Learn the Map Behind Every Qi Gong Practice You’ve Ever Done
The Five Elements Online Course teaches the energetic system at the heart of Holden QiGong. It stands on its own as a complete practice, and it’s the front half of the Teacher Certification curriculum.
So if you decide to go further later, you’re already halfway there.
There’s a moment when Qi Gong becomes more than a practice
At first, you learn the movements. You follow the breath, soften the body, and begin to feel energy moving in ways you may not have experienced before. With time, something deeper begins to open.
That may have been what drew you toward the Teacher Certification Program at first: the possibility of understanding Qi Gong more deeply and allowing it to become part of how you move through the world. But when you considered the 200 hours, the teaching demonstration, and the investment, the honest answer may have been, not yet. That doesn’t mean you have to set aside the part of you that wants to go deeper. You may simply need a different place to begin.
Perhaps you can already sense what a deeper understanding of Qi Gong could open up:
There’s a way to deepen your understanding, experience more of what drew you toward teacher training, and discover where that curiosity may lead.
You don’t have to commit to the entire path before taking the next step.
The deeper you go, the more your practice begins to reveal
Beneath every movement is an ancient understanding of how energy flows through your body, your emotions, and the natural world. This wisdom reveals the connections that can be difficult to see when you’re simply following a routine. How your emotional state affects your body, how the seasons influence your energy, and why the same practice can feel completely different from one day to the next.
As those connections become clearer, you can begin to:
For Lee, this is where the practice starts to become part of how you live:
“The difference between doing Qi Gong and living Qi Gong is the application. Being able to apply it in everyday circumstances, to take a pause before getting angry, before being reactive, to come from your center.”
At this point, this is where the deeper potential of Qi Gong begins to open. It becomes a way to understand yourself more deeply, participate in your own healing, and move through life from a more grounded center.
And the path into that deeper relationship begins with the framework at the heart of everything Lee teaches.
The Five Elements Online Course
The map behind every Qi Gong practice you’ve ever done, and the front half of the path to teaching.
A self-paced online training in the energetic system at the heart of Holden QiGong. Lee guides you through how energy moves in the body, how emotions connect to organs and seasons, and how to work with all of it deliberately. This is the same reshot, updated Five Elements curriculum that anchors the Teacher Certification Program. It comprises the front half of the coursework, accounting for 40 of the 200 hours required to become certified.
Each element carries a season, a pair of organs, and an emotion. Learn the five and you can read what your practice is doing, and choose it on purpose.
Sense how Qi actually moves
Learn how energy travels through your organs and meridians, and how to feel where it is moving freely and where it is stuck.
Read emotions as energy
Understand which emotions belong to which element, so frustration, grief, worry, and fear become information you can work with rather than weather you wait out.
Know what each practice is doing
Work with movement, healing sounds, acupressure, and meditation, and learn what each one is doing energetically.
See your own patterns
Read your recurring patterns through the elements and understand why they repeat.
Practice with the seasons
Adjust what you do as your energy naturally shifts through the year, instead of practicing against it.
Build a practice with intention behind it
Choose what you need on a given day rather than pressing play on the same thing.
Created by Lee Holden, one of the world’s most trusted Qi Gong teachers, the course distills more than three decades of practice and teaching into the one system he considers foundational to everything else he teaches.
If you enroll in the Holden QiGong Teacher Certification Program later, the Five Elements lessons you’ve completed carry forward, and your full $1,397 investment is credited toward your enrollment.
Lee Holden
One of the world’s most trusted Qi Gong teachers · 35+ years of teaching · American Public Television & PBS
Lee Holden is known for more than 35 years of teaching, his long-running presence on American Public Television and PBS, and his ability to make ancient energy practices feel simple, accessible, and useful in modern life. His community includes more than 180,000 email subscribers, 330,000 YouTube subscribers, and 24 million video views.
Like many people who discovered Qi Gong, Lee came to the practice looking for healing. As a collegiate soccer player at UC Berkeley, injuries threatened to sideline him from the sport he loved. What began as a search for recovery became a lifelong path of study, including training with renowned Taoist master Mantak Chia and deep immersion in Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, meditation, Tai Chi, and Qi Gong.
Along the way, Lee realized these practices were too valuable to remain hidden. He saw that people everywhere were struggling with stress, pain, fatigue, and disconnection, and that Qi Gong offered a practical way to participate in their own healing. That became his mission.
Of everything he teaches, Lee returns to the Five Elements most often. It’s the system that explains the rest: why a movement affects one organ and not another, why certain emotions surface in certain seasons, why the same practice feels different in March than it does in November.
“If you could only take one course in your life, this is the one.”
What Students and Colleagues Say About Lee Holden
What’s Inside The Five Elements Online Course
Everything in this course is built around one outcome: moving you from following a practice to understanding it. The material is organized element by element, so each section gives you a working knowledge of one part of the system and a set of practices that let you feel it in your own body before you move on.
The Five Elements Core Curriculum (40 Hours)
The full Five Elements training, taught by Lee, covering Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.
Guided Practice Sessions with Lee
Every element is taught hands-on, through practice.
Self-Paced Access Inside the Holden QiGong Learning Platform
The full course is delivered on demand through the Holden QiGong learning platform.
A Transparent Path to Certification
If you decide the teaching path is yours, nothing you do here has to be repeated.
Every part of this course is built to give you the understanding that makes the rest of your practice make sense.
What You’ll Learn Inside The Five Elements Online Course
By the end of this course you’ll understand what your practice is doing, and you’ll be able to choose it deliberately instead of following whatever comes next in the playlist. Each element builds on the one before it, so the system assembles itself as you go.
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Read the five elements in your own body and your own life
Recognizing which one is asking for attention on a given day, and which one you tend to overdraw.
Work with emotions as energy
Using specific practices to move frustration toward clarity, grief toward strength, worry toward stability, and fear toward steadiness.
Sense and guide Qi through your organs and meridians
So you can feel where circulation is stuck and know which movement, sound, or acupressure point addresses it.
Match your practice to the season
Adjusting what you do as your energy naturally shifts through the year.
Understand why the practices you already know work
Turning familiar flows from a sequence you follow into a set of tools you can select from with intention.
Judge for yourself whether the teaching path is yours
Based on real experience with the foundational curriculum rather than on how you imagine certification might feel.
The five elements are the organizing idea behind Chinese Medicine, and once you can see them, you’ll be reading them in your practice and your daily life for the rest of your time with Qi Gong.
Your Path Through the Five Elements
This course builds your practice from the ground up. Lee starts with the basics: what Qi is, how it moves, how the Five Elements fit together. From there, each module adds a new layer — breath, meridians, Taoist philosophy, Healing Sounds, and your own elemental personality — until you have a complete system you can keep using long after the course ends.
Getting to Know the Five Elements
Before you learn any one element, you need the whole map. This module lays it out: what Qi is, how it circulates, and how the Five Elements generate and balance each other. You’ll also take stock of where you stand right now, in body, emotion, mind, and spirit, a marker to check back against later.
You’ll also move through your first full Five Elements sequence, with an emphasis on synchronized breath and a relaxed, open body. The goal here isn’t information collection. The point is to start treating Qi Gong as something you cultivate.
Qi: The Nature of Life Force Energy
Here you’ll dig into what Qi actually is, tracing it back to its Pre-Natal and Post-Natal sources and understanding why breath is considered the most direct and constant access point you have to it. The module makes the case that whenever you breathe with intention, you’re already practicing.
You’ll return to the Five Elements sequence with new layers added: standing postures, wave breathing, and organ visualization. As the movements deepen, the goal shifts from performing forms correctly to letting your own Qi lead the movement.
Breath, Stress, and Purging
This module puts the exhale at the center of the work. You’ll learn how diaphragmatic breathing shifts your nervous system, and why a full exhale, not a forced inhale, is what actually deepens your breath. Understanding this changes how you approach every breath exercise that follows.
You’ll practice three distinct breath types and a purging routine built on a simple principle: empty the cup before you fill it. Releasing old tension and stress isn’t a side benefit. It’s the direct goal, and it sets up everything else in the course.
Meridians, TCM, and the Inner Smile
This module gives shape to what you’ve already been feeling in your movements. You’ll learn how organs function as energetic reservoirs and meridians as the rivers that carry Qi between them, tracing specific pathways through your body.
You’ll also pick up a second Five Elements sequence, the Taoist Five, and explore spiraling and silk-reeling movement. You’ll also be introduced to the Inner Smile: the idea that joy isn’t a reward for practice, but a practice in itself, with real, measurable effects.
Taoist Cosmology and the Five Elements
This module goes back before the beginning, to Wu Chi, the field of potential that Taoist philosophy considers as the source of Qi, the Five Elements, and everything you practice. It’s a shift from technique into the worldview underneath the technique.
You’ll also learn the complete emotional map of the Five Elements, pairing each element with its shadow emotion, its gift, and its Healing Sound. By the end, you’ll have a simple, repeatable structure for building your own practice sessions going forward.
Healing Sounds and Principles of Practice
Healing Sounds is one of the oldest tools in this tradition. In this module you’ll practice the Healing Sounds as a seated meditation, as part of a full movement routine, and as a way to close out a session. You’ll learn the five core principles of Qi Gong and explore how they are expressed through the elements.
You’ll also take a deeper look at what each element governs in the body, and begin adapting Healing Sounds and Qi Gong to fit your own life.
Taoism, the Control Cycle, and Qi Gong
This module moves between philosophy and practice. It traces Qi Gong back to its Taoist roots, starting with the opening line of the Tao Te Ching. The Control Cycle is then presented alongside the Generating Cycle, painting a fuller picture of how the elements interact.
Both Five Elements sequences come together in one session for the first time, along with a full organ-cleansing meditation. By the end, the practice starts to feel like your own.
Five Elements Personality and the Tao
The final module turns the Five Elements inward. Your own elemental personality takes center stage: your natural energetic type, how it shapes your stress responses, and how it shows up in your relationships. Purging, tonifying, and transforming round things out as distinct, practical ways of working with energy.
The course closes with the full Five Animal Frolics routine and a three-layer Healing Sounds meditation, along with a return to the Tao Te Ching’s teaching that the map is never the territory. By this point, the Five Elements should feel less like a subject you studied and more like a way you already move through the world.
Once you finish this course, you’ll have a complete grounding in the energetic system behind everything Lee teaches, along with a personal practice you can keep returning to and building on. You will also have completed the front half of the Holden QiGong Teacher Certification curriculum. Where you take it from here is entirely up to you.
What Students Are Saying
Bonuses Included When You Enroll
The full written companion used inside the Holden QiGong Teacher Certification Program, covering key learnings, reflection prompts, and integration exercises for the curriculum. It deepens what you’re studying now and gives you a clear look at the material that follows, so you can see the whole path before deciding whether to walk it.
Two live calls where you can bring your questions directly to the team: about a specific element, a practice that isn’t landing, or how to apply the material to what you’re working with right now.
Your Enrollment Is Protected
We want you to feel settled about this decision, so your enrollment is protected by a 30-Day Guarantee. Enroll today and work through the material at whatever pace suits you. Watch the lessons, try the practices, sit with the elements for a few weeks and see what they open up.
If within 30 days you decide the course isn’t right for you, contact our team and we’ll refund your investment in full. We only ask that you give the practices a genuine try first. This material tends to make sense in the body before it makes sense on paper.
What You Receive When You Enroll
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is this just the teacher training under a different name?+
It’s the front half of the Teacher Certification Program coursework, representing 40 of the 200 hours needed for certification. The Five Elements training is the foundation of the Holden QiGong Teacher Certification Program, and this is that same curriculum, offered on its own as a complete practice. It’s a low-risk way to start the certification path if that’s where you’re heading. The teaching side, including class structure and sequencing training, practice teaching hours, mentorship sessions, the exam, and certification itself, comes later in the full Teacher Certification Program.
I’m not sure I want to teach. Is this still worth it for me?+
Yes. Most of what you’ll learn here has nothing to do with teaching anyone else. The five elements explain why your own practice works, how your energy shifts with the seasons, and how emotions move through the body. Plenty of students take this purely to deepen their own practice and never go further, and it’s a complete experience on those terms.
What if I decide later that I do want to certify?+
Then nothing here has to be repeated. The Five Elements lessons you’ve completed are unlocked when you enroll in the Teacher Certification Program, and your full $1,397 is credited toward your enrollment. You will need to complete a short quiz for each Five Elements module as part of the certification requirements, but those act as a simple refresher on material you already know.
How is the course delivered, and how long do I have access?+
The full course is available on demand through the Holden QiGong Learning Platform. There’s no cohort, no start date, and no live sessions you’re required to attend. You begin the day you enroll and move at whatever pace fits your life. You have lifetime access to your course materials.
How much time does it take?+
That’s up to you. The material is organized into eight modules, each one building on the last, so you move through the system in order. Some students move through a module a week; others take closer to a month, especially early on, since the practices tend to click more once you’ve felt them a few times. It’s self-paced, and there’s no schedule to fall behind on.
Do I need to be an experienced practitioner?+
No. The course opens with the fundamentals, what Qi is and how it moves, before building into breathwork, meridians, and the deeper philosophy behind the practice. Each module builds on the one before it, so no prior experience is required to follow along. If you already have some Qi Gong background, you may find it puts language to things you’ve felt in your body for years but never quite had words for.
What kind of practices are included?+
Qi Gong flows, Healing Sounds, acupressure sequences, and meditations. Many connect to specific elements and the organ systems they govern, though you’ll also work with breath practices, warm-ups, and meditations that support the whole system rather than just one part of it. They range in length, and most can be done in a normal amount of space without equipment.
Can I ask questions along the way?+
Yes. Your enrollment includes two live 30-minute Q&A sessions where you can bring questions directly to the team, whether about a specific element, a practice that isn’t working for you, or how to apply the material to something you’re dealing with.
What’s the price, and are payment plans available?+
The Five Elements Online Course is available for a one-time payment of $1,397. Payment plan options include: 3 payments of $497 or 12 payments of $137.
What if it isn’t right for me?+
Your enrollment is protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee. Work through the material, try the practices, and if within 30 days you decide it isn’t a fit, contact our team for a full refund.
Start where you are. Keep the whole path open.
The energetic system at the heart of Holden QiGong, taught by Lee, self-paced, and yours to begin today. It stands on its own, and it is the front half of the Teacher Certification curriculum.