Ithaca Nei Gong Lotus Nei Gong certified training

Instructor

awakening dragon image

Hi! I’m Mark Reichert, chief instructor at Ithaca Nei Gong. I’ve been studying under Lotus Nei Gong technical director Damo Mitchell since 2012, recently completing a 2.5 year Qi Gong Instructor training program. I’m now certified to teach the Lotus Nei Gong Level 1 Qi Gong syllabus.

How I got into this…

I’ve been studying aikido since 1989, and have both a 4th degree black belt and a Shidoin teaching certification from the United States Aikido Federation. I regularly teach at the Cornell Aikido Club and Finger Lakes Aikido.

It was a search for further depth in my aikido training that eventually led me to Lotus Nei Gong. For many years, I attended Tada Hiroshi Sensei’s two week summer aikido training seminar in La Spezia, Italy. Tada Sensei spoke of several key concepts:

  • He talked of connecting to vibration force in the body. Vibration is the physical manifestation of Qi.
  • He talked of “tanden” (丹田 - “dan tian” in Chinese) - energy centers in the body.
  • He frequently would say we must build a body capable of doing the techniques (correctly). This idea of transformative cultivation of the body as a prerequisite to advanced study is key in Lotus Nei Gong.

At these seminars, it was nice to bring a book or two to read in my spare time, with it feeling somehow “compatible” to read Daoist books. In 2012, while ordering a few books for the trip, Amazon gave me a “You might also be interested in…” recommendation to read Damo’s Daoist Nei Gong book. Reading this book was an absolute eye-opener. It covered many of the topics that Tada Sensei had been discussing, but so clearly, and in so much more depth. When I returned home, a google search revealed that Damo was about to give his first set of seminars in the US. Attending the first event, I found Damo to be incredibly skillful and knowledgable, a great communicator, very ethical, and also fun to train with. I now train with him whenever I can, in the US and Europe. I’ll always be grateful to Amazon’s recommendation engine for this!