How to Find Joy: Ancient Qigong & Mindfulness Secrets with Vicki Dello Joio

"When we go one step further and take the time to acknowledge our joy, it tends to replenish itself, become more available and more abundance.  I believe our joy is a limitless wellspring: the more you use it, the more there is to use" - Vicki Dello Joio.  

 With over 50 years of experience in Qigong, Martial Arts, and performing arts, Vicki's wisdom and playful spirit shine through as she discusses the founding of "The Way of Joy- A Spiritual Fitness Program and the inspiration behind her book, "The Way of Joy." You'll learn how Vicki's methods can help you reclaim your innate joy and achieve profound, lifelong shifts toward greater harmony and energy.

 We explore:

• the significance of energetic boundaries, 
• the importance of self-love,  
• the practical applications of Qigong in daily life,
• the transformative power of gratitude,
• the importance of awareness, and
• the role of community support in healing.

 Vicki shares personal challenges she faced during the creation of her program, offering valuable insights into how these experiences tested and validated the principles of joy and resilience she teaches. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or new to the concept, you'll find something inspiring in Vicki's approach to integrating body, mind, and spirit practices.

 Vicki emphasizes the empowerment that comes from overcoming victimhood and making conscious choices, offering practical advice for anyone looking to shift their mindset and maintain passion in life. Tune in to "Chat Off the Mat" to be inspired, reclaim your innate joy, and unlock your full potential.

Connect with Vicki!
https://www.vickidellojoio.com
https://yourpowerpresence.com
National Qigong Association

Chapters

• 0:00 Reclaiming Joy Through Energy Practices
• 3:34 Navigating Life Through Joy and QiGong
• 15:15 Understanding Energy and Setting Boundaries
• 29:06 Finding Center Through Self-Love
• 40:22 Cultivating Awareness and Gratitude Practice
• 51:11 Empowering Through Questions and Charisma
• 57:18 Transformative Healing and Community Support

Transcript

Rose: 0:00

Do you sometimes feel like life has become an endless cycle of stagnation and unfulfilled potential, that the spark of joy and deeper meaning feels just out of reach? Well, my guest today, Vicki Dello Joio, has spent 40 years mastering the art of Qigong, energy work and integrating mindfulness practices from the East and West. She's here to be your guide across the bridge from feeling unraveled to reclaiming your innate joy and achieving your full potential. Her unique approach blends deep wisdom and a playful, renegade spirit that makes working on yourself feel like anything but work. So get ready to laugh more, worry less and reignite the joy that is your birthright. Vicki's methods can spark a profound shift that echoes through a lifetime. It's time to stop simply existing and start truly living a joy-fueled life. Welcome to Chat Off the Mat, the podcast that explores the transformative journey of healing and self-discovery where energy, spirituality, mind and body intersect.

Rose: 1:12

Hi, I'm your host, R ose Wippich, and I invite you to join me and explore ways to invite more holistic practices into your life. I will feature experts and practitioners who provide insights, tips and practical advice. From Reiki to Qigong, Chakra B alancing to Shamanism, this podcast will be your guide to understanding how these practices can lead to more harmony and greater energy. Whether you're seeking stress relief, emotional balance or a deeper connection to your authentic self, Chat Off The Mat will provide you with insights and inspiration. Let's start discovering the possibilities that lie within you. Today, I welcome Vicki Dello Joio, author and founder of the Way of Joy, a spiritual fitness program. Vicki is a transformational speaker, presentation skills coach and award-winning theater performer and director. She is also the host of the National Qigong Association's monthly interview program, Qi Talks. In 2013, Vicki was inducted into the Association of Women Martial Arts Instructors Hall of Fame for her 40-plus years experience teaching Q chi or energy practices. Since 1975, her transformational workshops and classes have empowered thousands of wellness-motivated, thousands of wellness-motivated, spiritually inclined seekers to step into their power and infuse body-mind-spirit practices into their very cells so they can tap into their birthright of joy. Use it as fuel, not a goal for a lifetime. Welcome, V vicki.

Vicki: 3:00

Oh, it's a pleasure, Rose. It's so good to see you.

Rose: 3:03

Same here. I am so excited about us chatting. Yeah, me too. Yes, great. So we're going to just dive right in so that we have enough time to go over so much that I would love to talk to you about. Yes, just tell us first about yourself, your story.

Vicki: 3:19

Well, there's like a lot of stories. Stories are the thing, um, but basically I, uh I am somebody who, um is really passionate about how we communicate, whether it's one-to-many or one-on-one. I'm interested in the energy behind our communication. So a lot of times people think just about the words and how they're saying words. But there's also another piece of it which has to do with um, you know, to do with you know what is it informing those words? So I'm interested in that and I have a big passion for martial arts, especially for Qigong.

Vicki: 3:52

Over the last many years I realized when you read that it was like I'm actually now over 50 years of doing these practices. So I guess it's a lifestyle at this point. And I, you know, I'm somebody who comes from a very nitty-gritty background, like I grew up in New York City. It's sort of what you see is what you get, and really, in a way, I would say I'm somebody who has become my own worst fear, because I was afraid that when I came to California and that I would just become this woo-woo person whose feet never touched the ground, and now woo-woo is part of how I make my living for the last 50 plus years.

Rose: 4:31

So, go figure, yes, great, I love that, I love your story and I know you have so much more to offer. And I've been reading your book and learning a lot more about you, because we do know each other from outside the scope of this podcast. Yes, but I am so excited that the audience will learn more about you. So I've been reading your book, which I have here, and I'll also put everything in the show notes. Of course, I always mention that, the Way of Joy. Can you tell us what inspired you to write your book and actually create this program, the Way of Joy?

Vicki: 5:06

Oh, I love that question so much. I don't think I've ever been asked that quite that way. I wrote it because I had been teaching at that point for many, many years and at that stage in teaching I was having what one of my students named Dharma talks. I wouldn't have claimed that particular word because I don't really have a lot of basis in that system, but anyway, I was doing these talks about the themes that were coming up for me through the practice of Qigong. So for me, qigong which I guess your listeners may know already is Chinese martial art for a lot, directed towards healing. I found that these forms had information that I loved to explore and that would come up for me as I would be in my own practice.

Vicki: 6:00

I remember when I was a kid studying Tai Chi Chuan. I remember asking at one point the master you know what is this? What does this move mean? What is that you know other than the martial application? And he said well, when you're very old, you'll, you'll know. It's like OK, maybe I'm very old, but at that point I, at that point in my teaching, I was, I was just kind of getting these messages and so I would hold these different evening sessions which would just be people talking, and I would lead discussions in things like a theme of like everything is useful, no matter what happens in our lives. We can compost it. We can look at what it is and it's not. It's beyond, just like what is the lesson in a negative experience? But also, what is it that's helping us grow, what's prompting us to grow? Things like that, or talking about how she moves in the space between, or talking about boundaries and how to energetic boundaries serve us and what does it mean not to have them? Those kinds of themes.

Vicki: 6:58

And as I was talking, people kept saying I want you to write a book. I want you to write a book and finally I just decided to do it. I tried to do it for a while, wasn't having much success, because what turned out that I needed to do was just actually take a break from teaching, go off into solitude and write it from there. So I did that and that ended. I thought I was going to be taking off six months to write the book. It ended up taking three years, oh wow. But that's partly because when I, you know, I was happily like in the country, working on my book. You know, just, you know, taking walks in nature, talking into a microphone, because at the time we didn't have cell phones, but I just I was able to, you know, transcribe what I heard.

Vicki: 7:46

And I was sort of in that happy creative process and I got a call from my uncle, who was like a dad to me and he was had just been diagnosed with end stage lung cancer and he wanted me to bring my mom, his little sister, to be with him. So I did that, I was with him during his dying process and then came back and one of my senior students, who was a very dear friend, and my mom were both diagnosed with cancer, rachel with end-stage lung cancer and my mom with breast cancer. So anyway, basically I had borrowed money to take time off to write the book. And I remember a friend saying to me you know, vicki, you know this is so hard. You took this time off to write this book and now you're doing all this caretaking in different ways and I realized that I didn't feel oppressed by it.

Vicki: 8:27

I felt like it was kitchen testing my book, because the premise of my system is that joy or the heart is fuel, that it's something that is our birth right, it's something that we are born with.

Vicki: 8:42

It gets damaged in various ways as we get older and experience various types of challenges in our lives, but that it's something that I believe is ours to own and that if we can just take that and work with it, that can really inform everything.

Vicki: 8:57

And so then I was like well, how does what does joy mean if people that you love are dying or suffering? You know, not just if I'm suffering, but what if I'm seeing. You know, trying to be helpful for other people. You know what is what is joy? Where's joy there? And so it felt like, you know, using my practices and the things that I had been teaching really helped me get through those times. And that was just the beginning of a whole series of death and dying that happened in my life as I during that period of time, while I was writing, but it made me feel really grounded in it because I knew it worked for me. So that meant it would work for other, some other people, maybe not everybody, but it would work for other people. To sort of look at these practices as a way to navigate when things are hard as well as when things are blissful.

Rose: 9:42

That is so true. I think we all experienced that. Yes, so I've been enjoying your book. It's wonderful information, but I plan on rereading it because there's just so much information and I have all these little post-it notes everywhere and you talk about you came up with various principles. Would you mind just kind of giving us a little overview of what those principles are about, talking about heaven and then earth and how we're in between. You know, we're the conduit in between.

Vicki: 10:14

Yeah, yeah. So that was, yeah, I'd be happy to that was really informed by my Qigong practice of Shen, Qi and Jing. So that means heaven, human and earth, and what I've taken the liberty of doing are sort of drawn in terms of how do I personally experience these? Um, I, I came up with a structure, um, where so heaven has to do with our inspiration, with our wisdom, with with our ability to see the whole picture, be able to have it's our link to the divine. If you have a spiritual tendency and if you're somebody, it's up for people who are take my classes who are atheists or who don't have that. It's a, I feel like it's a connection to that ability to have an overview. Like you were floating around up in the universe and you look down at your life and it was like little ants living their lives. Your life seemed really small. It's that sort of big perspective that we are all one perspective. We're all part of the same fabric. That's the heaven realm. And then I thought of those as three what I call laws, in other words things that are universal, like the law of buoyancy or the law of gravity or something like that, that that just is a physics type of a law. And then the earth realm is all about what we manifest, what we create, how we walk our talk. And then, like you said, the human realm the heart is really the conduit between these two and the human realm is all about our individuality, how we take the ahas of the heaven realm, or the possibility, thinking that the heaven realm includes, and then personalize it. So it becomes, it merges through you, through your experiences, through the ways in which you think or see things. So it's something only you can uniquely bring. So it's like this personalization of something very universal comes through and becomes personal. And then the actions and choices that we make and how we walk our talk. That's the earth realm. So that's how I see those three. So I have three laws for the heaven realm, three principles for the human realm and three actions or activities for the earth realm. That's one way of describing the system. The system is complex. That that's one way of describing the system. The system is complex.

Vicki: 12:27

In fact I've been almost embarrassed about it, because there are people like you who like, oh, this is so cool and they do post-its, and I have people who open the book at random and that's their message for the day, and then other people who start to read it and go, oh my gosh, this is really multilayered it's, you know, it's very dense. The material is pretty dense because of the system that's. I don't even know how it came through me, it just did, it was like, and it took a while for it to form, but I do feel the integrity of it. The integrity of what I'm saying holds true and, like I said, it feels like partly because of how it's applied to how I live my life and how I see students use it and how it is. You know my own interpretation of these Taoist concepts.

Vicki: 13:06

Do you use the book in your course, the Way of Joy? I draw from it all the time when I teach. So when I teach, I mean it's the, you know, the concepts that I'm teaching predate the book. And for when I first wrote the book, I had, I think for the first three years after I wrote it, I had courses that were specifically on the book, where people would read a chapter or part of a chapter and then we would work on that and then so it take people through the book so that we were able to, um, really, what's what's? What's interesting to me is how does it work for you? How do I, how does it get personal to you? What does it mean for you to have a circles open into spirals concept? What does that mean for you? How do how do you use it? Um, so, so I did teach courses that way and it's interesting that you asked, because I've been thinking, I've been hungry to do that again just so our listeners know that your last name means well.

Rose: 13:59

Your name means Dello Joio is "of the joy, or how you interpret it as well yeah, and that is your. That is your given name yeah, it's so fun.

Vicki: 14:09

I realized that my name actually. You know my name V ictoria. Victory of joy and it was like. What in the world does that mean? And that that's part of what instigated this whole system really was like. What would it mean to live that as a legacy and and you know what?

Rose: 14:22

There's no coincidences. You were meant to walk this path, as we say yeah. I love that you talk a lot about awareness of energy and tuning in and understanding what's going on. It's a lot of what you read throughout your book. Why is it important for people to become aware of their energy and maybe describe what energy is in your terms?

Vicki: 14:46

Yeah, because it's more than just get up and go right. I think of energy as sort of the unifying element that unites all of us living beings, whether it's people, planets, plants rather, or insects or animals, or that that energy is that which connects all of us um, and I think of it as something I don't know. I I've read, been reading um a book by francesco garapoli, friend of ours, who's a qigong master, and I mean he talks about energy as being something. That's where qi is being born, in the quantum field that appears and then pulls back, that it sort of sparks and then that it, it's not something. And in traditional qigong they often talk about energy as something that you want to um, conserve and direct and all of that.

Vicki: 15:41

I think of it as something that's a kind of the part of ourselves that is the aliveness of us. The energy is our aliveness, it's our life force, and I think that it's important because, for me, one of the things most important about remembering that, even more than a narrative being, I'm an energetic being, is that it reminds me that just how magical the world is. You know, like what an incredible phenomenon to have this body, with all these systems going on, whether I pay attention to them or not, to be able to have connections, you know, in the ways in which we do, to be able to be close and intimate, to be able to read people's energy and know this is dangerous or this is drawing me in. You know all of that. It's, it's, it's a, it's a. It's such an intangible thing to talk about. How do you think about it? How do you think? How do you define energy? Oh, wow.

Rose: 16:32

Well, um geez, I I never even thought about it. I think it's in my mind, but I never really had a opportunity to conceptualize it, other than how my teacher taught me. It's just, um, I think it's just something that is unique to everybody. I also. I also agree with you that it's just this underlying connection that we have with the universe and everyone in the universe, but it's something that is just unique to everyone. It's my energy, is unique to me, and what I do with it is part of it is an awareness of how I'm feeling on a day-to-day, or how I'm feeling in relation to another person or a challenge or things like that. So I think I'm trying to understand more about what my energy is, or what energy is in general.

Rose: 17:22

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of unnameable yeah it is, and you hear, you know, you hear a lot about it. I'm watching the Nick game last night. They're using the term energy. He had so much energy and there was so much energy around that play. They use it a lot and you know. So it's being used a lot more and I think people are like you said it's really undefinable, but people are defining it in their own way in different aspects.

Vicki: 17:49

Yeah, yeah, so that's interesting. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking, when you were talking about the connections with people, that kind of thing which I talked about too I would think of that as kind of human realm energy, right, because I think of the human realm is where we are interconnected with the world around us. And then when I'm thinking about the energy of in a, in a athletic event, that that's really physical, right, that's earth realm, that's your oh yeah, it's that base, you know. And then there's the energy that has to do with you know, where does this idea come from? Something pops up, I'm inspired, I get this new sense, or I feel connected to the divine, or you know, that's all heaven, realm, energy. So I mean, it's all the same thing, and yet it resonates in different areas of our lives and our being, with different functions, with different functions.

Rose: 18:40

In your book you talk about barriers and boundaries. So it talks in a way we're kind of segueing from what we were saying about other people's energies. So this is you talk about it as a principle in the human triad that you write about in your book. Can you talk about the boundaries in general and the importance of having them, and then when, or maybe just talk about what you mean by barriers and boundaries? We'll start there.

Vicki: 19:06

Yeah, I love that you start, that we're going there, because that's really the to me, that is the heart of the book, it's the central chapter. So it's the heart of the book. So I think. So what? First of all, when I say boundaries, I really like to distinguish it from barriers. In fact, I think boundaries can dissolve barriers, which is the title of that particular chapter.

Vicki: 19:27

Boundaries I think of as being the definition of who you are. So if we think of ourselves as sort of you know, we come into these lives and then we sort of develop in the ways that we do, we become who we are, we start to develop. You know what we believe, what we think, what we feel, what we experience, the choices they make, what I know, what I don't know, the actions that I take, that I don't take, those are all boundaries, right? So you could say to me you know something. That wouldn't be true and I would know that that's not true. That would be part of the boundary. This is no, this is who. I truly am right when we don't have boundaries, when we don't have those things sort of defined and clear in ourselves which you know can pop in and out, I have to admit. But when we don't, then that's when barriers occur, where either we feel like we lose ourselves and that kind of like I don't know where you want to go, where do you want to go for dinner?

Vicki: 20:23

I don't know, you know where I should we just sort of give over, we come I guess you could say it's codependent or we merge, we lose ourselves in a merge attachment theory you know, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah um, whereas with that barriers what you're doing, that so you lose yourself or you want to protect yourself, and so you put out these barriers that I think of as like porcupine quills and where you just you know, as I need my space, I need to have, but it's not just like I need some space, I want to take some time alone. It's like I need space. It's forceful and it's creating a wall. I need space, it's forceful and it's creating a wall. And I believe that when we have our boundaries clear and we're with somebody else whose boundaries are clear, that's where intimacy occurs, because otherwise, like I said, we completely lose ourselves or we're walled off because we're trying to protect ourselves. So I think boundaries are really essential for as a means of connection, which is probably you know, this is just coming through me, this is not something that I've heard before, but I know that.

Vicki: 21:24

You know a lot of people think of boundaries as a way of like, just as being barriers. Right, it's like I have to take care of myself, so I need to set some boundaries. So I think of it as a slightly different way. Is that when I'm centered in that, and so that's part of like a whole Qigong thing. Right, how do we come back to center, how do we align ourselves that when we're in that place of boundary that it's really connecting, so like when you're with somebody and they they're really clear about what they want, it can be really just such a relief, right, it's like, oh, I can feel more connected to you when I understand that.

Rose: 21:55

Yeah, understand that. Talking about Qigong here, maybe we can talk a little bit about Wei Qi, which is how creating, let's say, you have a hard time creating a boundary and some people do you know, they're just, they don't know where you, where you they begin or what ends, and there's a miscommunication, Rejections yeah.

Rose: 22:16

Rejections and all that but that. But in in qigong there's something called wei qi and it's it's almost building, uh, a barrier, sort, sort, and I think you've had some um experiences in your life where wei qi came in handy and you have a wonderful story to tell. I think you know what I'm referring to, if you don't mind talking about that, no, I don't ever mind talking about it.

Vicki: 22:39

So wei qi, the concept of wei qi, is what's informed my understanding of boundaries. So, just to be really clear, it didn't just come from my brain. The more I practiced, the more I understood. And wei qi, for people who don't know, is basically your externalized energy. No-transcript was walking home thinking I just don't want to do this anymore. I just don't want to fight, I don't want to hurt people anymore because I'm tired of getting injured myself. There's got to be another way. And as I was thinking that this guy walked around the corner and I think a lot of at least women will relate to you know, sometimes you see somebody and you can feel this is not okay. And the reason I had been studying self-defense was because I had been attacked on the street several times in my life before, and so I really wanted to learn how to protect myself. So you know, but instead of going into in some kind of you know, I'm going to protect myself thing, I I just remember instinctively just straightening up my spine, lifting the crown of my head, and it was like there was space in between each of my vertebrae and the thought that came to me was I am as opposed to you can't, and that's become the theme for me of what boundaries are I am as opposed to you can't. But anyway, I stood up. I stood up tall. The guy reached out to grab me and his hand bounced about six inches or less from my body, but he was really reaching for me. He bounced and I walked away, looking at his hand and then looking at me and looking at his hand back and forth, so I knew he had missed. This was something that was a real thing. And I got home and there was a phone call from somebody who became one of my Qigong teachers saying I think you need to stop focusing on fighting arts and do more of the internal arts. And then I learned from her this concept of Wei Chi, that this field basically had happened. And then I started. So this is what I learned was the name of what happened, because I didn't know, I wasn't thinking, oh, I need to extend my Wei, my Weichi field. I just was like I'm going to stand tall and I'm going to be who I am, and then this energy field emerged and he felt it um, and I wasn't thinking about it, it just happened, it was spontaneous.

Vicki: 25:30

Um, a few years later. Uh, I was speaking on a stage. Um, I had, uh, I was doing a it was a conference and I there were different people there and I think I was one of three women and about 40 men and they were we were all supposed to have one minute or 90 seconds to talk about a breakout session we were going to give. So it was one by one getting up on the stage and they were timing us and some of the guys were going on and on. It was way more than a minute and a half. I used to work in radio so I knew I had timed it down to the second. And when I stepped up on the stage and I also felt, you know, irritated that I was one of only a few women. I wanted more women's voices there, and so I felt really important that I was wanting to have a woman's voice and to sort of augment that.

Vicki: 26:19

Anyway, as I walked up on the stage, I saw the guy start the stopwatch before I even got close to the microphone. So I just took the microphone and I just started my thing about what we were going to be doing in the breakout room and the guy held up. You know the time and I knew that I'd only had 45 seconds because I know I know how to time things, and so I just kept talking and this other guy was who's in the back of the room, who was kind of the MC, started coming toward me and I remember just putting out my hand and continuing to talk and and and people started laughing and I didn't know why they were laughing because I wasn't trying to do anything, I was just like this and talking a little bit longer and finished by a minute and a half and afterwards I was like I was enjoying the fact that people were laughing. I was like, oh good, maybe I'm saying something that's amusing. But it turned out that he was like trying to get. He was not touching me, but he was trying to get past my hand and I didn't. I was not trying to do a power over, power trip thing at all, I was just trying to finish my sentence, sentences.

Vicki: 27:23

So that was another example of which I have hundreds of stories, of which you now, from students walking down grocery aisles, and I mean it's just lots and lots of stories about this phenomenon that comes from this place. That's entirely non-defensive phenomenon that comes from this place. That's entirely non-defensive. So that's where it's the boundary. I'm not trying to defend anything or my space or anything like that, but it's really about this emergence of who you are at center, and that creates its own cushion, its own expression, its own field.

Rose: 27:58

Its own energy, its own energy, its own energy right. So people can cultivate that through a practice like Qigong.

Vicki: 28:05

Absolutely.

Rose: 28:07

And I'd like to start mentioning that you help people get on stage and speak and create their story. Do you offer exercises in creating this energy about them, this Wei Qi or even the Nei Qi? Do you leave those tools in there?

Vicki: 28:28

Absolutely, I absolutely do, because being a speaker standing on stage, especially for people that I work with who are either keynoters who are really passionate about changing the world, or people who are either keynoters who are really passionate about changing the world or people who are speaking to sell they have a business where they're really wanting to serve people. There's a spiritual journey in claiming that right, getting up on stage and being vulnerable in that way or being exposed or visible in that way. So there's a lot of inner work. It's definitely an inner work piece that has to do with I mean, it's not Nei Gong specifically, but I'm doing a lot of the internal work of it.

Vicki: 29:06

And then, in terms of Wei Qi, I always have exercises for people that they can do to, first of all, align the wisdom of the heaven realm, the heart of the human realm, the action of the earth realm, so that when they're there they're aligned in these three what I call realms of consciousness.

Vicki: 29:23

And then, from that place, also, how do we expand our energy so that when you're speaking on a stage it's really heart to heart, that you're not just trying to get unilateral energy out there, but there's a reciprocity that happens between you and your audience, or you and the people who are listening to you. So so, so yeah, qigong absolutely informs me as a director, as a, as a speaker coach, as well as, of course, being a performer myself. So, yeah, I can't even separate them anymore, right, and I think that's one of the things that I bring to presentation skills that a lot of coaches don't really know about is how do you stand in your energy, not just feeling confident, not just being you know, not feeling cocky but yeah, it's not about that, it's about how do you really get into the heart of who you are and communicate from that place with a place that that's empowered I think you're saying how, how their authenticity is.

Rose: 30:19

their authenticity is a term that's used all the time. Yeah, yeah, it's being in your own authentic self while you're.

Vicki: 30:28

Your authenticity and vulnerability.

Rose: 30:30

And vulnerability.

Vicki: 30:31

Yeah, yeah, and it's always a tricky thing, right, because you don't want to be vulnerable in a way that people are going to lean forward. Oh no, I'm so sorry that happened to you, or something like that. You don't want people to take care of you. But that, that sense of being transparent or open or, like you said, authentic I know that is an overused word, but it still has a deep meaning to me, because I've seen so many people fronting where the internal doesn't match the external in the speaker world, you know, where there's this other thing going on and externally they're just, you know, trying to pump it out. And it may not seem fake to people, but there's a disconnect, right, there's a disconnect, and there's a way in which they're not connecting to their own hearts, so they can't connect to their audience's hearts.

Rose: 31:15

Yeah, we could probably travel down the road to social media, but I was going to save some questions for later on that. I wanted to talk a little bit more about some of the concepts and theories and principles from your book, or how we can integrate that in our own lives.

Vicki: 31:45

Yeah, for me, when I think about stillness in motion and motion in stillness, I think of it as the way to access our guidance, our sense of connection to that heaven realm. So I think of it as the heaven aspect of the heaven triad, which I won't get into because it's too complex, but but it's basically, I think, that that recognition that, first of all, the first practice being, you know, and this is really what I learned from sparring for so long, because I did a lot of fighting that ability to be still when things are coming at you in different ways and we all live, I think you know our lives can be pretty chaotic, especially these days. Things are tough for a lot of people and there's a lot of stimulus going on and a lot of divisiveness and stuff, divisiveness and stuff. So, when we have all of this kind of chaotic energy, how do we come back to center? Basic Qigong practice, that's that stillness, having that internal sense of being able to be centered and aligned no matter what. So, even if we need to move and sway, so even if we need to move and sway, we don't lose that center.

Vicki: 33:01

And then, within the stillness, is this constant motion right If you sit still and you meditate, your lymph systems are still going, your cardiovascular system is going, your digestive system is going, your breath, you know there's a lot of aliveness and we can be in a state of stillness and tap into that movement is still happening.

Vicki: 33:19

Or even in the world around us, like sometimes I'll go and I have a lake nearby here where I teach qigong and I, you know, I'll sit by the lake for a while and there's ducks walking around. You know it's very still, it's very quiet, but there's all this life force happening insects, ducks, swans, pelicans, um squirrels, sunks, all of the different. You know life, you know happening all around this, this stillness of this beautiful lake place where you know you don't hear anything but just the trees, the wind in the trees, which is another thing. You know another movement in the stillness. So I think that you know being able to balance all the time between understanding that whenever we're still there's motion, Whenever we're moving, there's access to stillness, that this allows us to really embrace the whole of who we are.

Rose: 34:08

I'm very visual and I was picturing a mother with children, young children, and I remember when my kids were young it was chaotic and there was never a moment of stillness. And if I only had the tools that I have now with learning Qigong and learning how to pause and center myself, I think I would have been able to maybe enjoy it more, it would have been less chaotic and I don't know. Just you know, come back to that center. I think it's an important skill for people to learn to come back to that center.

Vicki: 34:46

I completely agree, you know, and one of the things when you were saying that, the thing that popped into my mind was that it's also self-love, right? I know so many folks right, who are punishing themselves, angry at themselves, get stuck in the not enoughness, especially moms who are especially single moms, who you know have. You know, there's, no, there's hardly any time to breathe and of course breath is the way to come to that center, if nothing else. You know, sometimes when I'm driving I drive a lot here in California you know it's like while I'm driving I just really want to focus on my sixth direction, breathing, so that I stay really present and awake to what's around me, so that, you know, I'm sort of still, but then there's the sense of this breath going here, and then there's chaos around me and I can come to stillness, and then that stillness is motion.

Vicki: 35:32

So I think that, you know, coming to that place of being able to breathe into center and to come back to center, even if it's just for a moment, it doesn't have to be like go off to the mountaintop and sit for hours, it can just be, you know, for a moment, to just focus on that breath, going in and out, is an active self love. It brings us back to being okay, it takes us, takes us back to the, instead of thinking, oh my God, I'm not, you know I'm doing this, but I should be doing that and I should be doing that. It's like you know. Come back to center and be with, be with where you are, and it's a level of self-acceptance, self-love that feels really critical and really missing for a lot of people yes, that it.

Rose: 36:14

I was thinking self-compassion and and there are a lot of people out there there's a few like Tara Brach and Kristen Neff who write about self-compassion and they've created acronyms around that, and it's all about being mindful and aware it all comes back to that and the breath is an indicator of when things aren't right. Like you say, you go back to your breath, but if a person isn't doing well inside, their breath is an indicator of what's happening, whether they're breathing real, shallow or they're breathing and, more like you know, they're hypervigilant or something like that. That's a clear indicator and if you're not aware of that, you'll miss an opportunity to draw, to come back into that balance or to do something to help yourself. Do you think it's ever too late for someone to you know?

Rose: 37:09

We all have a story. I have to go back. I'm thinking how to phrase this. We all have a story. We come. All our experiences create our stories. Some stories are great, some stories are not so great, but some people are stuck in their stories. They're not happy, they didn't have this growing up, they didn't do this, they didn't do that. Do you feel people can rewrite those stories? How can people rewrite those stories about themselves?

Vicki: 37:42

Oh, it's such a good question, rose, especially these days. I think that what you're describing stuck in their story, I think of as what I would call a victim mindset, so the story being the ways in which I have been harmed, and so that's who I am, and so you have to be careful about not harming. I remember Carolyn Mace talking about this, but that that there's, you know that there's. There's just, I guess, I guess I would say that I think that that, yes, the short answer is yes, I believe people can rewrite their story. I think that there's a way in which to kind of honor the feelings that those stories have come, have that have come in, to honor what you've done, but to always listen for what, what is evolving in me because of it. So I have this one of the laws of the way of joy is circles open into spirals, and this concept is like that, that we can kind of go around and around in terms of our feelings. So I can get triggered in an instant by my negative, critical, dad, right. In fact, for years I, you know, I'm a performer, I've been on stage and for years I would like focus on the people who were the most negative and looking with what I thought might be a frown, or their arms were crossed or something like that, and you know, it would be like sort of circling, this thing again and again, of disapproval and I'm not enough and I can't do this and I'm not doing a good job, and who the hell do? I think I am and all of this. You know those demons of doubt, and but as we do our inner work which I've done a lot of work around this particular relationship in my life that, as we do that inner work, we start to move up, what I think of, up the spiral. So we're moving up, so there's more consciousness every time, and it's not that the feelings never come for me anymore, feeling like, oh, I don't want to be criticized or I feel tender, it's not like. But it's like, oh, yeah, I know that feeling, there you are again. Okay, it's all right. So, rather than feeling like I have to be dragged back down into whatever the story is attached to, that, I'm not good enough, et cetera, et cetera, that I can go, oh, there's that feeling that's coming back around again. What if I could just feel that and then just actually move forward from it or out of it and circle up to another level of consciousness so that I can actually use, compost these negative stories Because they're real. It's not like people don't have real, true trauma in our lives. We do, but how do we compost it when? That's?

Vicki: 40:22

What I love about qigong is that it's so much earth you know, so inspired by earth and animals and stuff it's really looking at. You know what? What? What is the breakdown of, of what's happening under the surface, in the unconscious? How do we break that down and let it become a nutrient, as opposed to just staying in the, in the, the waste place, right? So how do we turn things into fertilizer? And to me, that circles into spirals. As part of it is that, just as we do our work, we expand our awareness, and that happens through the integrity of coming back to center and being able to really listen deeper. And sometimes that requires help, right? You get help from a, from a friend, from a coach, from a family member, from somebody, a friend, oh, yeah, I love that.

Rose: 41:08

I love the way you explain that, and more and more people are really starting to understand the conditioning that occurred, or the trauma that occurred in their early life and are trying to change which is great, that occurred in their early life and are trying to change, which is great. You know, and, and, and we all want to live. You know, I know one of the things I always say is I want to live the rest of my life, the best of my life.

Vicki: 41:34

So yeah.

Rose: 41:35

And I and I want to do the, and I've been doing the same work that you've mentioned. You've been doing a lot of work and it's and it's, there'll always be work.

Vicki: 41:49

It's never not gonna yeah, always, yeah, yeah, and that's okay, yeah, and it's not about being in a state of bliss all the time. I want to mention, when I say the way of joy, I think of joy as a container for all emotions. So it's not like joy instead of anger, or sadness, or grief or it, it's joy is a container for all of it and but but that I think of that as the, as the life force. So so when we're in victim mindset, there's always something there. You know the victim mindset. All it does is perpetuate more victimhood. So I'm not going to be a victim, I'm going to make you a victim, or or I'm not, you know it, it, it.

Vicki: 42:20

It brings up this again, this kind of defensiveness. So I think that, um, being able to really work it on whatever level you do whether it's through therapy, whether or whether it's through energetic medicine or plant medicine or whatever it is that people do to help heal trauma and there's so many modalities out there that are actually effective that then becomes particularly useful, because those traumas don't go away, but they are part of who you are, and to not be victimized by them anymore is a huge step in empowerment, I think, where I can have trauma in my background, but it's not. It's not. It's not ruling my choices anymore.

Rose: 43:08

Speaking of that, that's a great segue. I love that, and you talk about that in your book, about discernment and paying attention to our choices, which is very important, right, because we all have choices. It's all about choice, yeah.

Vicki: 43:25

Yeah, yeah, I can choose to continue to feel like I'll never be enough, and that's your fault, because you're looking at me that way. You know I could choose, or I could choose to go. Oh, I'm feeling that. Well, what do I need to do to shift my mindset so that I don't feel it in this way and that I'm able to, you know, recognize that's part of what makes me maybe, more empathic, more ability to feel other people, but, at the same time, I'm going to use that as a way to move us forward and up that spiral, instead of the same dynamic occurring again and again. So, yeah, are are paramount, right, and that's, that's the part of the human realm where we're choosing.

Vicki: 44:09

What I think of as the human realm in terms of, um, the cultivating of discernment. What is it that feeds me? What is it that drains me? Is the thought that I'm having, right now, something that's making me feel good or making me feel worse? Um, what? What do I need to do to change it? You know, so I can choose to feel good if I, you know, just create that mindset of awareness to be able to shift and you know, with practice, you can turn that question and it can pop up into your head right away.

Rose: 44:41

You can ask yourself okay, it can pop up into your head right away, you can. You can ask yourself okay, all right, what am I doing? Am I doing something good here, or or or should I just stop, like I've learned, like now? Okay, rose, just stop.

Vicki: 44:54

Take a pause.

Rose: 44:57

Exactly when before. And like I'm not saying, I don't spiral when I get angry. I'm Italian and you know there's things that trigger me sometimes, but I'm a lot better because of all this. Yeah, just wait until you're level headed, you're grounded and you can express in. You know you could come from a better place of expression.

Vicki: 45:23

Yeah, but you don't have to give up your Italian passion, right, you don't? Have to give up the passion part of it. It's really just about coming from a place that's centered as opposed, so I think of it as being responsive instead of being reactive.

Rose: 45:35

Yeah, that's great. You talk about expressing appreciation and gratitude and doing it intentionally. How important is it to have a gratitude practice, and is that an expression or a way of healing?

Vicki: 45:55

I think it's so important and I know that there's many, many spiritual teachers out there that will say the same and it's not hard right For a while, actually, when I first was kind of thinking about gratitude, it was like I did have a hard time remembering. What am I grateful for Because I was so focused? Am I grateful for Because I was so focused? I talk about choosing the story you're telling yourself so focused on what I didn't have, what I wanted, that I was yearning for and all that stuff that you know. But when that starts to turn and when it's like, oh my gosh, what can I say?

Vicki: 46:31

I'm grateful for the breath that I have going in and out, that I have. You know that I have these lungs that work so well, that I have. You know that I have people in my life that I love and that love me, whatever it is, that I have enough money to be able to eat, or that I have a roof over my head, whatever, whatever the things are that you know I mean of like, what can I own? That is mine. I think that's a life source. I mean, I think it's a source of energy when we can go into gratitude as a way to just really heal and also serve. If I'm really grateful, I can serve a lot better.

Rose: 47:26

True, yeah, that is true. Yeah, you know it's, it's and not everyone. People, I think, are conditioned not to to come from that perspective for whatever reason, their, their, you know influences in their early life or or challenges in their life or whatever.

Vicki: 47:43

but it's never too late to learn how to come from a place of gratitude and appreciation and yeah, I mean I have a morning practice where I do the microcosmic orbit, which is a very common Qigong Shigal meditation practice. That goes through many, many different systems that I've studied. All have some form of microcosmic orbit. That and where I were each of the energy points on the on the orbit, which there's, of course, many, the main ones that I work with. Each of them have an affirmation, and there are a lot of them are about what I'm grateful for.

Vicki: 48:19

So I just sort of run those through my body every day about what I'm grateful for.

Vicki: 48:22

So I just sort of run those through my body every day and I think to have something that's a systematic practice, whether it's a journaling or whether it's just spending a minute looking in the mirror and saying I'm grateful to you today because you, whatever, or to do something that's you know, what I'm doing is really relatively more, you know, a little more complicated. But to have a sense where you're just breathing that gratitude in or recognizing that gratitude, it needs to be a practice. It's not something that necessarily we're not really, you know, grow up in a culture that values it. At least here in the United States that I'm aware of, it's rare right that we even hear about gratitude, unless it's in the sort of more the woo-woo spiritual world. But I think the more we can be grateful, the more we can do this as a practice, as an active practice, as opposed to wait till something happens and then say, oh, thank you to actually know that there's something there all the time that you can be grateful for.

Rose: 49:19

Yeah, well, words have energy. Yes, and if we put the appreciation and gratitude behind the words that we say to ourselves and to others, I mean that just vibrates out and it's a wonderful thing, a wonderful feeling. I love that. We wanted to hear about all the things that you offer.

Vicki: 49:44

Oh, wow, well, thank you for asking. So I basically work with people now in terms of what does it mean to step into your power presence? And so that might be anything from you know working with Qigong. So I teach Qigong classes. I do seasonal classes every season and, as well as then, like nine week packages of classes where we'll be working on some of the themes that come out in the season, and that's that's pure Qigong.

Vicki: 50:20

I work with speakers, with storytellers, with actors and artists and performers on their stories, and some of it sometimes it's a solo show for a performer, sometimes it's somebody who wants to speak about it. They know that they were put on the planet because they have a message and they want to look at how to make that message really live and pop and live for people, really live and pop and live for people. I have a group that meets called Embodied Joy, where those are people who are in the Qigong workshops or classes, and then it's a kind of an add-on program where we meet and I do group coaching basically, and we're looking at the different concepts behind the way of joy and what's going on in your life and what are some of the remedies that we could come up with, or what are some of the ways that I can help draw out your own problem solving ability. I'm not a coach who tends to tell people what to do. I don't like it. I don't like it when people give me advice, so I don't tend to do a lot of advice. I a lot of advice I might make suggestions about. This form might help, and this is why I think so. But, but, but I do.

Vicki: 51:25

I don't know why I have this knack of knowing how to ask questions. I really like asking questions. I really like helping people find their own guidance, as opposed to me being their guide. I really believe in people's innate brilliance and that's what I'm always looking to. How can I help accelerate the access to that? Let's see what else do I offer. If people are interested in speaking, I would encourage them to download my free gift, which I call. What is it called? Let's get real about charisma three keys to inspire and motivate your audience every time you speak. And what that is is looking at partly of the stories, and then it's also looking at what are some Qigong exercises you can do before, during and after you're on stage to really amp up what, what your impact is. I think that that's it for now. I mean, I don't know, I do a lot of different things.

Rose: 52:26

It's hard to think I'll put all the links in and you also. You host the NQA, the National Qigong Association, QI Talks every month and there's people out there. There's a lot of Qigong instructors and practitioners and if you are curious about what Qigong is or want to chime in, these are free talks, right, so I'll put the link.

Vicki: 52:45

They're absolutely free and they're absolutely amazing.

Vicki: 52:48

It's such a I've been doing it for 10 years, and this is just a very wide range of people's approach to Qigong, because Qigong, you know, is a word like dance, right, there's so many different styles of Qigong and theories and concepts and lineages and um um. So there's, it's a very wide range of people's approach to qigong, so it's always really interesting and every, every single one has been just so enlivening to me. I love, I love, love, love doing the qi talks for the national qigong association, yeah, so that is free that is free.

Vicki: 53:19

That is free, and then for a month, so you can come live or you can listen to the recordings for a month at the NQA. org website and then, if you become a member, you actually have access to the whole 10 years of.

Rose: 53:32

It's a wonderful community and you know, of course it's a plug because I also belong. I belong and there's the conference is being held in September in Savannah Georgia and you are one of the presenters.

Vicki: 53:47

I am. I know I'm excited about it, and what I'm going to be talking about is we're working with people. I'm not. It's experiential. It's not me lecturing. It's Qigong as a as a access to creativity, because I'm an artist. I'm an artist, I'm a performing artist. I'm really always looking for you know how do these things come together? Because I believe that being able to perform and express yourself from a place of real, empowered vulnerability there's nothing like it, there's no feeling like it. So that's what we'll be playing with in Savannah.

Vicki: 54:18

Another offer that I do feel like I'd love to make for any of you who are out there who feel like either you're interested in Qigong or you know that you have a message.

Vicki: 54:28

You feel like there's something that you want to say that's going to help raise the energy we need that right now. I'm really, really feeling that there's the level of divisiveness and stuff that's happening. If you have something that feels like it's a healing message or something that's a solution or ways in which people can heal themselves, or any of that, and you want to be speaking more and you want to get a little bit of input about your story or how you do it, I would like to offer people a pre precession just to connect with me, and you can do that If you go to your power presencecom, that that'll give you access to download the book. But even if you don't want to download the e-book, that's the guide to speaking. Even if you don't want that, there's a link there that you can connect with me directly and we can just have a chat complimentary chat around, because I really am very, very dedicated at this point to getting more and more voices out there that can help create some solutions to a divided world.

Rose: 55:25

I love that. It's wonderful, one of the things you know we're surrounded by social media and social media can be such. It can be so positive, it can be positively impactful if people just put the right messages out there. If people just put the right messages out there and I hope that people will start doing that and just think about how we can spread joy and positive messages and all good messages out there with the tools that we have, and I hope we do that.

Vicki: 55:58

And you're doing it right now with your podcast, with this podcast that you're talking to amazing people it podcast, with this podcast that you talk to amazing people. You know it's such a huge service that you do by doing this.

Rose: 56:07

Yes, my intention, it really is my intention to share the messages and to raise the vibration of the world. I think I've always felt that as a young child. So hopefully I'm doing that and we'll continue.

Vicki: 56:22

No, hopefully you are doing that. You are doing that, yes.

Rose: 56:25

Just that last question I had was is there any advice or anything you wanted to tell when you would tell your younger self, my younger self?

Vicki: 56:36

It's okay, honey, really it's okay, you'll be fine. This is trust your heart. Trust's okay, you'll be fine. This is trust your heart. Trust your heart, you can trust that who you are is good and speak out, you know. Just don't be so afraid, just get up, speak out, raise the energy.

Rose: 56:57

Love. That. That's beautiful. Thank you for that. I appreciate you and everything about you, and thank you so much for being here with me today.

Vicki: 57:08

It's been a joy, Rose, truly a joy, that hour went by.

Rose: 57:18

Thank you for joining me here on Chat Off The Mat. I hope these stories have inspired you. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with those who might benefit. Your support helps me spread awareness about the power of transformative healing. Stay connected with me on social media. Reach out with your own healing stories or topics you'd like me to explore in future episodes. Your voice is an essential part of this community. I hope that your healing journey is filled with self-discovery, curiosity, resilience and the unwavering belief in the power that resides within you. Until next time, I'm Rose Wippich, wishing you a journey filled with love, laughter and endless possibilities.