Every few years a practice comes along that quietly reorganises everything you thought you already knew. For me, White Tiger Qigong was one of them. What drew me in was not a promise of mysticism but almost the opposite — a school willing to put ancient Daoist medical Qigong and modern science on the same table and let them speak to each other.
White Tiger Qigong is an online academy built around a single idea, printed plainly across everything they do: ancient Qigong meets modern science. This is not a watered-down, wellness-app version of the art. The forms are old — some of them centuries old, drawn from Daoist medical and martial lineages — but the way they are taught is informed by fascia research, sports science, neuroscience and classical Chinese medicine. That combination is precisely why I trained to teach it.
Who is Master Tevia Feng?
White Tiger Qigong was founded by Master Tevia Feng, and his story is inseparable from the work. He was born with chronic illness and grew up in a body that did not cooperate. At the age of seven he began practising Qigong — not as a hobby, but as a search for his own healing. That search became a life.
As a young man he travelled across China to train with renowned Qigong masters, seeking out rare skills and lineages that are seldom opened to outsiders. He has since written five books, translated into multiple languages, and through the academy he has guided more than sixty thousand students around the world. What makes him a teacher worth following, for me, is that none of it is theoretical — he teaches what gave him his own body back.
The conversation below — a podcast with Tevia from the White Tiger Qigong Academy — is the best way to hear the philosophy in his own words.
A conversation with Master Tevia Feng, founder of White Tiger Qigong.
The objective of the movement
The academy describes its mission as opening a pathway "for people to ignite transformation and maximise potential, scaling across communities to create a global movement." Behind the language the aim is both simple and ambitious: take an art that was once guarded and local, and make it accessible, teachable and trustworthy enough to reach people everywhere.
That word — trustworthy — is where the science comes in. White Tiger works with the language and research of fascia, sports science and neuroscience alongside the principles of Chinese medicine, drawing on experts from institutions like Harvard and Stanford. The point is not to "prove" Qigong with a Western stamp of approval. It is to give an honest account of why the practice works in the body — so that what used to be passed on as faith can now be understood, measured and taught with precision.
Where ancient medicine meets modern science
The bridge is more literal than it sounds. The meridians of Chinese medicine — the channels through which Qi is said to flow — map remarkably well onto the body's fascial network: the continuous web of connective tissue that wraps every muscle, organ and bone. When a Daoist text describes "opening a channel," a modern anatomist might describe restoring glide and hydration to fascia. Same territory, two vocabularies.
The same is true of breath. The slow, deliberate breathing at the heart of Qigong is, in the language of neuroscience, a direct lever on the autonomic nervous system — a way of shifting the body out of fight-or-flight and into the parasympathetic state where repair actually happens. Ancient practitioners felt this and called it cultivating Qi. We can now also describe it as down-regulating the nervous system. Both are true. Holding both at once is what White Tiger does well.
The systems I teach
As a White Tiger Qigong instructor I am certified to teach three of the school's core systems, and I work as a breathwork facilitator alongside them. Each one trains a different quality in the body.
8 Trigrams Qigong (Bagua)
Named after the eight trigrams of the I Ching, this is the school's spiral system — built around twisting, coiling, circular movement that works the fascia in every plane. It is the one I reach for when the goal is mobility, balance and resilience: it keeps the spine and the long fascial lines supple, and trains the body to move freely in any direction. (An immersive in-person 8 Trigrams certification opens through the academy in August 2026.)
5 Element Qigong (Wu Xing)
Five Element is the powerful, athletic side of the work — what the school calls organ alchemy. Each of the five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal, water — is paired with an organ system and a quality of movement, and the practice uses dynamic, expressive forms to clear and strengthen them. The Dragon belongs to this system. Below is a short clip of me practising the Dragon form from 5 Element Qigong.
The Dragon form from 5 Element Qigong — my own practice. MindBodyInMotion, Tenerife.
Meridian Qigong
Where Five Element is athletic, Meridian Qigong is gentle and precise. It is meridian-focused, joint-friendly work designed for health recovery — soft, flowing movement that follows the body's channels to restore circulation and ease. It is often where I begin with people who are rebuilding after injury, illness or long-term stress, because it asks for sensitivity rather than effort.
Breathwork
Underneath all of it is the breath. As a breathwork facilitator I treat it as the operating system of the whole practice — the fastest, most direct route to internal alchemy, emotional regulation and the deep states the older texts point toward. Breath is what turns movement into medicine; without it, a form is just exercise.
Why I teach this
After more than thirty years moving through martial arts, Tai Chi and Qigong, I have learned to be wary of anything that asks me to choose between tradition and evidence. White Tiger Qigong never asked me to choose. It let me keep the depth of the Daoist lineages and gain a clear, modern understanding of what is actually happening in the nervous system and the fascia while I practise.
That is the same gift I want to pass on. Whether someone comes to me for the spiral of 8 Trigrams, the power of Five Element, the recovery of Meridian work, or simply to learn to breathe, the aim is the same: a body that is supple, regulated and genuinely its own again. Ancient art, understood with modern eyes.
You can explore the full curriculum and Master Tevia Feng's work at whitetigerqigong.com. If you would like to experience these systems in person here on Tenerife, take a look at my personal training, or simply get in touch.
