather than I want this person to flourish and do whatever he or she does. Then we will be totally happy if he or she walks off the relationship and does what he or she wants to do, because that’s his or her life. Right. But so it’s important to understand what the concept of love really means. And so love is

not directed towards one particular person. Love really is a way of being. Yeah. And that way of being that I then, you know, implement in my healing practice, that I connect with when I do whatever I do in my practice to support a person on their journey to health and well-being. So I just wanted to make this clear, and I’d like to get your point on that so

that I know we are talking about the same thing here. Absolutely, absolutely. I think, like you say, there is a very selfish understanding of love in our society, obviously emphasized by the media and the films and the songs. And it’s interesting what you say. So when you think you love a person, you love them for the way they make you feel. Right. But when you also understand that

that person mirrors the quality that is actually inside you, you understand also that you don’t love them, but they help you love yourself. So each person that you are very fond of, you are fond of because it resonates with something in you which you love. But it’s easier to project on someone else, the same way it’s easy to project the bad things on someone else. This person is

like this. I don’t like that. It’s the same. This person is so wonderful. I love that person. But actually, what it is is that you love that quality that you already have inside of you. And so love is this energy that reconnects you to yourself. It’s becoming one. So love is the force that brings us together, that makes us one with another person, but it’s also the force

that makes you one with yourself. And that’s the most important basis for healing and understanding that. Understanding that this connection with another is actually helping you connect to yourself is beautiful. And this oneness with yourself is also something we strive for when we heal. You know, I love every cell of my body. I am one with every cell of my body. And that’s also this, in this Hunyuan

Qi Therapy and the Zhineng Qigong, we, you know, when you go from the inside and you expand and integrate with every cell of your body. This is loving yourself, it’s loving every cell of your being, and that’s when you heal as well. The love concept is definitely other than what we, is displayed in our society. But it’s the start, you know, it’s the start of some of a

bigger journey, I would say. And I think you’re touching on another very important point here, because this is the other miscon. See, at least the idea of self-love because there are a lot of people running around, you know, posting stuff about how they need to love themselves more. But I don’t think it works that way. It’s not by focusing on me and saying, now I’ve given so much,

I’ve given so much love to others, which is impossible because, you know, love is a way of being. You can’t give away your love. It’s just who you are and how you go through life. And then they say, now I need to focus on myself and love myself. And it’s not working. Not surprisingly, it’s not working. And what you’re suggesting is it’s quite different. It’s because by giving

your love freely or by loving freely, by being love, as you said, it comes back, it mirrors your qualities. And through that way, you start to love yourself not by excluding others, not by focusing on yourself. It’s a natural result of going through life being a loving person. Right. And that will automatically mean because of oneness and because you see qualities in others that you have in yourself,

that you start to appreciate yourself more and that you start to value yourself more and treat yourself in a different way. So that’s another misconception that I thought I’d just bring up here because I see it so often that people think self-love means focusing on me. No, it doesn’t. It’s the outcome. It’s actually the opposite. Right. But it is only the opposite if it’s not a needy love

that I’m giving. So if my love is always conditional, like I’m loving you so much, now what am I getting back? That’s not love. Mm. Right. Okay. I hope I’m not getting too much off track here now with my thoughts, but yeah, for me, it’s an important aspect of how I go through life. And we talk a lot about unconditional love. And I mean, for me, love is

unconditional. There’s no conditional or unconditional love. That’s unconditional. There’s no, there’s no boundaries to it. There’s no conditions. There’s no prerequisites to it. It’s just the essence that it’s actually a good way to see where is my love coming from, or love. If it is in any way conditional, it’s not love. So let’s just get this out of the way. Right? So if I think I’m loving, but

it is conditional, okay, then let me be honest. It’s not love. It’s something else. It’s a selfish need or desire that I have, but it’s not love. And I would not be too harsh on yourself because we are all in this. I assume a lot of us are in this situation that we think we love someone, and when they do something, we are upset. But that’s also a

point when you have that feeling that you love someone, but as soon as they change, you might not love them. This is really an invitation for you to work on yourself then and to see, okay, the grain of love is there because that’s the essence. It cannot not be there. But what is it in my personality? What is my ego trying to tell me? What is it triggering

in me? And try and work on that, saying, okay, I feel this dependence. I feel that if that person changes, then I feel uncomfortable. Then it’s an invitation to work on yourself and love yourself for being the way you are, and then moving forward with that. You know, we’re human beings at the end of the day. And I’m glad you make that point because I didn’t want to

be harsh here. If we notice these things about ourselves, as you said, it’s an invitation, and there is a grain somewhere. And I just need to find out and discover more about myself, you know, to move and get to the next level. So I think that’s an important distinction that you made here, adding to my thought here. Thank you very much. Now, we spoke a lot about love

here, but I know that as a TCM practitioner and as a Hunyuan Qi therapist, you obviously have techniques that you’re using. So you’re not saying I replace these techniques, but what you are suggesting is that you, you’re using these techniques coming from this loving point. Is that correct? Yeah, correct. So my practice, you know, my, the place I work, I always set up the Qi Field before I

receive the patient. And it’s in the way. Yeah, in the way of preparing. It’s the mindset, it’s the way you approach things. And of course, you know, a person who comes, I don’t say, I’m gonna treat you with love. Although it is in me and it’s what I give out. But there will be needles, there will be massage, there will be other conversations also during the treatment that

contribute to the healing. So it’s more a preparation for me in my mind, in my practice, and then it just flows. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, you know, obvious that the other person picks up that you’re coming with good intention, that you have his or her interest at heart, which makes your patient far more perceptive to your treatment than if that connection wasn’t there. So I think we all

have this experience that if we have a doctor or some other health practitioner and we know he likes us and he wants the best for us, we obviously are more receptive to his or her advice and to the healing practice that they do with us. Cool. So when you spoke about the website that you’re launching, do you have other ideas of how you would like to present this

idea to the general public to get your tsunami going eventually? Oh, it’s so. Yeah. So the website would be The Art of Healing with Love, and I had a few ideas of what could go in there. So Hunyuan Qi therapy is definitely going in there. I also organize cacao ceremonies. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. So the kind of gatherings of people using cacao as a

medicine plant to open the heart, to help people connect with their heart and with the love energy. So I think this will be a part of it as well. And I think that’s all my ideas for now. I would love to share more texts and thoughts on what love is. A bit like what we’ve just discussed. So there will be parts, you know, parts of that as inspiration.

And I propose also some meditations based on that. So this is the start. As I say, it’s not yet online. It’s under construction, and I need to get my ideas straight and see what else could come in there. But this is the. The essence of what it will be. I don’t know much about the cacao therapy, but it sounds lovely because everybody loves chocolate, so you can’t go

wrong with that. But I know a little bit about Hunyuan Qi therapy, obviously, so I’m curious to see because I know you guys are doing a lot of work in the educational program and are learning a lot of theory also behind the Hunyuan Qi therapy to understand it properly; you’re learning all the techniques. So I’d like to hear a little bit more about where you see this love

aspect in the Hunyuan Qi therapy, because some of our listeners here might be familiar with what it means. So in the program, the Life Changer program, we learned, as you say, techniques to provide treatment, which include connecting, using, of course, your consciousness with the Qi and the Qi field to provide relief and treatment for people and for ailments. And it’s a therapy that you can do by yourself

as a community therapist or you can do it as a group, which is what we’ve done in the various retreats in Austria, for example, where we are groups of three therapists giving intensive treatments to patients or clients with all kinds of different problems. And the results are amazing. Really. I mean, I guess you know, and you’ve seen the results. Right. But it’s really amazing. There’s no other word.

Right. And for me, I’d really love to explore that further. There is this. So I do it already on my own, but I’d like to explore the group effect. So being more than one therapist working, at least two, three, or four working at the same time with the same intention on one person, I think you can achieve amazing results. And I’d like to also explore that idea that

we could be a group, a group of Hunyuan Qi therapists working together. And again, I mean, this all goes under the love idea. You know, we are one, so we connect with each other as therapists. We connect with the patient. And this can be done online, you know, it can be done. Distance doesn’t have to be presence with the patient. Yeah, so I’d love to, I’d love to

go down that avenue as well and make that more accessible to people and explore ways of working with more therapists together. And yeah, that would be amazing. Okay, thank you. That sounds great to me. And we know that from the medicine-less hospital. One of the reasons why it worked so well was because the Qi field was so amazing, because of so many people practicing together in building the

Qi. But as you said, you know, these days we have technology at our disposal. There was no such thing as the Internet or Zoom in those days, so we can actually benefit from it. Even if we are isolated at our homes, we can still use the power of the Qi field because in oneness, distance is not an issue. And using this, working together is just as powerful as

if we were in person. Now, before I let you go, is there any other thought that we didn’t touch on when it comes to love and healing that you would like to share with us? The topic of self-love, we’ve touched on, and I think the importance of that has to be underlined. Everything starts with you, and learning to love yourself, learning to accept every part of you is

a huge challenge for many. And once we make steps toward that, I think we find strength, we find our healing abilities, and we find our wisdom within us. I think that’s super important for our society that we all, each of us, find this because we have everything inside of us. We have the wisdom, and for me, it’s important not to depend on an external force, authority, or anything

to make my decisions and to make my progress. And so maybe the invitation here is to explore that love for yourself and really accept every, every part of you. Love it, nurture it, and dig deep to find all the answers inside of you and the wisdom that you hold, because it’s really a treasure and a source of empowerment. How would you go about that? Because, you know, that’s

one of the interesting things. You cannot force yourself to love yourself, right? You cannot force yourself to accept things. It has to come from somewhere, and that is the reason why I think many people struggle with it. When there’s a reaction that I don’t like in myself or this part of me that I don’t accept, maybe it helps because I am a mother, but maybe — Torsten, tell

me, maybe you relate to this. Can you see yourself? So there’s a part of you that you don’t like. Okay, you have done something. It really annoys me, and I’m not happy with myself. Can you step out of this and look at yourself as a small child? Okay? And can you love that child deeply and say, okay, you’re just having a tantrum, you’re just having a moment. I

love you. I really love you. It doesn’t matter what you do, and get in that state. I, I wonder, I wonder if that’s my way of doing it. As I say, I don’t know. Because I have children, I am a mother, so I have that love and that feeling, that love for your child, and I project it to myself as a small child. But I think we can

all connect to this small child of you, a small version of you, and hold it in your arms and say, okay, okay, we’re going to work through this together. It’s okay. So that’s my way of working on that, on self-love. I can relate to it. Actually, my experience is at a slightly different level, but I have that as well. For me, it is often if I see children,

and it’s normal, you’ve got a child and you immediately love that child. And whether it’s your own or not, you just think of a lovable human being. And then I think that this child will at one time be 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and I’ll see the same person and be full of judgments about that person because I don’t like this, I don’t like that, but it’s the

same person. Right. And so, in a way, I’m doing the same thing already with other people that you’re suggesting here to do for yourself, because that is a great way of putting yourself in a place where you can love who you are. Because if you connect with that little person, there’s no way of scolding him or her. I think it’s a great idea. It’s a great concept that

many of our listeners might find useful here. So thank you for sharing that. It could be a good path to accept yourself without forcing an excitement, but by accepting it, by really understanding, you know, you are this little tiny being just trying to make the best of this world, given your circumstances and the ideas that you’ve taken on along the journey. And then, obviously, when we talk about

growth, it’s also about discarding some of these ideas and leaving these beliefs behind that don’t serve you and rather starting from scratch with an open heart and open mind as well. This is the mind part that comes in as well. But I think it’s a very useful tool that you’ve given us here at the end of our little episode. So thank you very much for that, Heather. It

was lovely to reconnect with you. It was great. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you very much. And once your website is live—I know it’s going to take a few more months probably—then we might have another chat and explore more aspects, because if there is no love, there’s nothing. So I think the topic itself is very, very important, and it is the essence, as you say. So thank

you for sharing everything. Thank you, Torsten. Thanks a lot. We trust you enjoyed this conversation, and we invite you to subscribe to our podcast so we can stay in touch and notify you of future episodes. We will end today’s episode with the Eight Verses Meditation performed by Zhineng Qigong teacher Katrien Hendrickx. Enjoy! To get your free eBook on the Eight Verses Meditation, please check the show notes below.