4 Energy Artworks for World Tai Chi & Qigong Day

April 25th is World Tai Chi & Qigong Day. It invites people around the world to experience the benefits of these practices for health, mindfulness and qi (life energy) cultivation. 

For this event, our friends at Body & Brain Yoga and Tai Chi are hosting events at locations around the United States focused on the theme: Arirang: the joy of finding your true self. They are presenting qigong as a way to rediscover your true self. In this context, finding your true self isn’t about adding anything new. It’s about removing what’s in the way—and that’s something that qigong is great for.

Through intentional movement and focused awareness, qigong helps energy move again in places where it's been stagnant. Tension softens and the thoughts and feelings that felt fixed start to loosen. Stress starts to clear, and your emotional blocks become less dense. What once seemed overwhelming becomes more spacious. 

What emerges in that space is your own original, vibrant nature. Like clouds parting to reveal a sun that was always there but just hidden, your true self becomes easier to feel because it's no longer obscured.

That's why this practice and self-love are so closely connected. You don't have to become someone different. Who you are is perfect. You just have to remove what's in the way.

Arirang and the Longing for Your True Self

Body & Brain is also offering “Arirang Qigong” as part of their campaign. "Arirang" is a traditional Korean song that expresses longing for a beloved. Change Your Energy’s founder Ilchi Lee sees that longing not as a yearning for someone outside of you, but as a longing for your own true self—that part of you that remains constant beneath everything else. 

When the energy in your body and mind begins to shift, that reconnection becomes possible. The thing you've been longing for turns out to have been there all along.

That same process of clearing and returning to your true self can also happen through art. Energy art can create conditions for energy to shift in your body and mind. It can help you soften tension, quiet mental noise, and make space for your deeper essence to shine.  

So in honor of World Tai Chi & Qigong Day, we're joining Body & Brain in celebrating our capacity to return to our true selves through the power of energy. Below, we’re sharing four pieces from our energy art collection that speak to exactly this experience.

1. Bokbon – Return to the Source by Al Choi

We don’t truly know where our journey began or where it will end. But there are moments when we turn inward in a search for that sense of origin and connection.

Bokbon – Return to the Source points to a place where we sense that original pulse of life. It’s the same rhythm we once heard in the womb, and the one that flows through all of nature, humanity, and the Earth itself.

This is a place we can access in meditation or quiet contemplation, in qigong or other energy practice, and by spending time with this energy art. Gaze at the painting and connect to that deep place inside you. Let your body and mind harmonize and settle. Feel what has always been there inside you.

2. Nothingness (Mu) by Ilchibuko Todd

Returning to your true self doesn’t come from adding more—it comes from creating space.

Nothingness (Mu) expresses the truth that experiencing your true self doesn’t come from adding more—it comes from creating space. The character 無 (Mu) represents the state of being empty, when you have released what fills the mind and weighs down the body so that you are fully free in the present moment.

Qigong practice helps you let go of the thoughts, emotions and tension you’re used to holding. The more you practice, the more Mu can become your default way of being.

Artist Ilchibuko Todd has dedicated her life to helping people discover their true selves, and it starts with her own deep practice of qigong and other aspects of an embodied spiritual life. She created this calligraphy in a state of Mu, and you can connect to that energy yourself through the artwork.

3. Wave of Thought by Matthew Smith

Clearing the mind doesn’t mean stopping thought completely. It means changing your relationship to it.

Wave of Thought captures the movement of the mind through the imagery of water and light. Thoughts and emotions rise and fall like waves, constantly shifting, but at the center, there is a quiet, still presence—calm, aware, and grounded in the moment.

In qigong, this is the presence you cultivate. It’s not the absence of thought, but the ability to stay present within it. As your energy becomes more balanced, the mind becomes less reactive. There is more space between you and what you’re experiencing. Instead of being carried by every wave, you observe it.

Learning to remain steady inside the waves is a form of self-love. Spend time with this painting and let it help you be fluid like water, while allowing your awareness to illuminate what is true beneath it.

4. Radiant Being by Yesang Lee

Radiant Being expresses this simple idea:

“Brilliance does not arise from achievement but from existence itself. Simply by being, one carries an inherent and luminous light.”

Strip away the distractions and misguided beliefs about who you are and who you need to be. There is nothing you need to achieve in order to be whole. 

Yesang Lee sees you as already existing in light and love. When the energies you encounter in life are not suppressed but allowed to move, reality becomes something you participate in shaping. In that flow, choice emerges not as control, but as awareness.

So recognize the radiance inside you and commit to revealing it. Use your awareness to stay connected to that light, and let it guide how you live.

Check out the Change Your Energy Art Gallery to explore these works and more in various sizes and formats you can bring into your home.