ABOUT
MASTER JIM NANCE
For the first nineteen years of his life, Sidney James ‘Jim’ Nance was functionally illiterate due to undiagnosed, severe dyslexia. At twenty, he read his first book – Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha – and continued his schooling until he found himself on the Dean’s List at Wabash College a year later. In that same year, he was involved in a near-fatal accident, during which he was thrown from his car at 85 miles an hour. Throughout this horrific event, he received clear guidance on how to survive the crash. Not only did he come out of the incident with literally only a scratch, but he also discovered that there was a guiding intelligence beyond the written word and that this intelligence had been guiding him throughout his entire life.
Soon after this incident, Jim Nance left Wabash College to play professional basketball in Europe. During his rookie season, he suffered a series of injuries that crippled his chances to further his professional career in basketball. He returned to the U.S. and began to explore other dimensions of life. During this time, his interest in healing and spirituality grew. From 1971-85, he traveled around the world seeking out healing practitioners, specifically in Africa. In 1976, he earned a B.A. in Elementary Education from Antioch College, and later an M.A. in Career & Academic Counseling from North Carolina Central University. All throughout this time worked extensively with inner-city youth in Philadelphia, Houston, and Cincinnati. In 1978, his interest in Soto Zen Buddism brought him to Minneapolis, MN, where he had an opportunity to study at the MN Zen Center with Dainin Katagiri. He studied there for several years. From 1978-1997 worked as a teacher and counselor within the Minneapolis Public Schools.
In 1995, Jim Nance met International Qigong Master Chunyi Lin and started studying Spring Forest Qigong (SFQ). In 2005, he was named Spring Forest Qigong Master. For over 20 years he worked professionally as a medical Qigong healer and teacher and helped to bring healing to people from all around the world. In 2014, Master Nance developed an applied approach to Qigong called Guiding Qi. He continues to teach, mentor, and work as a Qigong healer to this day.
"There is a place. I like to call this place 'the point of origination'; the point from which all knowledge comes, all life is given, and all meaning is understood. We've all had moments in our lives where we've been touched by this essential energy. My interest and purpose in life is to support people in gaining a greater understanding of their relationship to this point.
This point emits an intelligence that guides us in ways that many times we can't see until after we've had the opportunity to look at our lives and see the gifts we've been given all along the way."