Spring 2022: In the Spotlight: Lana Reed
Central to the mission of The Center for Family Well-Being is our commitment to a holistic, integrative approach to achieving personal and relational wellness. Our clinicians are highly trained in a diversity of practices, teachings and modalities, and we seek to constantly expand our knowledge. We are also deeply aware that we cannot be all things to all people, and we believe in the power and art of attuned collaboration. It is a blessing to know and work with so many different providers in our larger community– people whose work is meaningful to us, our clients, and their families. Lana Reed is one such person who brings a wealth of good to our community through her yoga and Qi Gong teachings. We enjoy referring to her classes and workshops, where our clients and their families can learn inward attunement and connection. She has even served as a guest teacher in our Girls In Tune therapy groups, helping school-aged children cultivate a joyful relationship with their own bodies and minds. Meet Lana.
Q: Hello, Lana! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? How did you come to be a teacher, and bring such emphasis to your work with children?
So wonderful to be here with you as well, Lida. My main background has been with yoga, and the beginning of my own practice was in 1972– that sounds so long ago! I practiced for a number of years and then I moved into a community of kundalini practitioners. That was my lifestyle for the next 27 years, living in a yoga-based community. I’ve also been into healthy and holistic living since the 1970s as well. As part of that I started to teach yoga to the kids in our community and I discovered that I really loved it. I had a knack for it. Eventually I became a Montessori teacher, and in the 1980s I had a school where we did meditation and yoga every day. It was a lovely environment. I learned a lot about children and how to communicate with them (I like to tell people about one resource in particular, the book that saved me at this time: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. It focuses on calm, assertive, and loving communication skills).
One of my biggest take-aways from my decades of working with children is that they are more connected to who they truly are than we are as adults; I wanted to be able to help them keep that connection, to be more authentic and not so covered up with socialized worries about what people thought about them. And yoga, mindfulness, and meditation helped them greatly. The kids already knew so much of the true meaning of yoga– working with our bodies, minds, breath, relaxation and intuition. I think they were really happy that finally someone was talking about these idea, playing games in which we practice our intuition, or feeling our breath by blowing on a feather, for example, because they mostly never heard adults addressing body, mind and spirit. Children instinctively understand these connections to self, and they don't need to understand it intellectually; they just live that way. It’s the inside that counts.
I loved having the school, but we were moving to Northern Virginia due to my husband's work. So I said goodbye to the school, and when we moved I considered starting another school. But when I had a child of my own, my son born in 1991, I knew I wanted to focus on being a mother first. I realized I was very well-versed in yoga for kids, so I contacted a lot of local schools and daycares asking if they wanted yoga classes and I started teaching– at one point in the 1990s I was teaching 500 kids/week, little ones all the way through teenagers. It was great to get so much experience. This culminated with me writing my first book.
Then people started asking me how they could help kids with yoga, so I started Radiant Child. It’s over 25 years old. First it was just me with a 30 PAGE manual, then I added more materials and more levels. Somewhere around 2003 I started training trainers, and the program expanded. We were around the world– Australia, Africa, Europe, Candana– the work kept expanding. The next idea was, all right, let’s become a certified school! With the help of the trainers we applied to the Yoga Alliance.
Q: Yes, and Radiant Child has become such an incredible and influential training program. Lately, you have shifted your focus from yoga to qi gong, a very intentional and personal choice. Can you share a bit more about this journey?
About 18 years ago I saw a qi gong video on PBS with Lee Holden. And I absolutely loved it. I loved how it felt, and I loved the teacher and his environment; it created a whole amazing experience and I started buying all his videos…DVDs at the time! I started practicing on my own, and at one point I got the idea I could go out and study with him. About 12 years ago I went to California and became a certified teacher. I’m a 400-hour certified teacher, and I started traveling around and adding qi gong to the Radiant Child training, because I could see it was so beneficial. It’s natural for the body body, it never stresses the body– you’re never pressing your body to do something other than what it would naturally do. It’s a dance, almost. I enjoy the freedom and the naturalness of the movement.
I was focusing internally on self nurturing and self love, especially because the path I had been on for all those years, I began to change from it. I began to realize I was very grateful for those years of meditative discipline and community, and also I was changing. I felt I was experiencing something of a sloughing off, or a recovery that needed to happen from letting go of what didn't serve me any more. The most important thing was being OK with myself no matter what. This became the basis for an online course–my favorite to teach–called Happy Ever NOw, a deep mindfulness experience focused on befriending ourselves however we find ourselves.
Q: With what you’re sharing, I’m reminded of your comments about how kids really know who they are instinctively, if not intellectually. It sounds like qi gong has played a part in supporting your own journey back to that instinctive sense of self.
Yes! And I would say that being OK with ourselves allows us to be OK with our kids. It helps us to see that they’re really all right. If there’s something that needs a little tweak, that's OK– and we can do it in an honoring way. When we work with adults that work with children, they need to feel good about themselves first.
Q: One of the aspects of Qi Gong that I have come to appreciate is that it is truly for all levels and all bodies. This can certainly be said of yoga and many other practices of mindful movement, and yet Qi Gong feels uniquely accessible. Is this fair to say?
Yes, that can be right. With kundalini yoga, for example, it can have more of a yang/projective energy. This means it can be more projective, more effortful, or even forceful. It has an assertiveness. This can be very therapeutic, because with yoga you’re getting all your stuff out, but in a more projective way. When I started doing qi gong and loving it myself, I felt like it was very yin, which means more receptive and supportive. It’s energy that takes you as you are, just enjoying life as it is. Coming into the present moment, with no goal in mind. And there’s quite a bit of relaxation in there.
Q: We are in a goal-oriented cultural moment where “quick-fixes” are desired. At The Center, we work to instill a sense of pacing in our clients, as well as a deep connection to the here and now, while supporting a person’s desired growth. Qi Gong can be such a special partner to that end because, as you’ve said, “You are always present to NOW in Qi Gong.” Can you say a bit more about what that means? And is this connected to how Qi Gong is beneficial for mental wellness?
I would say that I feel myself more into the moment when working with qi gong than with yoga. I love how it is doable for everyone and how it teaches us to flow with life. I am so happy that we have both, but personally for me the benefit I’m seeing from qi gong is significantly different for a number of reasons. One of them is that when I'm practicing qi gong I can feel when my mind wanders to something else, and I can tell right away. I can tell if I’m present to [the practice], and if I’m truly feeling what I'm doing, how the air feels as it moves through my fingers, for example…it’s easier to bring myself back to that, because it's something I can directly feel. I don't feel any self recrimination if I wander from my practice, I just gently bring myself back. It’s a gentle, self-nurturing practice and I think our world needs more of that.
I'm curious to learn more about what children and young adults think about that, too. One of the things I discovered [when guest teaching in the Girls in Tune group] is that the children like repetition and consistency. They liked knowing what was coming. When you're learning something new, it feels good to feel secure. And then gradually over time, we can add in something special that's different and exciting. The girls often commented how peaceful they felt, how grounded and yet joyful, after qi gong practice.
Q: That’s such a valuable balance to be able to learn as we work on our own wellness, how to both have a command of our surroundings as well as acceptance for what we cannot control. And speaking of what to expect, what do you most want families to know about the experience of attending one of your classes or workshops? What might one feel after their first experience with Qi Gong? And after subsequent and ongoing practice?
After practicing qi gong, people feel relaxed. They feel peaceful, they feel quiet inside, it seems like, and because we give the video to them for a week afterwards, they can practice it every day and so they're really solidifying that feeling within themselves. That makes me feel really happy. I also want people to know that whereas some people think qi gong is a martial art, it’s really a meditative art. With tai chi, for example, you have to learn longer forms, it’s more complex. Qi gong is more repetitive and doesn’t have required choreographies. And qi gong is so portable! You don't even need a mat. You can stop in a favorite spot in nature and just practice spontaneously.
Q: What’s really exciting you in your teaching these days?
I’m really excited about our “Happily Ever Now” offering, where we teach mindfulness tools to adults, and the children in their lives. One thing we do is a little journaling, and we remember a time we were going through challenges. You remember how the challenge felt, and you remember the tools you used to work through it. And then ask yourself: What qualities do I now know I have because of the challenges I went through? How can I apply that to something I’m working with now, or is coming up in the future? One of the most profound experiences that people realize in this course is that you can use what you've learned in your life to your ongoing benefit. It’s all focused on a deep experience of your inner self, and we seek to help people reassess the baggage we’ve been carrying that doesn’t necessarily belong to us. We invite people to question their assumptions through meditative inquiry into the belief systems, and whether they are just “excess baggage” or are something they want to keep and own.
And I want to say that one wonderful thing about the hybrid model of teaching right now during Covid is that we’re working with people all over. Also, we’re working on developing a qi gong workshop for people who are interested in teaching qi gong to children. Eventually we are going to bring in a trauma integration piece for trainers, too.
I'm excited about where we’re going with Radiant Child, and I'm very grateful for my practice– I teach 45 or 46 weeks a year! I do that because I really like it, and it gets me practicing and I love sharing it. I’m also very passionate about underserved populations. We have a scholarship fund for that and we’ve been doing this for years and we want to expand that. We’ve done this in the US and internationally.
Q: You’ve shared such a wealth of information with us, and we’re excited to connect more of our families to you and your work. Any final thoughts as we say goodbye for now?
We all have this beautiful radiance that is wise, and internally connects us to our true self. We’re all in this together, and we’re all learning and growing together. We can have self compassion and compassion for one another because we’re all doing this together. Yoga, qi gong– they're all just tools to help us remember who we are.
Thank you, Lana. We’re so grateful to have you in our community!