Building a personal Qi Gong archive (so I stop forgetting what I learned)

I recently started recording Qi Gong exercises for myself because I kept forgetting them. I’ve been practicing Taijiquan and Qi Gong for over twenty years, and so many exercises just slipped away. Not just small exercises. I once knew a Tai Chi fan form, and I forgot it. I once was really good at Yi Jin Jing Qi Gong, and I forgot it. I’m sure I could pick it back up quickly, but I still feel bad about forgetting it.

It does sting a little, knowing that something I once could move through easily, is just not there anymore. And I know it will keep happening, unless I do something different.

Recording my personal Qi Gong archive

So I decided to record moves. Nothing fancy. I do 3 repetitions of an exercise, then turn 45° and do it again, until I’ve captured every side and angle. That’s usually enough to see what’s going on, even for exercises with a few tricky details.

For some exercises, the video alone isn’t enough. So I add a short comment, a few words, sometimes a PDF.

This is just for me. No one else will see these videos, so I don’t need good lighting or a clean background. I don’t edit anything. I just need enough to jog my memory later. It looks a bit like this:

https://youtube.com/shorts/6KefsszWVOo?feature=share

This is an exercise I learned during a Qi Gong workshop that focused on water element exercises. It’s an exercise specifically for the kidney meridian. In my notes, I also wrote down: don’t shortcut the arms. The arms, at shoulder height, go all the way to the front and then to the other side.

This recording will not stop me from writing comments on paper during classes and workshops. But paper gets lost, and I can’t search through a stack of notebooks. So now I’m moving the video and the comment together into my own personal database, so I can actually find things again when I need them.

Start your own archive

If you’ve been practicing for a while, you probably have exercises somewhere in your memory that you haven’t done in years. Create your own system to archive. A notebook works. So does your phone camera. The point isn’t the method, it’s that you actually keep something before it slips away for good.

And feel free to share your system in the comments. Or write me an email! I would love to hear from you.
Angelika