The Creative Art of Living, Dying, and Renewal: Your Journey Through Stories, Qigong Meditation, Journaling, and Art

Tapping the tremendous healing power of Qigong and the expressive arts, this beautiful book invites the reader to contemplate the continuum of living, dying, and renewal within this life and beyond. The stories, Qigong meditations, and journaling/art processes, including collage and maskmaking, are invitations for you to engage them for your own healing, transformation, and wisdom.

Authors, artists, healers, and teachers of Qigong and art, Elise and Kaleo Ching draw on their 23 years of experience working with others on their paths of personal transformation to present an approach to living and dying that is saturated with wisdom, compassion, and understanding. Through their work, the authors have witnessed many personal journeys of dying, transformation, rebirth--facing terminal illness or loss of a loved one, letting go of old lifestyles and embracing new, connecting with past lives and future dreams. The stories and processes in this book will inspire a wide range of people interested in using Qigong practices and meditations, journaling, and art for self-cultivation, mindfulness, spiritual awareness, and healing: artists, clergy, spiritual seekers, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists, social workers, chaplains, hospice workers, teachers, students and practitioners of transformative, shamanic, and healing arts.

KALEO CHING and ELISE DIRLAM CHING have cotaught classes in Qigong and art for personal transformation at John F. Kennedy University Arts and Consciousness Program for the past 23 years, in addition to teaching at Ubiquity University, Naropa-Oakland/University of Creation Spirituality, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, Lucasfilm, and many others. They are the authors of five books, including Faces of Your Soul and Chi and Creativity. The authors livein Walnut Creek, California.
KALEO CHING, MA, Art, CAMT (Certified Acupressure Massage Therapist), CCHT (Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist), and CMQ (Certified Medical Qigong Practitioner), has a private bodywork practice and teaches Qigong and Hawaiian massage at the Acupressure Institute and McKinnon Body Therapy Center.

ELISE DIRLAM CHING, RN, MA Transpersonal Psychology, MA English, CAMT, CCHT, is an award-winning poet and was an RN at the San Francisco County Jail for 25 years.