Another two years has passed, and a few things are happening that has led me to write this update. I was actually inspired to do this because I had a feeling that I needed to edit the previous blog post and remove some of the details which were less directly focused on Give Freely Receive Freely, and as I was doing that I realized that I have a few things going on at the moment that might be worth posting about.

The main thing is that I am travelling overseas at the end of the month to teach some international workshops for the first time since before the pandemic (more on how that is specifically relevant a bit lower down in the post).

Dealing with my situation and some of the events that occurred in my personal life over the last few years has kept me in New Zealand for much longer than anticipated, and in many ways I have felt quite stuck here. It has been interesting watching how other businesses similar to my qigong teaching have developed across the last four years, both online and in specific locations that I had planned to operate from. Basically they have flourished – the plan I had was a good one, and the timing was good. There is every reason to suppose that my own business would have flourished similarly had I not been delayed and been able to execute it as planned.

An Update On Progress

My own teaching has gone well and grown to a significant degree, but not being able to operate fully in the way that I had planned and would have like to means that the growth trajectory has been much slower than it otherwise might have been. I estimate that my business is probably about an order of magnitude smaller than it would have been if I had been able to follow the intended plan and put all of the necessary pieces in place.

I now have three major 200 hour training courses that I offer online, focusing on principles and practices around each of the three major historical applications of qigong (the path of the healer, the warrior, and the sage). I has been a huge amount of work to put these together, but is quite fulfilling to be able to share these practices and principles with a broad range of people, who then go on to teach them to others. This leaves me with one more major course to produce and offer – on the direct healing application of qigong as a treatment modality, and I will also offer a variety of other shorter courses on specific topics over time.

So in many ways I have accomplished a lot in these four years – just on a much smaller scale than I otherwise might have. The format that I have produced these courses in is good and offers an excellent learning experience for course participants, but the ongoing running of the courses is also very time and administration intensive, limiting my ability to grow the courses beyond their current size – there are only so many people I can handle at a time on the courses in the current format. Being stuck in New Zealand during this time has also greatly limited my ability to offer live intensive training in the way that I would like to, but it now seems like I am on the cusp of being ready to start reshaping my teaching and business towards the original planned format which will allow me to grow my teaching much more effectively, and in many ways offer and even richer learning experience for people wanting to delve deep into the principles and practice of qigong.

Overcoming Inertia

All of the various issues that were keeping me in New Zealand now seem to be coming to a close. There is one that I am waiting on that should be resolved in a couple of weeks, so perhaps I shouldn’t count my chickens just yet, but things are looking good for me to be unencumbered with nothing restricting my ability to travel next year to teach and explore possible locations to base myself from in the medium term. I am also at the stage with course development, where even though I have one last major course to put together using the format I have been using, I will also look to produce the first of the courses in the original format I had planned, which will be much more scaleable – enabling me to reach many more people with the practices, and in the longer term as I am able to produce more courses in this format – freeing my time up so that less time is needed to be spent on running existing courses and more time can be spent on developing other aspects of teaching as well as having more time available for my personal life.

So it is an encouraging, but also quite daunting time in some ways. It feels good to be able to hopefully finally move forward with some of my previous plans – but also the world environment has changed quite a bit over the last four years. It does not seem to be nearly as straightforward or easy for me to execute those plans as it would have been prior to the pandemic – a few things have become a bit more complicated in the world.

I also feel like I personally have quite a bit of inertia. I have been so enmeshed in dealing with some things here in New Zealand, and in just getting on with and keeping up with my work with the online courses in their current format, that I feel like my horizons have narrowed somewhat. I think that maybe it feels more difficult for me to organize travel, and workshops, and retreats etc than maybe it actually is – just because I haven’t done anything like that in so long… I do think there are some additional challenges in organizing and running these sorts of things now compared to before the pandemic, but also I am just out of practice.

Overseas Workshops – and GFRF

And that is where the overseas workshops at the end of the month come in! I will be making just a short trip to Melbourne in Australia to teach 3 short qigong workshops while I am there. They have come about in a somewhat impromptu way – inspired by a friend who is going there for business and suggested I should come while he is there so we can hang out. I thought about it for a bit and decided that if I also ran some workshops while I am there it would be a worthwhile trip.

I think this will be a really good way for me to start breaking out of the inertia I have had. It’s just a short trip, and while travel costs are certainly higher than before the pandemic, they are manageable for a trip to a nearby destination like this, so there is not too much riding on having to have a certain number of people attend the workshops in order to make it viable or anything like that. I think this will help me to get comfortable with travelling and teaching, and organizing all the logistics involved in running events again in a very manageable way, and will help me to start to build some momentum towards travelling and teaching more extensively next year.

It will also be good to simply be out there connecting directly with people again, and supporting some of the qigong instructors who have done some of my online qigong courses. I’m kind of cautiously excited about it.

In addition to this – I am planning on running one of the workshops completely Give Freely Receive Freely as well! While I have continued to use GFRF from time to time in small ways over the last 4 years, this will be the first time I have done an event completely on this basis in a loooong time, and it feels good to do that . So two of the workshops will have set prices, and the last one will be GFRF. It will be interesting to see how that all goes.

Other notes:

Prices and Inflation

Another thing I am having to deal with at the moment is increasing prices. As you are probably aware, inflation had been very high all around the world over the last few years, but the prices for my courses have remained the same since the early stages of the pandemic. One of the things with having set prices is that you do need to adjust them to the changing economic and financial environment from time to time. It’s an interesting time to be making these kinds of adjustments because even though there has been a lot of inflation and therefore increased costs to run the business, potential participants are also having to deal with a wide range of increased personal costs, making it harder for many of them to afford things like qigong training. It’s a bit of a balancing act – needing to increase prices but not wanting to make the courses unaffordable. Amongst other things, I want to be able to pay the people that help me with teaching the courses more, and they are currently priced in a way that there isn’t a lot of room to do that without increasing the prices. So – for now I am going to be increasing the prices for the next time the courses run just a little bit for now. Not as much as I need to in order to bring them in line with other increased costs, but enough that I can make a small increase to the rates that I pay my support staff – and I will probably need to increase the prices again in the not too distant future.

My Financial Situation

I wrote a bit about this in the last post – laying out the broad view of the position that experimenting with GFRF for so long had left me in with regard to both income and an asset/capital base. So as an update on that, I have continued to make progress in recovering from this over the last two years. I am still not quite all the way to where I would say I am fully financially stable and secure, but much as with the other things I have mentioned earlier in this post – potentially on the cusp of breaking through in this area into a much healthier state of being. So encouraging progress there.

Conclusion

Much as I predicted – the disruptions to my earlier plans would take several years to recover from and get back on track – they have, but I am now at that point where I seem to be close to moving forwards in a way similar to my original plans. This has largely been made possibly by giving myself the stability of operating using regular pricing during this time, and it feels good to be in a much more positive position now. As part of this, I am now also at a point where it may be possible for me to start to use Give Freely Receive Freely a little more again – as I am for one of the workshops in Melbourne at the end of the month. I look forward to doing this, but will do so cautiously so that I can maintain the progress in sustainability that I have achieved over the last several years.

TL;DR: I am charging set prices now. It is working much better, and on that basis I have a suitable income to meet my current needs. There are still some challenges to overcome from not having been able to accumulate an asset base during this time of experimenting with GFRF. A few other topics also get interwoven.

Introduction

It has been three years to the day since I last posted here on the Give Freely Receive Freely blog. It might seem a bit strange to return here to write an update, particularly as it is doubtful that anyone is really reading this blog. But… from the outset of this blog, and when I first started working with GFRF, I framed it as an ‘experiment’, and in this blog I said that I would report honestly on the results of that experiment. So I feel that I should still do that. Perhaps no-one is reading this blog today, but perhaps someone will stumble over it in the future and gain some valuable insight from what I write here. Maybe even for myself looking back at this in the future I might find some value in what I record of my thoughts on what I have experienced from this experiment.

As you would expect, quite a lot has occurred in the three years since I last wrote here, more than I will be able to include in this post, but I will cover the things that are most relevant in terms of assessing the progress of this GFRF experiment.

The main events which I will outline briefly are as follows

• Sold main/side business
• Delayed in pursuing my plans overseas
• Pandemic
• Pivot back to online training

And then more space will be given to discussing the results of these events, my current situation, and implications from these and how it all relates to the GFRF experiment.

Sale of business

My business partner and I did eventually sell our business which I had been running alongside my qigong teaching for a nominal sum. In financial terms it was basically like giving it away, but at least it meant that the value we had created in the business was passed on to someone else rather than lost. The sale came through right at the last moment as we were getting ready to shut the business down anyway if no buyer came through so that each of us could pursue our future plans. In many ways it was sad to make the sale in these conditions, but it also tidied things off nicely, and left the path clear to pursue new plans.

Operating the business had taken a huge amount of time and energy, and had kept me from being able to move forward with developing my qigong teaching. Selling or shutting the business down meant that I could devote myself fully to teaching qigong again, and do what I needed to both really develop the quality of the teaching I could deliver and also change the way that I was doing this so that I could receive a viable income from this to live on. As we had set a deadline by which we would either sell or shutdown the business, I had started to make plans for what I would do to develop and promote my qigong teaching. This included travelling overseas so that I could live somewhere with low cost of living for a period of time to relieve the financial stress of living somewhere with a high cost of living (New Zealand has one of the highest costs of living in the world) while transitioning between income sources, and to put myself in a better state of mind for the development work that I needed to do. Spending time overseas would also be quite important in terms of being able teach workshops and run retreats with wider audiences and generally generate awareness and interest in qigong and my teaching. From past experience I knew that simply travelling and teaching in different locations was one of the most effective ways that I could gain interest both from people living in those locations, and also from people who looked on with interest from other parts of the world as I posted about the travels and teaching on social media.

So, selling the business was the somewhat disappointing end of an era, but also a dawning of a bright new one which I had a lot of confidence would be successful – even if it did present a few challenges in getting started.

Delayed Plans

So with the business sold, I was finally ready to launch into my new plans with enthusiasm. I was greatly looking forward to being able to focus solely on developing my qigong teaching, and also all the new and interesting experiences that this new path would bring. Visiting new places, meeting new people, experiencing cultures, eating interesting food, and having the time and energy to relax and enjoy the journey as I put into action all the plans that I had made over the course of many months and start to bring them to fruition.

The plans were quite time sensitive for a couple of reasons. One being where the world was at with a developing awareness of qigong and desire for training in it. Awareness was just reaching a tipping point where it was becoming more viable to offer longer intensive training courses, and people were starting to seek for this kind of training but not many people were offering it. I needed to take advantage of this opportunity to establish myself in the market at this pivotal time. And the other reason was that I had now given up my main source of income, so I had a limited time to be able to transition over to making qigong my main source of sustainable income, beyond the minimal income I had received from teaching on a GFRF basis over the last several years.

But unfortunately some issues within a personal relationship lead to repeated delays in my being able to travel overseas. These issues ended up delaying my plans by a full year – and it was a very stressful time for me dealing with the high cost of living in New Zealand, now without a suitable income to support myself having sold my business, as well as dealing with those specific relationship issues. Eventually I simply had to move forward if there was any chance of being able to execute the plan. The length of the delays made things much more difficult, even questionable if it would now be viable, but perhaps there was a way that I could sneak through the last gap in the window of opportunity before it closed, and somehow get the plans back on track.

Because of the length of the delays at such a critical time, I knew it would likely take me years to get things back on track to be able to make the plan work as well as it would have if I had just left immediately after selling the business.  But I had to at least try.

Pandemic

There were several parts to the plan, now greatly compressed. The first was to go somewhere to establish a base which would provide me with a low cost of living and a relaxed environment to live and work from, and also to be able to travel easily to deliver workshops, retreats, and residential trainings in different parts of the world. So I was relocating to Europe first, and then had several retreats and trainings lined up for the following months spotted around different parts of the world that I would travel to from that base.

I had begun promoting these events and had a little bit of time before I needed to be in Europe to get myself established there before travelling to the first of the trainings. So I decided to spend a couple of weeks in Bali on my way to Europe as I found a flight itinerary that would cost me about the same to stop off in Bali as it would for me to just travel directly to Europe (remember at that point I had no substantial income for over a year – so doing everything as cheaply as I possibly could was still very important as I was trying to make a new start). I had never been to Bali before, and I thought that spending some time there would serve several useful purposes. For a start, Bali is a destination that has become very popular for people seeking out different types of health and wellness retreats and training. I thought it would be useful to research how things operate there, and to check out some possible venues for future retreats and trainings that I might offer. Spending some time in the tropical environment of Bali could also provide me with some great content to start to bring my social media back to life and start to generate some interest in the Qigong teaching that I would be offering in the future (again – always trying to find a way to make the plan work). And lastly, I thought it would be a good opportunity to clear my head, to help myself to let go of all the stress and challenges from the past year, so that I could arrive in Europe in a better state of mind, able to think more clearly, and make better decisions as I looked at how I could set myself up there and finally start to move forward with the plan.

I enjoyed my time in Bali, and largely accomplished all that I set out to do there. I visited a couple of possible retreat locations and talked to the managers there. I recorded a few vlogs. I didn’t quite get to taking photos of myself – my headspace wasn’t quite ready for that yet. But I also took time to relax, I ate good food. I swam in warm water, and I did start to feel the stress reduce and become a little more prepared for the next steps in my plan.

And then on the day that I was due to fly on from Bali to Europe, borders of countries all around the world closed like dominos falling one after the other. I had a bit of an anxious time trying to get hold of airlines and official information, eventually needing to just go to the airport with my bags to sort out exactly what was going on and if I would be able to travel to my intended destination. I couldn’t, and I also couldn’t stay in Bali indefinitely, so I had to quickly look at what options were available to me. New Zealand had implemented self isolation requirements for people returning there, and as I was in the process of relocating I had nowhere to return to. Fortunately one of my sisters had space at her house where I could come to and stay almost completely separate from the rest of her family – meeting the requirements for self isolation. So I did that. And I am very grateful to her and her family for allowing me to do that and taking me in at short notice under challenging circumstances.

I was in a spare room that at that time was filled with big racks of wedding dresses – it was a spare room after all. My sister had taken on the task of selling the left over wedding dresses after a friend of hers business had closed, and that was the place she had available to store them.

So, I was back in New Zealand. On a small bed in the corner of a room filled with wedding dresses. Nothing for me in New Zealand – I had given away most of my possessions other than what I had in a couple of bags. I had sold my car, so I had no transportation – something that is quite important in New Zealand. I had no source of income. I didn’t have a business that would provide me with a livable income – that was long gone over a year ago at this point. I was in the process of shutting down all of the online qigong courses I had been running previously, so even the small amount of donation based income I received from those was coming to an end. I had been shutting down the online teaching in favour of offering more live training and retreats, and plans for those had been looking good. I had enough people booked in for a three week training in Thailand to make that viable, and other retreats planned as well, but with the new restrictions to travel these could not run, so I refunded all of the deposits that people had paid.

I was also quite socially isolated. Of course immediately I was in self isolation, and then after that the whole country went into quite a strict lockdown, so there was no immediate opportunity for live interaction with people anyway. In addition to this, the relationship issues of the previous year had disrupted many of my previous social interactions, greatly reducing my social circle.

I was in a pretty dark place, and it got even darker, as my mother who had been suffering with gradual cognitive decline deteriorated very rapidly with lack of social contact during the first lockdown in New Zealand. My father continued to do his best to take care of her, and we did our best to help him, but it quickly became too much for him to cope with, so there were now even more challenges to deal with.

Pivot back to Online

I still needed to do what I could though. The plan in shutting down my online qigong training courses had not been to shut them down forever, but rather just for a time while I focused on live teaching. And then over time I would rebuild the courses in a new format, and to a much higher standard. I knew that if I was having a hard time, many others would be as well. A lot of the world was in some kind of lockdown or another, and many people would be struggling with isolation and uncertainty.

Of course I didn’t have my new courses ready, but I decided to make use of what I had and to offer the courses in the old format one last time on a donation basis. I thought this would give people something beneficial to focus on while they were locked down, and also it meant that anyone who wanted to do the courses could afford to do them – because they would be paid for GFRF, one last time. I also realised that this would give me at least some small amount of income as all my future planned income from live events was now gone.

There was a pretty good uptake of the courses, and I also decided to try doing something that I had planned for a long time, but had not had the time or quite the right situation to do it from. I began offering regular live streaming qigong classes to whoever wanted to join in. I still didn’t really have the right environment to run them from – I did them in that room full of wedding dresses on racks. I had a small space that I could use the very wide angle camera on my cell phone to stream from, as it would only be a metre or so in front of me. I couldn’t extend my arms or legs forward or backwards fully, but I could adapt and make it work.

Eventually when lockdowns eased, I was able to get some more equipment and do the practice sessions from another space in my sister’s house which made it a bit more comfortable. In total I ended up doing over 50 free livestreaming qigong sessions during 2020, and I got lots of good feedback from people about how the courses that I ran, and the livestreaming sessions, helped them through the lockdowns.

Of course, as discussed in many of the earlier posts on this blog, running the courses on a donation basis was not sustainable though. It was a stop gap measure to help people out, and to keep me going in the short term. I still needed to continue with the transition to doing my teaching on a regular paid basis, and for me this meant reformatting and rebuilding the online courses. I was far from having the setup and circumstances that I had hoped to have to do this, but again I just needed to do the best I could with what I had, so I proceeded to work on redeveloping the qigong courses into a new format.

In that first year – 2020, I managed to put together and run a comprehensive 200 hour training course on Small Universe Qigong. It was far from what I had initially planned, but still a big step up from how the old courses were previously organized. And this year in 2021 I have been able to continue to run the Small Universe Qigong program, while also putting together and starting to run another 200 hour training program called Inner Fire Qigong. A little bit frustrating in that they are not in the final form I had planned and would like them to be, which will mean a lot of reworking at some stage in order to bring them up to that level, but still a pretty decent accomplishment in the circumstances.

It has also been interesting going from doing so much of my work on a donation/GFRF basis for so long, to finally just setting a price and charging for my work. Which leads to the next part of our discussion – the results.

Results

It was quite an adjustment coming up with the prices I would charge for my courses, having not done that for so long. In the end I used a comparative pricing approach – looking at what other people were charging for as near as possible comparable offerings. There weren’t too many comparable offerings of 200 hour online qigong instructor certification programs available at the time, but the number of such offerings is growing – part of why some aspects of my plan were quite time sensitive as mentioned earlier. There were a few that I could compare with though, so what I did was price my course at the low to mid price point compared to the others that were available, while seeking to offer a better quality and more interactive learning experience than what others were offering.

I also benefited from one of my contacts that I have made over the years starting to actively promote qigong during the lockdowns. This led to her forming a business using other instructors to teach mainly my style of qigong within it – leading to a good number of referrals to my training programs from that.

Overall – from setting a reasonable market determined price, I would say that I started to earn about 5 times the income for the same amount of work as I did from teaching on a donation basis with a donation of any size required. This in turn was a big increase from the income received when it was explained that the teaching was on a GFRF basis, but there was no restriction put in place to ensure that people made a donation of any amount.

This is actually a sustainable income for me. It means that I receive enough to comfortably meet my living costs while focusing solely on my qigong teaching, and with this income I could possibly actually get ahead in life and create some financial stability and security for myself (more on that in the next section). It also gives me the opportunity scale up and continue to improve the quality of how I teach and the support that I am able to give to students.

I have been able to employ my virtual assistant full time to help out with more administrative tasks, meaning that I don’t need to spend as much time on those and can spend more time on course development, writing, and teaching. While I did employ my virtual assistant on a part time basis previously, and I had plenty of work that it would have been helpful to have her do for me, while I was not receiving enough to support even myself alone from my qigong teaching, and with the unpredictability of donation based income, it was difficult to make the move to employing her fulltime. By charging set prices I have easily been able to do this, and it came at a good time for her as well. With her previous fulltime job becoming untenable, and no realistic opportunities for other work where she lives due to the pandemic at the time, it allowed her to continue to support herself through these challenging times.

I also now employ four teaching assistants on a part-time/casual/contract basis. The work that I give them is probably only a small part of the total work that they do, and some of them probably do it more because they enjoy it than for the payment, still this is something that I could not realistically do when operating on a donation basis because I often simply did not receive enough income from the work to pay anyone else to do it.

So not only am I able to now support myself well, there is also a ripple effect outwards creating financial opportunity for others. And by being able to bring in other people to help me with my work I am able to teach more people qigong in a richer and more interactive way. There is also the possibility that under this type of model, that by bringing in more people I will be able to grow this much further and reach many more people overall. And I look forward to doing that when the time is right. I would like to hire some more people right now for some aspects of developing the business, but for now I still need to be quite careful in my spending and I am also still very much involved in taking care of every aspect of the business, so it may take some time to free myself up enough to even be able to have the time and focus to make those hiring decisions

My Current Situation

That brings us to some discussion of my current situation. It really is a big change to have a livable income from my qigong teaching. It relieves a lot of stress in many ways. It is quite an adjustment in many ways to do simple things like go grocery shopping and be a bit more relaxed about what I buy, not feeling stressed about finding the most economical option for every single purchase and what the total will be. I don’t think I’ve mentioned specific numbers previously of just how low my income has been at times due to choosing to use GFRF, but it really has been that bad a lot of the time across quite a few years. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still shop carefully, but there is less stress in the process. It also opens up options of participating in activities that I might like to do, that I simply would not have considered doing previously due to cost. It means when some of my clothes wear out, or I need some new equipment, I can just go and buy what I need without having to deliberate for a long time, or maybe wait until something is at an amazingly low price before I can get it.

It feels good and I am still adjusting and settling into a new state of being from it, but it still doesn’t actually resolve all of my financial issues. This is because while I have a livable income – even for living in an expensive place like New Zealand – I don’t have a base of assets to also support myself.

This is one of the interesting features of a capitalist society – a large part of how it functions is based on having capital – not just income. The one place that this really stands out as being relevant is in being able to own a home, and then following on from that are things like having savings or investments for retirement etc. The situation with this is a bit different in different parts of the world, but in New Zealand without a home and without savings for retirement, your future prospects are pretty dire. There is government superannuation – but this is not really sufficient if you do not have your own house to live in and thus do not have to pay rent. For many people owning a house and paying a mortgage is essentially a form of compulsory retirement savings for them that ensures they accumulate a suitable asset base to support themselves. It also of course gives them stability in their immediate living situation, as their outgoings are stable and even reduce over time, rather than increasing on a regular basis as they do with rent. If they are renting a change in their landlord’s situation or plans can also mean that they end up having to face the disruption of moving homes and even neighbourhoods at relatively short notice.

If I had a similar relative level of income (allowing for inflation) as I have now all along, that would have been fine. I could have purchased a home some years ago and gradually paid off the mortgage while that house also gradually increased in nominal value. But over those years house prices in New Zealand have grown to ridiculously high levels, far out of step with people’s incomes. Over the last 20 years, the average house price has gone up by more each year than the average workers salary each year… This also draws out an interesting inequity in the New Zealand tax system. All those increases in house prices have been completely tax free to the person who owns the houses, yet all earned income is taxed, at quite high rates as that income increases.

Someone who bought a house years ago has built up a large asset base without having to pay any tax on that nominal increase in wealth. But someone like myself who was not in a position to be able to buy a house years ago, and manages to somehow get themselves into a position with a high enough income that might let them buy a house at the greatly inflated prices they are at now, will be taxed highly on every dollar that they earn due to the level of income required for this – making it much harder, or perhaps even impossible for them to catch up and make up for their lack of income in the past, despite their good income now. Especially as they also now have less working years to pay that house off within. It is very difficult for someone with even a very high income to catch up with all those years of tax free capital gains.

This situation has been developing in New Zealand for quite some time. When most of the world had declines in house prices after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, New Zealand just had a little flat period and then kept on going up. So even before the recent financial turmoil surrounding the pandemic Auckland house prices were at extraordinary levels – regularly at the top or near the top of the table of least affordable housing in the world relative to local incomes. And during the pandemic all of the financial manipulation by central banks and governments have forced them up even more – rising 25% to 30% each year over the last two years from an already extremely high base.

So even with a good income – my financial situation isn’t really stable here. I may be earning well in relation to others around me, but I don’t have the massive accumulated tax free capital base needed to truly have a stable life here. With all things considered, it looks like to be able to get ahead and create stability for myself I will still need to relocate elsewhere – to somewhere that has a favourable tax regime that will allow me to have a chance of accumulating the asset base that I need from my earnings, without being relatively penalized for not being able to purchase basic needs like a house earlier in my life.

So… I’m doing pretty well now as a result of now charging set prices for my work rather than doing it on a donation/GFRF basis. But I still have some challenges to overcome as a result of my long period (about 8 years) of inadequate income as a result of being committed to my Give Freely Receive Freely experiment for so long.

Implications for me, implications for GFRF

Even though spending so long persisting with the GFRF experiment has presented me with many difficult times over the years, and significant challenges yet to still overcome, I don’t think I would go so far as to say that I regret doing it. I followed my conscience. I did what, in a way, I felt I needed to do. To try to find a better way to interact economically with the people around me. To try to find a way to make what I have to offer available to everyone who wants or needs it.

I think I have mentioned before in this blog, but it would be reasonable to assume that most people who are reading this particular post will not have already read every other post on here, that I actually have a degree in finance from the top ranked university for finance in New Zealand. I graduated with straight A’s and received first class distinction. So I do have a fairly reasonable understanding of how our economic system works. And I see the very significant flaws, inefficiencies, and inequities in how it currently runs. In theory when implemented well and embraced, Give Freely Receive Freely would overcome all of these to produce a vastly more efficient and equitable system to the benefit of each of us as individuals and to our society as a whole. That is in theory. In application there is a lot to be overcome in terms of people’s motivations, and just their expectations and habituation to the system as it now stands – and I have written about some of these factors in previous blog posts as I have encountered and tried to address them. I have not been unaware of these issues. But in theory, GFRF should be able to overcome them, and so I persisted – because it felt right, it felt good to operate in this way, and because I wanted to.

All too often I see people talk about ideals in theory, without ever having tried to actually put them into practice, or having only done so in some minor cursory way, and then have extrapolated that out to a strongly held position of what they think to be true. Including around this same or similar principle of giving service without price and that somehow they will receive back everything that they need. I see people hold forth about their strongly held opinions that this is the only way that certain types of work should be done. But then if I look into their background further, they have often never actually tried it themselves, or if they have, they have done it very occasionally and very much as a sideline to whatever their true source of income is. They have never tried to live solely in that way, and have certainly never accomplished anything of merit that requires an extended period of focused effort on that basis. I wanted to try to put theory into practice and really give it a good honest effort to live on that basis.

It didn’t work. And while I don’t regret trying – perhaps I should have learned more quickly from what I experienced, and changed my approach sooner. In the end operating on a GFRF basis has held me back from creating stability in my own life, and as a result has held me back from giving as much benefit to as many people as I otherwise might have. And I guess that is why, even after a three year break I am back writing another update about this. I committed as part of the experiment to document and share my experiences with it as openly and honestly as I can. And perhaps that is where there may yet be some value for someone else, and maybe for society as a whole.

If someone else reading this feels inclined to pursue a similar experiment, I salute you. I wouldn’t tell you not to do it, but rather encourage you to learn as much as you can from my experiences which I have documented, and maybe do better. Maybe succeed, or at least come closer to succeeding, and someone else may be able to learn from you. But also weigh up the cost to yourself personally, and maybe set some limits on how far you will follow the experiment, or perhaps for how long, so that you avoid disadvantaging yourself in life to too great an extent.

It could be easy for me to give up completely on any idea of using the principles of Give Freely Receive Freely in my work, and to give up the deeper reason behind even trying that in the first place – a desire to reach out and help people in need, and to try to catalyse change in our society towards better ways of interacting with each other. Now more than ever the need of that is apparent, with all the crazy financial shenanigans going on in the world on a global scale. By I can’t make a positive difference effectively by sacrificing my own wellbeing. I need to find a balance and make sure that I can interact effectively with the financial world as it currently stands, so that I can be effective in sharing what I have to offer to help those around me, and maybe try to affect the system as a whole is smaller less ambitious ways.

With that in mind, I think I will probably still experiment with using GFRF in small ways from time to time – but ensuring that I do that in a manageable way that does not put my whole financial wellbeing on the line. I have in fact continued to offer a certain amount of my work on a GFRF basis even now after transitioning to working with set prices. From time to time we get approached by people asking if there is some kind of scholarship or something like that which we can offer to help them to be able to do some of the training. Ideally in the medium term that is something I would like to be able to offer – a formal scholarship program with defined parameters. This is something that I think many people would find easier to interact with than a pure GFRF exchange, and important checks and balances could be built into the parameters of how the scholarships are set up. But I have been far too busy to be able to put such a system into place yet – so in the meantime, when I have felt it is appropriate, I have offered some of those who have enquired the opportunity to do the training on a GFRF basis, but to keep that confidential between us. Sometimes that has meant that they have done the training completely for free, and other times it has meant that they have made some payment of whatever amount they have felt they are able to afford. It has been nice to be able to still do that even in somewhat of a limited way, and I think every course I have run so far has had at least one person on it on a GFRF basis.

Conclusion

Well, I think that is the end of my update. I know it’s a bit long, and maybe a bit rambling. I know I got off onto some other topics, but I think they were relevant to give a more full and true picture of what has been going on with me and my experience of the GFRF experiment.

For now the GFRF experiment is kind of over… It is certainly not the main way I will be operating in the immediate future. But I may continue to use it in some small ways as described above, and may even experiment with it more extensively at some point in the future again, but at a time and in a way that I can maintain my own wellbeing more effectively while I do it.

I think I will try to leave this blog up in the meantime though. Perhaps it will offer some value to someone along the way, and perhaps I will have some interesting things to update it with at some point in the future.

It has been almost a year since my last post. I am also on the brink of further changes, so it is about time for another update.

I quickly re-read my last post before writing this one, and it was interesting, a lot of what I probably would have had to say in this one I kind of already said in the last one, or at least foreshadowed it.

So what is the update?

Well I have continued to run the business I mentioned in the last post with my friend. It has been really hard to do that and keep the qigong courses running as well, but I have done it.

While I have managed to keep running the qigong courses, I wouldn’t say that I have even managed to tread water and stay still. I think it would be more accurate to say that in some ways things have slid backwards in that area. That is largely because, like it or not, most things in life require some consistent effort to just keep them where they are, let alone moving forwards. There are lots of things that need to be done, like updating and making changes on the qigong website, that I just haven’t been able to do, so now it is starting to look and function in a very dated way – it has slid backwards rather than staying current. I also haven’t had any time or focus to put into promotion of the qigong courses and classes, and have not been able to do any further course development etc. In many ways the qigong teaching is exactly where it was at a year ago, but in many ways it also feels like by not changing, it has actually slid backwards, and if I am not able to start moving forwards again soon, the slide will continue or even increase.

This has been hard for me, as I see how much qigong can do in people’s lives, and I feel like I have not been coming close to fulfilling my potential in this area of spreading understanding of qigong.

So… I am leaving the business that I built with my friend. The decision is mutual, I would not just abandon him in the business, if anything he is pushing for a faster end to it than I am.

We have had the business on the market for sale for several months, but a buyer has not come through yet. So we have decided that if it does not sell by the end of the year, that we will just shut the business down anyway. This would be a real shame, as it was our goal to build and sell the business. And aside from the financial implications to us of not selling the business, there is real value in the business that someone else could benefit from if they took it over. It is likely that if we kept the business running and waited, that eventually a buyer would come forwards. But this could take many months, and each of us want to move forward with other things in our lives that mean more to us than the money a potential sale would bring, and we cannot move forwards in those areas while still running the business.

So at this stage it seems most likely that we will simply be walking away from it. It is interesting as I have been thinking about this. I realised that this is the second time I have walked away from significant potential financial return, to follow my heart. And each time it was for qigong. The other time was when I left a job to pursue a path that would allow me to put my focus into teaching qigong and led to me writing my first book on qigong. My boss called me up and offered to double my rate of pay for me to come back. But it was too late, I had already decided the direction I wanted to head in.

It is exciting in many ways. I am really looking forward to being able to refocus on qigong, and put all my work time and effort into it. I am also looking forward to a more balanced life, and things like getting enough sleep regularly…

It is a bit scary too though. As I will now need to make the qigong teaching economically viable as it will be my only source of income once more. Realistically this is going to mean that I need to start putting prices on my work. I won’t do that straight away. As I referred to in my previous blog post, it will actually take quite a bit of work to reformat things so that I can teach in this way, and there is a lot of catching up with updating various things to do before switching to a paid model as well. But this is something I will need to work towards. I think it will take at least 6 months to a year before I am ready to make the switch.

If I can make a decent income in a mundane business that only requires a basic level of skill such as the one that I have been running with my friend, then surely I can earn a viable income with an uncommon skill that I have spent decades developing. Maybe I just can’t do it using GFRF, maybe I just need to put prices on it.

Regardless, I will continue to run GFRF at least for the next 6 months or year, and then I guess I will just have to see how things go.

I thought I would right a short update on where things are at with my GFRF experiment while I have the chance.

So… following on from previous posts. I did go ahead and put password protection on my qigong courses from the third week onward in each course. And, as you would possibly expect, this has led to a greater financial return for the courses. I have also started a new business with a friend that operates using normal financial arrangements.

This leaves me rather… … … stretched.

The new business takes up more than a full time effort, as businesses often do when you start them, and I am also continuing with running the qigong courses, which could easily also be a fulltime or more than fulltime effort as well, which I try to squeeze into all the gaps at night and on weekends etc. And of course all the other regular things that need to be attended to in life continue as well.

I have been doing this for the last six months, and well… I have been managing to do it. But… it is constant. As soon as I finish work on one thing there is just more work to do, with very little chance to just take a break once in awhile. Of course this is inherently unbalanced and unsustainable. I can do this for awhile, but I can’t continue like this forever, or even too much longer I think. So at some point I will need to make some changes.

The new business is a financial necessity for me at the moment, but the qigong is more of a passion, and an area where I believe I can make a unique and valuable contribution to the world. While I have managed to keep the courses running over these last six months, I have not been able to put the necessary time into creating new additional courses and upgrading existing course material in the way I would like to. I’m treading water and managing to keep afloat – but not being able to make progress with my qigong teaching.

I have had the opportunity recently to focus a bit more on qigong. I had the opportunity to come and teach qigong at a hotel in Mauritius for a few weeks. It coincided with the holiday period when my new business in New Zealand would be closed for awhile anyway, so I have been able to take this opportunity without leaving my business partner running things by himself for too long. As well as spending some time teaching qigong, I had hoped that this would be a good opportunity for me to move ahead with some of the work on new courses while I am here too. For the first week and a half or so, as well as my commitments at the hotel I did write whenever I had the chance, but then I just ran out of energy… I needed some time just not doing anything much. So… of course I have continued with my teaching here, but I have not progressed my course development nearly as much as I had hoped.

My time in Mauritius is almost over, this is why I have a chance to do some writing now, there simply won’t be enough time when I am back in New Zealand and taking care of all the things I need to do when I am there. And moving forwards I am faced with a choice (not one I need to make immediately). I can either continue doing what I am doing, running the business and teaching the qigong the way that I am – and not make a lot of progress further developing the qigong teaching. And realistically, this would also mean eventually pulling back from putting as much time into the qigong teaching as I do at the moment, because I won’t be able to keep up this level of time and energy commitment for the long term. Or I will need to find a way to free my time up sufficiently so that I can do the development work for the qigong.  This will mean that somehow I will need to make the financial side of that work better as well.

It has been interesting that each step of further restricting access to my qigong training has led to better financial returns. First requiring registration to go through the courses increased enrollments and increased the level of donations. Further restricting the courses by putting passwords on the content increased enrollments and donations even more. At this stage it still is not at a level that balances with the amount of work that goes into running the courses, or a level that is viable for me to live on financially. I suspect that further restricting access is likely to further improve the financial returns, and – as I see it, that next level of restriction basically means putting prices on the courses in the normal way.

…

…

…

Clearly I have been very reluctant to do this for a very long time, but aside from some miraculous development over the next little while, if I want to be able to return to putting more of my focus and time into the qigong teaching, I need to make the finances balance for it.

Somewhat ironically, I don’t think this is a change I can just make immediately. For me to be able to run the courses in this way with standard pricing mechanisms, I will need to do a lot of work restructuring the courses, and I just don’t have time for that right now. Also, having made a commitment to my friend in starting the new business with him, I am not going to back out of that immediately. I need to continue with that business until we achieve what we set out to with it, and then I will be able to exit having fulfilled my commitment. That will be the point that I can refocus more on the qigong and put the time into restructuring and further development.

So… all of this is a bit ahead of any actual change. For now I will continue with the new business and running the courses the way they are currently run, which includes them being GFRF…. but its just not sustainable like this for the long term. So it seems perhaps inevitable that I will need to move to pricing my courses in the future if I am to continue offering them. In a way that could be seen as a completion of the GFRF experiment. Having gone through many iterations of it and tried many different things while using GFRF, to return to using normal pricing and compare that as well. Hmmm…

Well, that’s the update. I figured as there had been some changes using the passwords, I should report on what the result of that was, and also just how things are going overall. Also it had been about six months since my last post, and I don’t know when my next chance to do some writing like this will be, so I should take this chance while I have it.

I guess we will see what comes in the future.

 

 

Ok, so this is a long one. Maybe only for those who are REALLY interested in what is going on with my GFRF… You may have noticed that I like to explain things in detail. Hopefully this is helpful a lot of the time, and perhaps even endearing some of the time.  But it does also mean you sometimes need to read through a lot of material to get that detail.

TL;DR

So here is the TL;DR: I need to balance the energy I put in to my qigong teaching, and the energy I receive back in return. To try to accomplish this I am going to password restrict access to some of my online training materials. This will create a barrier of sorts to protect the ‘flame’ of my personal energy from the winds of a harsh economic environment. I will have greater control over the use of my time and energy and who has access to it to reduce the drain on me. It will also create a much stronger decision point for people to decide to donate or not and how much. I will keep it GFRF for now and see how it goes.

If you do want to read the rest of the post though, I would recommend it. I have even included some pictures and videos to keep it interesting for you!

Difficulties

I am finding these recent posts difficult to write, but when I first started out on my ‘Give Freely, Receive Freely’ experiment I committed to documenting my experiences and the results, good or bad, or otherwise it would not be a very honest representation of the experiment.

If anything I have held back on writing about just how difficult it has been for me to continue to do things by ‘Give Freely, Receive Freely’, because who wants to be complaining all the time? I would much rather focus on the positive, and also I committed to gladly accept whatever I received without complaint – otherwise I would not truly be giving freely or receiving freely. But now that it has become necessary for me to make changes to how I am doing things, I think I also need to write a little more about the challenges I have had while using GFRF.

Protecting the flame

An analogy that occurred to me that would describe some aspects of the challenges pretty accurately is that of a flame.  I often refer to a flame when teaching about breathing and qigong. How for a flame to be healthy and strong it needs enough air, but also not too much. Think of a candle, without enough air the flame will be smothered. With too much air, in a breeze or wind, the flame will splutter, and maybe even be blown out.

Having tried using GFRF for over five years now, I have often considered other types of arrangement that have similarities to see what makes them work or not work, and using the analogy of a flame, from what I have seen there is a feature that seems to be almost universal in examples of successful use off GFRF principles or similar. There is always, or almost always some kind of barrier or buffer of protection for the people using GFRF that allows them to do it successfully. Something that protects their flame from the winds of this

I will mention several examples and explain:

The Monastery

Being in Thailand recently and seeing the monks going around and collecting food from devotees each morning brought this one strongly to mind again. The monks do not work for money, relying on donations for their support so would seem to be using GFRF pretty well. BUT, they are also supported by the infrastructure in place at the monastery, they don’t have to worry about things like paying rent, and the monastery often has financial reserves from previous bequests and donations.

They also benefit from a cultural understanding and tradition of supporting them in this way.  All of these things contribute to them being able to function in this way, and in the end they don’t fully engage with the world, they retreat from it. They don’t need to pay taxes, they don’t need to provide for a family etc etc.

The Commune

This is another example of a group of people together trying their best to live by GFRF principles or similar. A larger flame is harder to blow out than a small one, so by working together and sharing freely with each other they are able to benefit from their collective strength and provide for their needs together in ways that they could not individually. These communes usually start out with property purchased from the collective finances of the founding members, so again they don’t need to worry about that very basic need of at least having somewhere to live, their daily efforts are usually more about taking care of their daily needs and possibly developing their property further. But they do this within the sheltered environment of their communal society.

They share freely with each other, but are usually isolated to a large extent from the rest of the world. If they have to interact with the rest of the world, they usually do so on normal commercial terms, buying and selling. They attempt to create a protected oasis from the outside world in their commune where they can live the way they truly want to. BUT, this isolation and strong reliance on each other also creates challenges. If you are familiar with the history of various communes you will know that scandals are common, and often members end up being taken advantage of in different ways by the unscrupulous and power hungry among them. Because of their reliance on the group and lack of personal property it makes it difficult for them to leave, and unfortunately there are very very few examples of communes that have managed to be successful and healthy environments for their members to live in for the long run, and so so many examples of communes that have broken up and fallen apart because of abuse within them.  I have actually wanted to write an in depth blog post about communes and the challenges involved in them and possible other ways of looking at achieving the same purposes for quite awhile, but just haven’t  had the time as I have been working so hard on other things. Perhaps I will get to do that in the future.

The Foundation or Charity

I don’t actually think these are a very good example of GFRF because they are not usually about exchange and mutual support. They do however represent people’s desire to give to help other’s and to create a better world. BUT, usually the money that flows through these organizations has been obtained by usual commercial means – work, business, investment, and so on.

And those working in the charities are a combination of volunteers who do the work for no compensation – they do not rely on it to support themselves, and employees – who are working on a normal commercial basis as they would with any other job. Some employees in charities are even paid hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars annually, and for them their working situation is really not too different from working in any other industry sector. I will comment more on how this relates to GFRF a little later in this post.

The Academic Institution

This is an interesting one. Sometimes academics once they have been granted tenure then find themselves free to put their efforts into researching and teaching whatever they think is most valuable.

They are able to freely give their intellectual efforts to the world, but they are clearly very protected from the economic realities due to the backing of the institution they are part of which may be funded by the government – indirectly through taxes, or by private donors. They may indeed be giving freely, but they do so from an extraordinarily protected financial position, which leads to the sometimes criticisms of academics in their ivory towers being out of touch with the realities of the world.

The Independently Wealthy – or Significant Asset Base

Another group who sometimes seem to manage to do something like GFRF is those who are already wealthy, or at least have a significant asset base to start with. These people are sometimes able to give their services freely and support themselves by doing this, but they are not truly meeting the full cost of their living because they are doing so supported by the asset base they have already accumulated through more normal means whether it be work, investment, inheritance or so on. This then gives them the security and freedom to operate in this way.

The people who do this are few and far between, and I think those that do are wonderful and embracing the spirit of what I have referred to as GFRF (sometimes other people use other terms to describe their philosophy), but in a practical analysis it can’t be ignored that their base of assets is a big part of what allows them to do this successfully. One of the best examples of GFRF that I know of is not wealthy as such, but does benefit from owning a substantial piece of property that allows them to do what they do in the way that they do it, and they are an inspiration.

The Supported Partner

Another type of person that may be using GFRF is the person who works at something that is their passion and chooses to do it in a GFRF way because they want to share what they have with others, and it feels good and right and freeing to do it GFRF (I feel this way too J). They are able to get some return in this way so it seems like it is working for them, but if you dig deeper into their financial situation they are not actually supporting themselves fully in this way.

They have a partner, or someone else who has a significant income from a more normal job or a significant asset base etc which is paying for a significant part of their living costs. The GFRF work is either just a hobby, or a part-time supplemental income, not an income that would actually meet their financial needs fully. To do that they need the support of another. This support protects and shields them to some extent from the harsh economic realities of their environment.

The Side Project

Another example of someone using GFRF for their work is someone who uses it just for a portion of their work. This allows them to use GFRF because they want to, but the bulk of their income and financial support comes from a more regular job or business. Again shielding their side project from the economic winds around them.

How do these examples compare to my GFRF

I applaud any and everyone’s efforts to use the principles of GFRF, or to otherwise act charitably. I think any effort in this direction is wonderful and my intent is certainly not to be critical of peoples efforts in any way, but simply to examine closely and rationally how things are working to learn from them, and some kind of ‘shielding’ or protection seems common in I think pretty much every example of successful GFRF like situations that I have come to be aware of. There may be exceptions of course, and that is great. But this seems to be the general pattern.

So how do these examples compare to what I have been doing with GFRF?

First the monastery. I am not working as part of a religious order. My intention is not to retreat from the world but to engage fully with it. I think when we retreat from the world we reduce our influence on it. We are most influential when we are in it and part of it, as such I have the same economic needs as other people in society, which are quite different from the monk in retreat.  Because I am not part of an established tradition I so often encounter confusion and misunderstanding of how to interact with GFRF, and if I want to have any success with it have to put a lot of effort simply into communicating this rather than getting on with giving the other things I have to give. Also because of the perceived similarity to how monks live, I from time to time encounter people assuming that I am just like a monk of some sort… I may be choosing to use some of the same underlying principles of how I want to interact with people compassionately, but I am definitely not a monk. I am also not supported in my travels and efforts by a large established organization with financial resources, which is sometimes assumed as well. I am doing everything off my own back, and out of my own pocket. When my pocket empties out, there is not another reserve for me to draw on.

Next the commune. Well… I am not secluding myself from the world. I am not only giving to those within my select community who have agreed to common principles and also give freely back to me in the same way. I have no such community to support and strengthen me. I guess in a small way I have wanted to encourage development of a community like this of sorts by having the GFRF website and sharing my experiences on it. Also listing the details of other people who are using GFRF or similar as I have come across them. But we are few and dispersed and unable to meet each other’s needs in this way. I have also specifically wanted to keep my giving and my interaction open to the world at large to influence, share, and spread the ideals of GFRF by letting people come into contact with it, and also to avoid some of the potential pitfalls of a closed commune type environment. I guess my hope – and I realised that it was an idealistic and perhaps unrealistic hope this could spark wider change. In the least people would become more comfortable interacting with GFRF, and perhaps it might inspire a more giving and compassionate environment for all of us as more people tried GFRF or similar in their lives. But overall my efforts have been very much exposed to the regular everyday economic environment, and that was always my intention.

The Foundation or Charity. I think you can definitely consider what I have been doing as charity in the sense that it is giving inspired by love and compassion. But it is not charity in the sense of the word in the way that most people commonly use it, in that I do not benefit from some people giving to me financially so that I can then give my services to others. My idea has always been that if at all possible there needs to be reciprocity. Those receiving need to give in return. Charity in the sense it is commonly used implies giving in one direction. This implies that there are those that can give, and those that can receive. This creates a kind of inequality and often on a deep level is not beneficial to the receivers as it creates a mindset of dependency and that they are unable to give that is hard for them to break out of. When there is reciprocity it recognises the fundamental worth and equality of us all, and our mutual dependence on each other. We all become both givers AND receivers. Some may be able to give more, and others less, but that all balances out in the end and everyone’s contribution is valuable and necessary to our overall wellbeing and success.

I have thought about the possibility of seeking charitable status which would make my activities tax exempt, and I think there would be a very good case for that being granted. This would also encourage people or organizations to make larger tax deductible donations to help support my work in sharing with others, and maybe this is something I could still explore in the future, but overall my activities have been too small for me to be able to afford the time and expense of jumping through all the necessary hoops to achieve this at this stage, and also it is not truly in line with the highest ideal of GFRF which should ideally include reciprocity.

The academic institution. I actually think that one of the areas where I could potentially give the most value to the world is through academia. I think I have an unusual level of insight into some of the things that I teach about, and good academic research would be a valuable tool for gaining further understanding of these things and also spreading this knowledge so that it can most effectively reach those who need it most. I am currently not in the position of having support from an academic institution though. This may be something for the future.

The independently wealthy or significant asset base. I wish… I entered into GFRF without significant assets, and I still do not have them. I don’t even have and cannot at this stage afford a home to live in. So many conversations I have with people as I have travelled sharing qigong at some point go back to what about your home in New Zealand, or what about your studio etc. There is just an assumption that I must have these things, and I don’t. I never owned a home, much as I would like to, and I gave up my studio so that I could travel to teach because there was no way that I could afford to keep it and do both. When I get back to New Zealand I will be essentially homeless and relying on the kindness of friends and family when I first arrive and scramble to figure out where I am going to be able to live.

I started doing GFRF, not because it was easy, not because I was financially comfortable and could afford to do it without worries, but because it felt right and I wanted to do it. Perhaps I could have waited until I had accumulated an asset base and then began my experiment, but again that would not have been in keeping with what I consider the highest ideals of GFRF. If we wait for the perfect conditions to try to do things, we tend to keep on waiting… Even the very wealthy often tend to think of themselves as not having enough and so they constantly seek to obtain more, (and there are very good reasons for that stemming from the way our financial systems operate – another topic I have wanted to write something in depth about but haven’t been able to yet). So surely if we really want to create change in ourselves or the world around us we need to just start now with what we have rather than wait for some future time or circumstances that may never eventuate.

The supported partner. I mentioned already that when I get back to New Zealand I will be relying on friends and family for places to stay as I try to get re-established and move forwards there. So I have people who have been supportive of me, and I am grateful to them for that. But I don’t have a partner earning a good salary to support me while I work on my hobby project. While I may have supportive people who will help me in the short term, in the long term I need to be able to support myself. I would even like to be able to support a family of my own when the time is right, so I need an income that will allow me to do this and provide some security for them, not to merely allow me to continue to exist.

The side project. To begin with this would have described my start with GFRF. I did it with only a portion of my work. A very substantial portion, but still not all of my work. However overtime I have gradually shifted more and more of my efforts to being on a GFRF basis, giving up different business interests so that I could put more of my time and energy into the work that I do on a GFRF basis. I still haven’t managed to get to 100% GFRF, mainly only to 90%. I still have some very minor income stream from my previous efforts, and to be fair, these have actually been part of what has propped up my ongoing GFRF work. If I didn’t have those I would have reached this point of crunch time a lot sooner. But certainly the vast bulk of my work in recent times has all been GFRF, the other outstanding financial interests have become the minor side project and certainly not the focus of my time or efforts.

The Unshielded Flame

So overall, my GFRF efforts have largely been an unshielded flame, not protected by the buffers that are common in situations where GFRF type situations manage to persist. There are some potential benefits to not having a shield around your flame – if you want it to spread. Being unshielded allows the flame to come into contact with flammable materials to allow the flame to grow. When the flame is big enough it is then very difficult to put out, and any wind just causes it to burn brighter and hotter and spread further. I think GFRF could be such a flame. If the environment was dry enough it could spread and grow, and in doing so it would burn down many of the assumptions we have about how society and economics should work, clearing the way for a more peaceful and utopic future.

I think on some level this is part of what makes some people reluctant and even suspicious of interacting with GFRF. It undermines their ideas of how society should work, and even if they recognize the issues and problems with society, the implication of a society without some of the existing restrictions is scary and unsettling to them, even if they are not consciously aware of it. It feels much safer to stick with the imperfect situation that you know, than to venture into the unknown.

But anyway… my experience has been that in most situations I have found the environment to be rather damp and windy. I have found the odd dry twig along the way that has caught the vision and also caught alight with the spirit of GFRF. Some of those have since blown out, finding their environment to also be too damp and windy. Perhaps some are still burning. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they found some dry and sheltered territory where they are successful in growing their GFRF flame?

Even for those who I have encountered who have LOVED the idea of GFRF, and LOVED my work, what I offer and what I teach, all too often when it comes to it when it comes to giving in return I have found them to be very reluctant to part with their resources. Even as they tell me how well my teaching compares to other courses and classes they have attended, both online and in person, and how much they have had to pay for other courses, they have then ended up giving me a tiny fraction of this, or even nothing at all in return for the teaching they have received. Their deep instinct to retain their resources unless they absolutely have to give them up has obviously kicked in when it comes to actually opening their wallets. Even if you LOVE the idea of GFRF, it can’t thrive unless you put this into practical action and support it not just with your words but with your finances as well. And this has been what I have attempted to do. Not just explore GFRF as an idea, as a philosophy, but to put it into action, to put everything on the line to make it work.

I have also had those that again have loved GFRF, and love what I offer and teach, and then come up with suggestions of how I could make more money. And basically the ideas are usually to just make something new, or repurpose something I have already created and sell it in a normal way???? They deeply agree with GFRF and want me to keep doing it, but in the end their idea is to do something just completely in an ordinary way using an ordinary pricing mechanism???? Not to use GFRF at all… It’s like it just doesn’t quite compute and they are so entrenched in the ordinary economic system that they can’t tell that that is exactly what they are recommending. I could just put a price on what I already do!

And then there are those people who make suggestions of ‘why don’t you just do this: …..’ I won’t go into specific details, but they then suggest something that would require a huge amount of capital input. And where would that money come from? I don’t have it. If they were offering to give the money to me for it, maybe it would be a good suggestion, but overall there is a certain unreality to their thinking. And it is never something they themselves have done, just a fantastical idea with no consideration of the resources required to implement it.

And then there are those who whenever I talk to them about what I am doing ask “you’re not still doing it for free are you? (or GFRF if they remember the term)”. They are concerned from me because they are worried that people will not respect what I do and give me enough for it if I don’t put a price on it. There are also those that when they have organised workshops and things like that for me to teach at have insisted on putting prices on them, because they have not had confidence that I would get sufficient, or even any return doing it GFRF. I have found it frustrating at times because I have wanted to use GFRF as much as possible, but I have respected their concern for me and the practicality of organising workshops, and in the end the financial returns from these have usually been much better than those that have been GFRF.

And then, there have been so many who just never get around to giving in return, or who actually don’t end up participating in training because they can’t get their heads around the GFRF, even if they really like the idea.

Now has this been everybody? No… I did mention that there have been some dry twigs along the way. There have been those that have ‘got’ GFRF and been respectful and even generous in return, but these have been in the minority. Overall I have found my environment to be very damp and windy, and my flame has been blown about, spluttered, and is now very weak. Maybe it has even gone out?

I have done this all calmly, persisting with GFRF because I have wanted to and it has still felt like the right thing for me to do. Some who are very perceptive have known that it has been very difficult. Others have just assumed that because I am doing wonderful things, everything must be just wonderful and somehow I am able to survive on rainbows and fairy dust. Others have just been unaware and it is not like I have particularly wanted them to know what a struggle it has been, and because of my calm they have had no reason to notice. The reality is that the financial pressure and stress has been huge. But I am very good at remaining calm, determined and resolute in difficult situations. I can do all sorts of things calmly and without fear like this:

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are without danger, or even a good idea.

In many ways I have felt a lot like this:

Just somehow hanging on. Continuing despite all odds for the sake of my principles and a distant hope. But eventually it has to come to an end… (Did you like the videos? Even with all this I still think I have managed to keep a sense of humour).

Peoples responses I think are largely a result of their reaction to this same environment they find themselves in, and I can’t fault them for that. I have pushed ahead with GFRF by myself wanting to make a change for myself and for the world around me, but in the end my small flame has not been strong enough to cope with the economic environment as I find it.

If I want to have a future, to be able to have some security for myself, and possibly be able to support a family as well, then I now need to take care of and protect my flame. I need to put in place some barriers, some protection for it. I find myself needing to pursue ordinary work on ordinary terms to take care of my financial wellbeing. This is a start towards giving myself the economic support and security that I need, but what about my qigong then?

There is so much more that I want to teach, more courses on different aspects of qigong practices that I would like to make available for people. Things that can REALLY help them. I also want to go through and improve the quality of the existing learning resources I have made available so people can understand even better and more clearly what I already teach. I want to be able to offer retreats and intensive live training to enrich and deepen peoples practice and knowledge. But as I look at it… just maintaining what I already offer takes a lot of work. With a lot of my time needing to go into the new business I will be working in, how will I be able to find the MASSIVE amounts of time I need to put into producing new course materials and organizing further training opportunities? Just maintaining what I already offer may prove to be too much and I may have to pull back on some of that, let alone moving ahead with further development.

I could get other people to do some of the teaching and take care of other aspects of things. I have some students who are showing potential to take on some of that. That could free me up to put some of my time into the things only I can do. But it also still raises some of the same issues around there being enough coming back in to support all of the effort going out. I need to be able to compensate fairly whoever takes on some of the teaching work, or they will end up drained and exhausted like myself. I need to create a balance between the work that goes in and the financial return that comes from that, both in the short term, and also in the longer term if I want to ever be able to return my fulltime efforts to the teaching of qigong, which will be necessary if I want to teach and share all that I would like to.

One last ditch effort at GFRF

So how do I accomplish that?

Well what I am considering is to put up some boundaries, some protection in a way around the online training that I offer. (There is something a little poetic about that as well for those who know the nature of the business I am starting in New Zealand).  Up until now it has all been open access. Anyone can look at and use the training material at any time. It has been very ‘free’. As I have mentioned one of the biggest challenges has been people just not getting around to donating (or paying, depending on how you want to term it). The fact of the matter is that so many people just don’t engage with the GFRF concept at all. I don’t expect many people will read this blog post, I guess I am writing it for the few that will, and for myself. Without a very clear prompt of when to pay, they just aren’t even going to think about it. By restricting access to the material it will create a very strong decision point where they will need to decide to donate, and how much, or not to donate if they want to use the material.  There will still be lots of free information and videos available, but access to the more in depth courses will be restricted by password.

I am thinking along the lines of that the first two weeks of each course and the introductory material will all be open access but beyond the first two weeks will be restricted. It is not going to be particularly strong protection, and those with the will and some know how will probably find a way around it, but it will create that clear decision point.

If you have been following this blog at all, you will recall me talking about another change earlier in the year, again to create a strong decision point. That change was starting to require registration for the instructor certification courses. As people register they are told they need to consider their GFRF contribution in return for the training the receive. I did this for other reasons as well, to formalise the registration process so I could better track and support students, but I expected that this would lead to a significant increase in total donations received – and it did. Not significant enough to balance the work vs return equation unfortunately, but encouraging none the less. Even with this there are quite a few people who still just never get around to donating. It is quite frustrating really. I don’t actually feel like this change restricting the access will necessarily have the same positive effect on the level of donations, but I figure I might as well try it anyway and see. At the least it will reduce the drain on my energy of dealing with people who don’t want to engage properly with the exchange, and it will also pave the way for if later on I need to put in place stronger barriers, and even simply put a price on my work.

A Lantern Instead of a Candle

If I can possibly continue to do this in a GFRF way, then I want to do it. And this is one more refinement that I can try to achieve that. If I can’t do it GFRF, then if I want to continue to do it at all I will need to find a way to balance the energy put in with the energy that comes back to me from my work, or I simply won’t have any more energy to give – and that may mean prices.

In the end I may have to decide, do I continue with my qigong teaching and put prices on it, or do I stop. Or do I cut right back to a much lower level that I can sustain without charging prices so that I can have enough time and energy to put into things that do earn me sufficient money. I think there is a lot of value in the qigong that I teach. I do think that there is sufficient interest and demand for it to earn the income that I need from it, but I may need to separate my teaching of it from my ideas about GFRF in order to achieve this. As one of my talented qigong students who has helped me to organize some workshops said, he thinks I will have more success in changing and improving the world and people’s lives through teaching them qigong than from trying to use GFRF – because they are just not ready for it.

I have been very committed to sharing qigong as openly as I possibly can, but I need to put some protection in place now. It could be tempting to just hide my qigong away and continue with my own practice and not try to continue to share with others because I cannot do so on the terms that I would like. There is so much for me to explore and enjoy for myself, and I know others who have followed this path. But I want to continue to share. I don’t want to put my candle under a bushel to hide my light (I’m paraphrasing the Bible now), I want to share it with the world around me. To do this I may need to accept that I can’t simply hold my flame out there in the wind and the damp either though. I need to protect it… But I can do this in a way that it can still be seen and give light to those around me. If I put a clear barrier around my flame, it becomes a lantern instead of a candle. My flame can be nurtured or rekindled into life from its current level of depletion and weakness, it may not be able to spread and light other flames with the same ease, but it can continue to glow bright for all around to see and benefit from. I think this is better than simply letting the flame go out.

We’ll see what happens with this next incremental change to my implementation of GFRF. I don’t think I am ready to do it just yet, but probably over the next few weeks or months.

Note* Yes I am aware that I have mixed my use of the flame analogy. Sometimes I use it to refer to my own energy and wellbeing, sometimes to refer to my sharing of GFRF, and other times to refer to my qigong teaching. If you got all the way to here you are probably smart enough to figure all that out though.

Note** If you are reading this blog post by itself, you might need to read some of the others for context of what is going on. Definitely the one just before this, and if you’re really keen why not all of them from the beginning? That might take you awhile though…

 

 

 

There is an old Chinese saying, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water”. It refers to the idea that what must be accomplished and done day to day is much the same before enlightenment and afterwards. Sometimes people have romantic ideas about what enlightenment means, and that somehow afterwards things will just happen magically by themselves. That by being enlightened somehow all of the mundane things will no longer be necessary – they will just happen, or at the most maybe you will have to wave your hands to make them happen. But the reality is that even after enlightenment all of the mundane things must still be taken care of and life may not actually look too different from before enlightenment at all, the only difference is that you understand better.

Focus On The Giving

Some time ago I wrote a blog post titled “Focus On The Giving” (I just checked, and that was over 3 and ½ years ago… wow) and that is certainly what I have done since then. I have done all I can to give without price. There are now 9 comprehensive online qigong courses available freely. There are 52 certified qigong instructors around the world who have been certified on a ‘Give Freely, Receive Freely’ basis. On my most recent tour I have visited 28 cities in 12 countries teaching 78 workshops many of which were offered on a Give Freely Receive Freely basis unless the local organizer wanted to do things in another way, either way my offer was always to give my teaching freely without regard for the potential financial remuneration. And many more workshops in different countries the year before. And my clinical work has continued to be GFRF for over 5 years now, again with minor exceptions when travelling when an organizer has wanted to do things in another way. I have gradually given up various normal business interests so that I can do this.

The Results

So what has been the overall result of this? Well, I have learned a lot. I have had many rich experiences, and met many wonderful people. In some ways I think I have accomplished far more than I otherwise would have, in terms of developing courses and taking interesting opportunities, because I was not concerned about the return I might receive for these, I went ahead and did the things that I felt were most worthwhile and valuable. And… I have felt good doing it. There is a deep feeling of rightness about doing things in a Give Freely, Receive Freely way. I also feel that on a deep level it has given me insights into the functioning of things that I would not have otherwise been able to perceive. But, in the end, at this stage it is simply not financially sustainable for me to continue in this way…

I really have focused on the giving, and not just in a small way, I have done all I can to give value to people around me. Sometimes people hearing about my recent travels think that I am just having a great long relaxing holiday. And while it is true that I have been going to cool and interesting places and meeting wonderful interesting people, I have actually been working extraordinarily hard.  Many have been the nights when I have pulled into a town, searched for the nearest starbucks so that I can get on my computer for a few hours to get some writing done, respond to emails, or organize some logistics for onward travel (made more challenging by always trying to do things in the very cheapest way possible to allow me the possibility of doing it at all) and upcoming workshops, before then going and finding somewhere to  park my car so I can sleep in it before getting up and driving all day the next day. Many nights have been spent in airports because the cheapest flights have included long and inconvenient layovers. Many times I have turned up in a country having barely slept for several days, or a city after having driven for 13 hours to immediately go and teach a workshop, because that was the way I could fit in visiting the most locations and people. Many times I have been somewhere amazing, and ended up spending hour upon hour on my computer instead of going out and exploring and experiencing because there was work that needed to be done.

Now, I don’t want this to sound like I am complaining. I have no-one to blame for any of this by myself. I chose to do all this, because I wanted to. I am just explaining when I talk about focusing on the giving, I have not just been giving a little when it is convenient, but truly giving my ALL, and still it has not been enough in financial terms. There have been some workshops where the return has been ok, but many many others where it has just not been close to the level of financial viability. Some of the workshops where the financial return has been negligible to non-existent I am sure could actually have been quite lucrative had there simply been a price put on it. In my experience there are some people who really get the idea of GFRF, but also so so many who don’t.  I have taken all of these experiences without judgement, but in the end as I look at my situation I have to face the reality that I simply cannot continue the way things are.

Update On ‘The Missing Link’

Out of interest, if you are curious about what the result has been from the changes to the way I run the online courses that I referred to in a recent post “The Missing Link”. Having more structure to the running of the courses and more personal contact with participants as part of that has led to a significant increase in donations as expected, which is encouraging. Unfortunately still not enough to bring it to the level of financial viability for me though.

So what now?

Well I have to face the facts of life that I need a way to receive an income that will allow me financial stability. Actually I also need a way to back off from doing the amount of work I have been doing. Finances aside, the amount of work I have been putting in is also simply not sustainable. So when I finally make it back from this most recent tour teaching qigong I will be starting a regular business charging regular prices with a friend. It is a simple business that I have confidence will bring the financial income that I need at this time. Somewhat appropriately, and perhaps a little poetically, it also happens to involve chopping wood and carrying water.

So, some of you reading this might be wondering, what then is the future of Long White Cloud Qigong? And what is the future of Give Freely Receive Freely? I’ll start with the future of Long White Cloud Qigong first.

The Future Of Long White Cloud Qigong

For now this won’t mean any big changes with Long White Cloud Qigong. The courses will continue to be offered on a Give Freely Receive Freely basis for now. I recently hired someone to help me out with administration for Long White Cloud Qigong part time. Partly this was just because I needed the help already anyway, partly it was also to prepare for when I start this business, so that Long White Cloud Qigong can continue to run, even when I don’t have as much time available to put into it. By having someone helping with the admin I can focus more of what time I have available on the teaching part of things. Somehow I will juggle the commitments of the new business and the time and energy that goes into the teaching.

It will be a challenge because the teaching and testing for the certifications, particularly with the new way I have been running the courses, really does take up quite a bit of time and mental focus. One option could be for me to pull back on things a bit and revert to running the courses the old way which did not require so much of my input, but I actually think I would prefer to go in the other direction and support the courses even more fully if I possibly can.

I think more to the point is what happens to the ongoing development of Long White Cloud Qigong. There is so much more I want to teach. Many fascinating and useful aspects of qigong practice that can improve people’s health and wellbeing and enrich their lives. But how will I be able to find the time for that? To prepare the materials, write the books, record the videos, create the online courses? I don’t know, it will be very difficult.  How will I be able to make the time to teach workshops, and intensive live training courses. Again it will be challenging, and I may just have to put that on hold for awhile.

Much as I would like to continue to offer the Long White Cloud Qigong training on a GFRF basis, if I am to ever be able to return to putting my fulltime effort into it, that may simply not be possible. I may at some point have to accept that if I want to do it I have to put a price on it to ensure that I can receive what I need to in order to balance the work required.

For any of the Long White Cloud Qigong students who happen to be reading this. I don’t want you to think that as I write this I am pointing the finger at you to say that you haven’t given enough to support this work. There are those who have given generously and respectfully of the work, this definitely does not apply to you, do not in anyway feel that you should give more because of this predicament. There are also those who may not have given much, but have given what they could afford. Again, don’t in any way feel bad about what you could afford to give, it has been greatly appreciated and respectfully received. That is the point of GFRF to be able to share things of value with all who need them regardless of their financial means. One of the things I am most proud of is that I have been able to share qigong with people and in places where they never would have been able to afford this kind of training had I put a market price on it. Somehow I would like to be able to always continue to do that. For those of you who meant to give, but then never got around to doing it, or who gave a token payment without truly thinking about the value you were receiving and the work and resources that go into it. If you are someone who has given well wishes and good intentions but never got around to turning that into something tangible, then yes – if you happen to be reading this perhaps this is an opportunity for you to reflect on the effect of your actions or lack of action.

This has been a very difficult decision for me to make. To divert my energy from an area where I have a highly specialised and I think valuable skillset where I can make a unique contribution to the world, to put it into something much more mundane but with the opportunity of giving myself some financial security and stability. But at this stage I really need that financial stability. In a way I think my practice and teaching of qigong have become conflated with GFRF, and maybe it is time to separate the two. The qigong has value by itself, whether there is a price on it or not, and GFRF also has value by itself without attachment to qigong. I do think I could earn a suitable income from my qigong teaching and practice, but it seems not with the way I have been doing it GFRF. And, even if I were to put prices on it right now, it would take some time realign things to earn the income that I need, and in the meantime I need something to bridge that gap.

Putting my energy into a regular business will give me the chance to have some financial stability, and buy me the time to consider what I need to do in the future to allow Long White Cloud Qigong to continue to grow and develop. Some of that development may have to wait a little while as I figure this out. It is possible that I may make some incremental changes to the way the courses and other training is offered to see if by restructuring a few things I can somehow make it viable to keep it purely GFRF. Or otherwise I will try to find a way that I can offer the training in some other way that I feel good about that while it may involve putting prices on it preserves the ability for those who can benefit from the training but not afford it, to still access it. There are a few possibilities of how that might work.

The Future Of GFRF

So what about the future of GFRF? Well, I hope in some way it will continue. At this point I cannot say it has been successful for me. But… it has given me glimpses into the operation of our universe that I would otherwise not have had. I do believe that this way of thinking, this way of acting, is or could be the solution to so many of our problems in this world, and a recipe for utopia. So much of the world is simply not ready for that though.

I do know that my efforts with GFRF have inspired others to also try it as well, some more successfully than others. Even if I am not able to continue purely with GFRF at this time, I think I will continue to try to experiment with it, even if only with a portion of my work. I will also try to keep this website available for people so they can read about my experiences with it, the good, the bad and the ugly. Perhaps they will learn from my mistakes, or still be inspired by some of my experiences and thoughts. Somewhat ironically, if I am successful in achieving some financial stability and reducing my overall workload I might even be able to write a bit more often on this blog about some of the aspects of GFRF that I really never had the time to explore and express in writing while I have been giving so extensively in other areas.

I also don’t think that GFRF needs to just be about me. Perhaps others who have tried or will in the future try using GFRF can write about their experiences here on this website as well. I still think GFRF is an idea worth spreading, even if I need to take a step back from it for now.

Maybe I need to take a break from GFRF for awhile, and come back to it later. Maybe in the meantime others can carry the torch for awhile.

 

 

There are two new listings in the directory of people using GFRF. Helene Fleming in Inverness, Scotland and David Somers in Brooksville, Florida. David offers martial arts training and healing, Helene offers tai chi, meditation and reiki.

Check them out if you are in those parts of the world.

If you have been following this blog, you will know that lately I have been wrestling with the possibility of returning to putting prices on more of my work again… Not an easy decision… But as I have kept thinking about it I have come up with something else I would like to try.

You see, as I have experimented with Give Freely Receive Freely I have come in contact with other people who have tried similar things. Many have told me that it was disastrous and almost ruined their business and things like that, but there have been a few… a very few who have told me that it worked for them. Maybe it was hard to begin with, but over time they figured out how to do things in a way that it worked!

One of the common features of the approaches that have worked is that there is a direct personal interaction between the giver and receiver, and a clear time to pay.

One person I talked to even went so far as to make it mandatory that the person come directly to him, shake his hand and look him in the eye as they made their payment… In this way the person is engaging with a real person, understanding the effort of that person that goes into what they have received and that they are dependent on their support for their very real human needs (food, transport, shelter etc). So the person has to really evaluate their side of the interaction and give in return in a way that they feel good about and maintains or builds their respect for themselves.

One challenge that there has been with my work is that a lot of it is online. I have put a huge amount of effort into developing online courses, which currently have completely open access. Because of this people can view the material whenever they wish, and completely anonymously. Even for those that do get in contact with me, many of them say that they will donate in the future, or soon, or… and then never get around to it.

The reality is that they are interacting directly with the fruits of my labour – and it does take a LOT of work to plan and put together each course. But, because it is through the medium of the internet I suppose it feels more disconnected for them, and it is easy to forget to pay, because there isn’t actually a set time where they have to. I know that for myself I often would forget about bills or things that need doing as well if I wasn’t reminded and given a set deadline that I needed to do it by, so it is quite understandable.

Well… I am planning on changing the way I run those online courses. I am planning on scheduling the courses so there is a set start and finish date, and also having a lot more personal interaction during the course. I want to do these things to help students stay focused and gain more from their practice and study anyway, but it occurred to me that this could also be an opportunity for that more direct interaction and for a set time to pay which could make using GFRF more successful.

I think if people pay at the beginning of the course they are more likely to be successful in that course. It seems that if people are not invested, and I mean financially invested in what they are doing, it is very easy for them to become distracted and not follow through. So by requiring payment at the beginning, that is their investment in themselves to actually stay committed to the course, and that amount can still be up to them.

I suspect some people will still have difficulty with this and may have a tendency to just make a token payment rather than a realistic payment of an amount that reflects the value they expect to obtain from the course. But I also hope that many more other people will be able to engage with this more easily and understand the importance of making the investment in their commitment to the course and that it is an interaction with a real living person who needs their financial support as much as they need the guidance in their learning.

At this stage the other course materials will still be available open access, but I could in the future also restrict access to these to only those who have enrolled and donated to support the courses if I need to, while still making them GFRF.  This overcomes the ‘forgetfulness’ aspect of people not getting around to paying.

I think it is worth a try! Trying to work based on GFRF has been really hard, but I believe in the principle of it enough to keep trying. In the end if I have to I can go back to charging prices for things, as I have in the past, but… I would rather continue to try to make it work if I possibly can.

So… to set prices or not to set prices… I haven’t decided yet actually… still thinking… but while I do thought I might look at some of the benefits of having a price on things.

1. The first benefit is that price helps to create efficient utilization of resources. Basically it balances supply and demand. If there is a lot of something and not many people that want it, then the law of supply and demand operating through pricing would mean that the price would be low. It wouldn’t be a good idea for additional resources to be put into making more of whatever this good or service is because there isn’t really a need for it, it would be better to put those additional resources into something else – which people would do because the low price will not allow them to cover their costs or to be profitable while making more of these goods or services.

If on the other hand there is only a little of a good or service available and lots of people want it, this would suggest that the price of this thing will be high, because buyers will compete to have some of this limited supply. So it would be good to put additional resources into this thing as there is not enough of it to meet the demand, and because the price is high producing more of it will cover the costs required and be profitable.

So overall – prices can help to direct people to put their efforts and resources into things that people want and to not put those efforts and resources into things that people don’t want.

2. On a psychological level price acts as an indicator of value, so things with a high price are perceived as valuable and of high quality (because of the scarcity that must be associated with something of high price), and things with a low price are perceived as of low value and low quality (because of the excess there must be of something with a low price).

The combination of these two factors leads to more complex interactions though… which are prone to manipulation.

One excellent example is diamonds… diamonds are not that rare. But because of the strong market dominance of a few key players, the supply for sale is controlled and only a very small quantity is available for purchase at any one time. Combined with clever marketing which has spanned across generations, this leads to a perception of high value, and people are willing to pay extraordinary amounts of money for what essentially a small hunk of carbon with mainly ornamental value and little intrinsic worth.  Interestingly in the market of industrial tools, where diamonds have a more true intrinsic value because of their hardness and usefulness in producing cutting and polishing products – small diamond pieces are not so valuable, because if their price got too high the market would switch to other cheaper alternatives. The market is not concerned about the image and marketing of the tools, just whether they do the job efficiently or not.

Another example would be clean air and water. Clean air and water is free. Isn’t that wonderful. You don’t have to pay anything for it… But because of this unfortunately a lot of the air and the water on this planet has been allowed to be polluted. Because there has been such an abundance of clean air and water in the past, we haven’t valued it enough to put the necessary controls in place to protect it, and we are gradually losing it. Slowing it is becoming more scarce… at the point where we start to HAVE to pay significant prices for it I think we will suddenly start to value it more highly and to put the resources necessary into cleaning up our waterways and atmosphere. Ok… so that example is a bit simplistic, because some people DO value clean air and clean water highly, but the actions of others have been outside of their control, but the example is largely accurate if we look at it as a society wide thing. And on an individual level, how many people take full advantage of the clean air and water available to them, breathe deeply and freely in a natural environment? explore and swim in rivers, lakes and oceans regularly? Or do they not get around to it because it is ‘free’?

Application to Give Freely Receive Freely

So how does this apply to my work and GFRF? Well Qigong (moving, breathing, becoming aware of your energy) is essentially free. Anyone can do it anytime without any special equipment, and yet it is intrinsically valuable – it can make a huge difference to people’s health and wellbeing, physically, psychologically, and energetically.  In that way it is a bit like clean air and water.  So my aim has been to give this free gift to people, so they can discover qigong for themselves. But producing and maintaining the instructional materials, whether they be online or in person, is not free. It requires a great deal of time and effort and direct financial cost, and I have basic needs like eating and transportation and having somewhere to live that need to met in order for me to provide this instruction.  There is only so much of me to go around, as such I am a bit like diamonds – a restricted, limited resource, which I find stretched a bit thin as I want to spread qigong so widely.

There are some people that discover this wonderful precious gift of qigong, and truly appreciate it and make the most of it. They have wonderful experiences and it transforms their health and their lives. They recognize that while it is free, there is cost in making it available and a limited resource behind it (me) that needs to be supported for it to continue to be available. So they do their bit to contribute to the upkeep of this by making donations etc.

There are other people who discover this gift of qigong, and the start with enthusiasm… but they have a hard time continuing. They fail to make it a priority – because it is free. It is easy for them to put it aside, because they have other things to do, maybe things that cost them money, so they do those things instead because even if they are not consciously aware of it they put a higher value on those other things because they have paid for them. So they end up not gaining the true value of this wonderful free thing – because they fail to value it themselves by not supporting it financially or with other resources.

And the last group of people. People who see this thing of value, and are intrigued, but can’t quite figure it out, because how can something so valuable be free. They look at it with suspicion because surely if this was truly valuable it would have a high price on it… so therefore it must not be valuable because it has no price on it. Much like clean air and water, or some little chunks of carbon. Not really valuable at all….

So there is intrinsic value… but the perceived value is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

I think that the best outcomes come from people judging value for themselves. Learning to identify and seek out intrinsic value, regardless of price set on it. In this way they become immune to the manipulations of marketing and control. But for so, so many people in this situation they simply fail to identify the intrinsic value. They let a large part of their perception of value be shaped by the pricing mechanism which is all too often used manipulatively.

In so many ways setting a price is manipulative – to do it well means to both control supply to create suitable scarcity, and to manipulate perception by ‘telling’ people what something is worth through the price level set. It is less than ideal…

So what should I do?

There are two aspects of why I would want to set a price. One is that I simply need to be able to cover my costs and meet my own basic needs. I could set prices in such a way that I only provide my services if my costs are met in doing so – which makes a lot of sense in many ways. The challenge is if you want to be able to provide to those who cannot afford the cost… people who may need the service even more than those who can afford to pay a suitable price.

The other is to set perceptions of value, to help people understand the value inside qigong by ‘making’ them pay a suitable price to access it. This can help people to be attracted to it in the first place, and help them to stay committed to it as they have ‘invested’ in it, and by staying committed they are more likely to receive its value. The issue of perception also applies to those who can’t afford a high price actually. They are more likely to seek something out that they perceive to be of high value, than something that is given to them freely.

It is a bit like the old saying. ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’, however put a high enough price tag on the water and you can help the horse to want to drink, because if it has a high price then it must be worthwhile…, the horse won’t want to miss out on this expensive treat…

Or clean water… leave it in a stream in the wilderness and not that many people are interested. Put it in a bottle with a fancy label and sell it at a high price and everyone has to have it… (and you can bet the company making money from selling that water puts the required resources in to keep that stream clean too).

So to set a price is manipulation of a sort. Its not living to my highest ideals to put a price on my qigong in this way. But is it possibly ‘good’ manipulation? Is there such a thing? Is it a bit like telling a child that those veges on their spoon are actually an aeroplane to help them to eat them? :D. Does helping more people to discover and receive the benefits of qigong through price setting in this way make it a good thing to manipulate in this way?

I think possibly it does.

I still haven’t decided……….

 

Postscript…

I realise that if you haven’t followed this blog much you might be thinking, what is all the fuss about? Why not just go ahead and set prices on what I offer? Well it has been a long journey. 4 ½ years experimenting with and working on GFRF. It really feels good to me to work in this way. I think the potential benefits from operating in this way are massive for everyone… I have written a bit about some of the potential societal benefits elsewhere in this blog. Unfortunately I haven’t written nearly as much as I would like to, but the potential improvements in efficiency, innovation and overall wellbeing are huge. So it is very appealing to keep trying, even if I’m not very successful at it, as how do you make progress towards something if you don’t at least try? But I also need to be a bit practical – I still need to live.  I guess at heart I am an idealist… but I recognize the need for realism sometimes.

So… my Give Freely Receive Freely experiment has been going for 4 ½ years now.  4 ½ years… that is quite a long time!  You can read what I first wrote about it here: http://developyourqi.com/?p=468 actually looking up this post is how I know how long the experiment has gone on for.

Over that time I have had many ups and downs, as I have gradually moved towards doing more and more of my work on a GFRF basis.  I have documented a lot of this, writing and publishing 77 blog posts over that time.  Of course there has been a lot that has been left out. A lot about experiences, and theory and philosophy that I would have loved to write, but my focus has been on DOING it and not just writing about it. And the reality is that DOING it has been quite hard… so often I haven’t had a lot of time and energy left over to spend writing about it.

It is now time for another review, maybe with a bit of theory and philosophy mixed in 😉

Tough Choices

Over the last little while I have had to face up to some tough choices. You see working on a GFRF basis has really not been covering my costs.  Actually, it hasn’t been for a long time… but I have persisted, because I feel so good about it. It makes ME feel so good, and I feel so RIGHT about working in this way. It has become the natural thing for me to do, and I have a hard time contemplating putting a strict price on things now. But in the end I can’t go on forever not receiving enough to meet my needs.

So the choice I have been faced with is… to either change the way I am doing my work and start to charge for it, or to do something else that will bring me sufficient money so that I can continue to do what I currently do in a GFRF way.

At the moment my main work is teaching qigong both online and in person, or giving treatments using qigong and sometimes other aspects of Traditional Chinese Medicine.  Almost all of this I have been doing on a GFRF basis for quite some time now. It is what I really enjoy doing, and the area where I feel I have the most unique expertise, and therefore the most to contribute to the world. It would not be overstating things to say that some of what I do, I am the only person that can do it. That is not to say that I am better than anyone else, but that some of what I contribute to the world in this area is uniquely my own. At the moment though… doing this GFRF does not bring me close to the amount of resources (mainly money as that is the medium of exchange used most of the time) that I need to survive and to thrive.

On the other hand I have a number of opportunities available to me that are quite lucrative, that could earn me a significant income (I am qualified in several areas, and some of the opportunities do not even require any particular qualifications), but they are not in the area of my unique expertise. Some of them are quite mundane really, just about anyone could do them if they chose to – but still quite lucrative.

It has been a bit of a dilemma for me struggling for lack of money and needing to change this… to start to charge for doing what I love, and have the most unique skills in. Or to change my focus to something else that I can earn a LOT more money from – but would take a huge amount of my time and focus, so that I can continue to do what I love on the side… and not have to charge for it.

I have struggled with the decision, as I love qigong and think it has great value for people, but I also believe there is great value in the GFRF concept, and would ideally like to be able to do both. And it would be tempting to shift my efforts and the bulk of my time into something else so that I can continue to do the qigong on a GFRF basis, but by doing that I inevitably would only be able to give far less in the area of qigong as I simply wouldn’t have the amount of time I would like to put into it.

How Effective Is GFRF At The Moment?

There are other factors to consider as well… like how effective the GFRF is for other people.

If I’m honest, at the moment GFRF is mainly good for ME. It makes me feel good and opens my mind and energy in ways beyond the limits of the confined thinking of being constrained by money. BUT… for many of the people I interact with, it is doing them no favours at all. Because in order for them to receive fully… THEY need to give in equal measure. And this has not been happening.  I have had an intellectual understanding of this for a long time, but some relatively recent experiences have really made this principle stand out to me.  When people give a lot – they are capable of receiving a lot. When they do not give, they prevent themselves from receiving. I made reference to some of these experiences in a blog post here: http://www.givefreelyreceivefreely.com/new-project-encouraging-giving/ , and here: http://www.givefreelyreceivefreely.com/universal-law-learning-from-bad-experiences/ and I have had several other such experiences on both the positive and negative side since then.

So to REALLY help people – I need to help them to also give suitably so that they can receive…

Four Groups Of Interactions

In my experience with my GFRF experiment I can classify people’s interactions with GFRF into four groups:

 

The first group is those that maliciously use GFRF to get ‘something for nothing’ they abuse it and think they are getting away with something by not giving anything in return. Some people seem to think that there would be a lot of this. And if you chose to focus on this group, it would certainly seem like a large group.

But if you zoom out a little, you can see that there are other groups as well.

The group of abusers is actually rather small compared with the group of people who do truly understand GFRF. They appreciate what they receive and they give what they can in return. Sometimes that’s a lot, sometimes that’s a little, but it reflects their respect for what they have received and their personal circumstances.

Zooming out further we see another group…

 

These people kind of think they understand GFRF, or at least they like the idea of it, but in the end they don’t really act on it. They are the group of people who say that for sure they are going to make a donation for some of their training later on… but they just never quite get around it. Or they do make some kind of donation, but it is a token payment, nowhere near the value of what they receive  relative to their circumstances, and this is clear… because they will happily pay much larger amounts of money for similar things, even things of lower quality, but the moment the payment becomes voluntary it becomes a very small fraction of what they otherwise would have paid… and in doing this they do get some benefit, but they actually prevent themselves from receiving most of the benefit that they could have from what they received.

Zooming out further…

The last group of people is the biggest group by far. These are the people who just don’t understand GFRF, or if they do they are suspicious of it, or are just too uncomfortable with it … scared they might pay ‘too much’ or ‘too little’. So they just do not engage with it.  This includes the poor that are worried that they cannot pay enough so they just choose not to do it instead, not understanding that that is the point of GFRF, so that they can access things according to their financial means. It also includes the wealthy who are worried that they might overpay and not get as good a deal as they could – even though they have plenty of resources to spare. It cuts both ways, but either way prevents them from receiving any of the benefit that they could have. Probably the only benefit this group receives from the GFRF, is being confronted by the concept and having to think about it at least for a moment, but then they easily shut it out again.

Overall Effects Of GFRF On The Different Groups

So by operating in a GFRF way…

1. The first group, the malicious abusers, I am not helping them at all. In fact I am allowing them to harm themselves by abusing others in this way.
2. The second group, the exchangers – these people are wonderful. GFRF gives them the opportunity to exchange in a more honest and authentic way. It allows them to receive more fully and joyfully. These people are treasures and the world would be amazing if there were more of them. I guess this is a big part of what I have hoped to do by operating using GFRF. By exposing more people to this kind of thinking, help more people to become this way (and I include helping myself to become more like that too).
3. The third group, the apathetic, the forgetful, the take for granteds. This group fails to receive the benefits and in a way harms me by draining my time and energy while not giving sufficiently in return for it. There is no ill intent, but I am not really helping them effectively by using GFRF, and they surely are not helping me.
4. The last group, the masses who just don’t get it. By using GFRF I am preventing them from gaining any of the benefits of what I offer… and that’s a shame.

In the end I would love for there to be more of the second group to help make the world a more amazing place. But there simply don’t seem to be enough of them for me to be able to survive on GFRF right now, let alone thrive. To thrive I think I really need to be able to effectively reach a much larger portion of groups two, three AND four, and by doing so help far more people effectively.

Much as it saddens me, I might need to charge set prices in order to do this.

Group one will probably still try to take advantage under any system, so it doesn’t really make much difference to them, although having prices might make it harder for them to do this.

Principle of Leadership – Only One Step Ahead

There is a principle of leadership that I think possibly applies here.  It is the idea that to effectively lead you need to be just one step ahead of those you are trying to help. If you are ten steps ahead, or even three, or even really two steps, it is just too far of a gap for them to follow. It seems to hard or is too difficult to ‘see’ or understand.  For so many people GFRF is just too many steps ahead of where they are currently in their thinking and experience. They have compassion and love for their fellow beings – but they understand and are comfortable with this in limited ways like giving to charities, or maybe having access to a sliding scale for payments or most things being charged for with set prices with only a small amount being made available ‘pro-bono’ or maybe some special scholarships being available for those in need.  But outside of this they much prefer the existing social structures, where some people get paid more and others less, where some people have more comfortable lives and others more difficult. GFRF blows that whole structure wide open and makes EVERYONE equal in financial matters. And for most people that is just too uncomfortable and even scary. They are actually better off exploring charitable giving and receiving in smaller more controlled ways and perhaps in that way edging small step by small step closer towards GFRF or something even better. To make the leap all at once is just too much for them.

So for me to lead effectively in this area as well… I may need to scale back my GFRF efforts in favour of something gentler and closer to what people are familiar and comfortable with.

Is This The End Of Give Freely Receive Freely?

Sooo…. does this mean that the GFRF experiment is over?

I don’t think so. It may mean that it has to take a bit of a hiatus. But having experienced this way of being, even if I never truly fully achieved it, I can’t help but want to go back to it. So I think I will continue to experiment with it. I may just need to do it in smaller more controlled ways for awhile. And as much as possible I want to keep the spirit of GFRF alive within me. To do what I do for the right intrinsic reasons rather than being distracted and doing things in a way that is intrinsically less beneficial but may bring more money. I also want as much as possible to make what I have available to everyone regardless of their financial means – but in a way that allows them to get as full benefit as possible by having them give/pay in return in a way and amount that is meaningful for them.

This could be a bit tricky for setting prices… If my concern was simply to make money, I would price things just for the wealthy as they can afford to pay me more for my effort… But how can I compare pricing for someone in a wealthy country in North America or Europe, with someone living in some of the countries in Africa or small islands of the sea (and yes I do have students in all of these areas, and I want to still be able to reach and give to them).

I suspect in the end I will be able to make it work through the magic of discount codes 😉

To be honest, at this stage I am not completely sure that I will make the change. I still have an inclination to just go a little bit longer with GFRF, just try for awhile more, give it a bit more of a chance to start working better, or try something slightly but not majorly different… but I also think perhaps it is inevitable that I must make this change now. Afterall 4 ½ years is quite a long time. If I was looking at someone else’s situation and they described this to me, I know the advice I would give. I would say in the end you have to follow your heart, but you also have to be practical. You help no-one by not taking care of yourself. So maybe don’t give up on the idea, but perhaps take a break, you can always come back to it in the future…. and perhaps I should take some of my own device.

Postscript…

And… I know that there are others who are now using GFRF thanks to inspiration from this website. So… perhaps the experiment will continue to inspire others to give it a try. And little by little as more people try, we will edge our communities closer and closer to an ideal exchange and interaction. To those still using GFRF – I salute you and wish you the best. If I do make this change, I hope it is temporary and I am able to come back to GFRF more fully again in the future.