Daoyin & Qigong Retreat at Le Puget

Improvers & Practitioners

 6 Days/ 7 Nights - June Retreat

Training days Sunday 13th June to Friday 18th June, 2027 inclusive (check out Saturday 19th 10am)

This retreat is designed for people who already have some experience of Qigong, Taiji or related body–mind practices and would like to deepen and refine their understanding. It welcomes participants from previous Le Puget retreats, students of other Qigong teachers, Qigong and Taiji instructors, acupuncturists and other practitioners with an interest in Chinese health practices.

The extended daily practice allows participants to go beyond learning the external sequence of movements and explore the qualities that give Qigong its depth: alignment, relaxation, coordination, breath, intention, rhythm and the cultivation of internal awareness. Familiar exercises can be revisited with greater precision, while new and more complex material offers fresh challenges and insights.

The programme combines contemporary Qigong with ancient and medieval Daoyin exercises preserved in Chinese medical and historical texts. Teaching, lectures and discussion place the practical work within its wider cultural and therapeutic context, creating a distinctive meeting point between embodied practice, Chinese medicine and historical research. Routines are carefully chosen to highlight the Qigong theory of Body-Mind-Qi trinity and to illustrate how movements influence the energy flow along different meridians, including the Body-Mind form from Zhineng Qigong, Mawangdui Daoyin and TCM Daoyin for the 24 Solar Terms.

Participants are encouraged to work at their own level. The retreat is intensive, but it is not competitive and does not depend on physical strength or athletic ability. Its purpose is to develop greater sensitivity, confidence and independence in practice.

Le Puget provides an ideal setting for this deeper work: time to practise without distraction, space for reflection and exchange, and the support of a community with shared interests. Participants leave with a richer understanding of the forms studied and practical principles that can inform their continuing personal or professional practice.

This retreat is led by Feixia Yu and Professor Vivienne Lo.

Feixia Yu is an award-winning practitioner and teacher of many styles of Taiji and Qigong and a senior instructor at the British Health Qigong Association. She holds Duan 5 in Health Qigong. In 2024, she won first prize in the Ba Duan Jin section of the European Health Qigong Games in Vienna. In 2025, she won two first prizes in the Six Healing Sounds and the Daoyin 12 sections of the World Health Qigong Games in Vancouver. She originally qualified as an Exercise and Recuperation Instructor at Beijing Sport University, and now runs weekly Taiji and Qigong classes on-line and gives guest lectures and workshops on the Chinese health enhancement tradition. She regularly features in local media including BBC Radio Lancashire and the Lancashire Evening Posts on various aspects of Chinese culture. She also designs and delivers corporate wellbeing events. Her area of research interests is in Qigong as an exercise intervention tool for a range of chronic conditions including Long Covid, hypertension, Parkinson’s, and spine misalignment.

For a video about Feixia Yu and her work, click here

Vivienne Lo is Professor in the Department of History at UCL. For more than twenty years she has been teaching the Ancient and Medieval history of China and specialist modules in the History of Asian Medicine and Classical Chinese Medicine at BSc and MA levels and also supervising many PhD students. Vivienne's core research concerns the social and cultural origins of acupuncture, therapeutic exercise, and food and medicine. She translates and analyses manuscript material from Early and Medieval China, and publishes on the transmission of scientific knowledge along the so-called Silk Roads. She has a long-term interest in visual cultures of medicine and healthcare. Current projects include a history of nutrition in China.

Dolly Yang will be working with us remotely this year. She is a researcher in the History of Chinese medicine. Her main research explores the social and cultural aspects of bodily practices in pre-modern China. She received her PhD in 2018 from University College London, UK for her investigation into the institutionalisation of therapeutic exercise in Sui China (581–618 CE). She was a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, between 2020 and 2021. Her book on therapeutic exercises from the 7th-century Chinese medical text Zhubing yuanhou lun was published by Purple Cloud Institute with illustrations by Jessica Chiang.

Model Daily Schedule

7:00 – 9:00 am Zhineng Qigong

9:00 – 10:00 am Breakfast

10:30 – 12:30 pm Ancient/Medieval Daoyin

1:00 – 2:00 pm Lunch

2:00 – 4:00 pm Break

4:00 – 6:00 pm Daoyin Qigong

7:00 – 8:00 pm Dinner

Dates

Check-in after 5 pm on Saturday 12th June 2027.

The retreat begins at 7 am on Sunday 13th June 2027.

The retreat ends with a farewell and dinner at 7 pm on Friday 18th June, 2027.

Check-out by 10 am on 19th June 2026.

Pricing

Duration Twin-Share Room Private Room

6 days/7 nights £1200 £1400

Day rate £50 (meals extra)

Pricing includes:

• 6 days of retreat activities as per schedule above

• 6 days of all meals and drinks with full vegan/vegetarian options

• 6 days/7 nights of accommodation with en-suite bathroom (except one family a dounlr twin rooms with separate bathroom)

• Walks/Swimming

Extras: Riding, cycling, excursions in the Pyrenees

Travel: The closest airport is Carcassonne, with Toulouse-Blagnac a little further. Both are within the hour, with Carcassonne a small airfield and a pleasant drive to Le Puget through the vineyards. We can normally arrange airport transfers for around 30 euros if we can coordinate three or four guests arriving at the same time.

For further enquiries please email Vivienne at ucgavlo@gmail.com