Meet Leonard Shen

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leonard Shen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leonard below.

Leonard , we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

Although I probably always had a little core of confidence, coming from an immigrant Chinese family with high expectations from parents and siblings, there was always a lot of pressure to do well. Those pressures were exacerbated by growing up younger, shorter and less “white” than the norm in a suburban 1960s/70s town.

Building confidence first came by pouring my energy into making good grades and then reaping the results of brand name schools and jobs which (I could tell myself) made me worthy and capable. Then over the first few decades of my professional career, I learned to view life’s difficulties through the lens/defense mechanisms of 1) take the Long View: what happened today doesn’t really matter in the long run; 2) take the Reverse View: take a conflict situation and view it from the other person’s perspective: did they act in a toxic or aggressive way because of things going on in their lives, pressures they are facing, upbringing which was cruel to them? and 3) sublimating my insecurities into fuel to work harder (not necessarily a healthy thing or good for my growing family) so as to achieve goals by sheer effort.

Most recently, I have come to a peaceful place where confidence is almost irrelevant, by realizing in my heart of hearts that I am a sovereign soul, lasting across many lives, pure and connected to Source. When you are connected to Source and have that truly Long View, the slings and arrows of the present are dwarfed into insignificance. Trusting my intuition and connection to what I know is Right, Good and Sufficient is the ultimate source of Confidence.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I like to say that when I walk into the room, I’m like a punchline about to happen! I am a Doctor, Lawyer, Priest, and Lama.

A graduate with high honors of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, I spent the first 20 years of my career as an environmental lawyer at the U.S. Justice Department, U.S. EPA, and in private law practice. I then spent two decades as the Global Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer at GE Commercial Finance, American Express, PayPal, and Visa, and most recently served as the Chairman of the Board of two financial services companies in the US and Canada..

In parallel, over the last 40 years I have been training in tai chi, reiki (certified Levels 1 and 2), yoga, meditation — and medical Qi Gong. I am one of fewer than 1,000 medical qi gong doctors in the U.S., as well as an ordained Christian mystical priest and Buddhist Lama. I have been training directly for the last several years with the “father of medical Qi Gong in the West”, learning the most sophisticated techniques for self-healing and spiritual advancement.

For those who don’t know, Qi Gong is a 3,000 year old healing, martial arts, and spiritual tradition developed in China (with analogs in many other cultures). Based on the core principle that your mind is much more powerful than Western traditions recognize, Qi Gong or “Energy Work” involves techniques for increasing your perception of and connectedness with the energy of the universe which surrounds and pervades us. As you increase your sensitivity to the micro-pulsations of electromagnetic energy, you can begin to manipulate that energy, causing healing in yourself and others, increasing life force energy, strengthening the immune system, and amplifying kinesthetic awareness and emotional resiliency. Your body opens up and feels lighter; you feel more connected to your natural environment; you purge negative experiences and historical traumas; and you begin to orchestrate your mindset well beyond the narrow tunnel of the Self.

While used for centuries to heal millions of patients in China and elsewhere, Qi Gong is only now becoming recognized in the U.S. for its enormous potential. For example, in September 2023, Harvard Medical School hosted a conference on tai chi and qi gong, where representatives of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Veterans Administration, Kaiser and other large medical providers, as well as two of my Qi Gong teachers, discussed the emerging scientific literature demonstrating the health benefits of this ancient tradition. At that conference, the VA representative announced that they were so convinced by the efficacy shown by their own studies of veterans practicing Qi Gong (resulting in a 21% reduction in the suicide rate of veterans), that the VA would be establishing a formal Doctoral certification track, to authorize Qi Gong doctors to treat VA patients around the country.

What I love about Qi Gong is how self-empowering it can be: clients can apply its benefits to their own bodies based on what they directly sense and feel their body and psyche need. At the same time, real work — often emotionally trying — is involved in healing oneself both psychologically and physically.

My passionate mission is to make the healing benefits of Qi Gong available to those who can least afford it. I therefore have been teaching Qi Gong at four homeless shelters in CA and CO (to which I donate 100% of my fees), at Veterans Administration facilities, and to Memory Care patients at an assisted living facility.

I also teach online and in person. For more information about my training and treatments, where I lead a consortium of some of the most skilled Qi Gong doctors in the country, please go to www.californiaqigong.com.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

There is really just one quality which has been most impactful in my journey: Empathy.

The old maxim is that people “don’t care what you know, they want to know that you care”. While substantive knowledge in a job or calling of course is important, what people really appreciate is having someone who listens and cares, no matter whether the setting is professional or personal.

Start with the premise that all people are inherently good, and began that way when they were born. Even with the most obnoxious and hurtful people, seek to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, and think (or even imagine) compassionately about what they had to go through up to this moment. This will help you transmute your anger at their behavior into compassion.

This however may require a lot of purging of historic traumas and the anger/grief/depression/fears which we all accumulate over our lives. If we have some history which is triggered by a particular person or act, we need to first clear out the energetic charge of that prior history, to be able to then meet the other person today with empathy and compassion.

So spending real effort and time to pull out sometimes suppressed emotions in ourselves, then release and transform those past negative experiences which burden us even subconsciously, is essential to being a truly empathetic and compassionate source of light to others. The Qi Gong I teach provides many techniques to do so.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

I and my Californiaqigong.com team are always looking for good people embodying Integrity and Light, as we seek to bring more of those healing qualities into a troubled world in a perilous time. With training and hard work to heal ourselves, we can collectively then work to heal others, using alternative modalities which draw on indigenous cultures and ancient capabilities well beyond what mainstream western medicine has so far fully embraced.

If you feel called to support a mission of healing, please check out our website, www.californiaqigong.com, and contact me there!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.californiaqigong.com
• Facebook: Two Trees Qi Gong
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardshen