Qigong is offered at the Gunnison Library every Third Thursday of the month. See a description of the practice and instructor below.

About Qigong:

Qigong is an ancient practice that integrates movement, stillness, and deep breathing. The purpose of qigong is to relax and release tension so that the elements that give us energy and health (breath, blood, lymph, etc) can flow freely throughout the body. Movements in qigong are slow, circular, graceful, and flowing. These movements lubricate the joints, strengthen the muscles, improve circulation, and relax the nervous system. Qigong is a moving meditation that brings awareness to our breath and expands our range of motion. Qigong creates space for health, balance, and calm which can maximize our body’s natural healing processes. Qigong is an easy practice that can be done standing, sitting, or lying down. People of all ages can practice and enjoy this gentle ancient art.

About the instructor:

Heidi Magnus has taught qigong for five years and has practiced since 2015. Heidi’s first career was as an environmental scientist and she still enjoys applying the scientific method and observation skills to all aspects of life. Heidi enjoys making connections between ancient wisdoms, like Qigong, and current research in neuroscience, psychology, and wellbeing. For the last 26 years, Heidi has owned a deli with her sister Kate and finds that qigong helps her to thrive in a busy work environment. Qigong is a vital part of her self-care and she enjoys sharing the tools she has learned for navigating life and its ever-changing challenges. Currently she studies qigong with four teachers (Dr. Roger Jahnke, Mimi Kuo Deemer, Marisa Cranfil, Anthony Korahais). The teachings of Josh Korda and Sharon Salzberg also inspire Heidi in her practice. Heidi enjoys teaching Qigong, and finds sharing the practice with others rewarding. Heidi is offering classes through Gunnison Public Library. These classes are for beginners or advanced students who want to practice in a fun and casual community atmosphere.

Join us for a literary adventure and community conversation!

This Community Read will culminate during the Crested Butte Center for the Arts’ Mountain Words Festival with a free author talk at the Gunnison Library on Friday, May 22nd at 6pm. 

FREE COPIES of American Eclipse are available to pick up at each library location beginning May 1. 

About the book:

On a scorching July afternoon in 1878, at the dawn of the Gilded Age, the moon’s shadow descended on the American West, darkening skies from Montana Territory to Texas. This rare celestial event―a total solar eclipse―offered a priceless opportunity to solve some of the solar system’s most enduring riddles, and it prompted a clutch of enterprising scientists to brave the wild frontier in a grueling race to the Rocky Mountains. Acclaimed science journalist David Baron, long fascinated by eclipses, re-creates this epic tale of ambition, failure, and glory in a narrative that reveals as much about the historical trajectory of a striving young nation as it does about those scant three minutes when the blue sky blackened and stars appeared in mid-afternoon.

In vibrant historical detail, American Eclipse animates the fierce jockeying that came to dominate late nineteenth-century American astronomy, bringing to life the challenges faced by three of the most determined eclipse chasers who participated in this adventure. James Craig Watson, virtually forgotten in the twenty-first century, was in his day a renowned asteroid hunter who fantasized about becoming a Gilded Age Galileo. Hauling a telescope, a star chart, and his long-suffering wife out west, Watson believed that he would discover Vulcan, a hypothesized “intra-Mercurial” planet hidden in the sun’s brilliance. No less determined was Vassar astronomer Maria Mitchell, who―in an era when women’s education came under fierce attack―fought to demonstrate that science and higher learning were not anathema to femininity. Despite obstacles erected by the male-dominated astronomical community, an indifferent government, and careless porters, Mitchell courageously charged west with a contingent of female students intent on observing the transcendent phenomenon for themselves. Finally, Thomas Edison―a young inventor and irrepressible showman―braved the wilderness to prove himself to the scientific community. Armed with his newest invention, the tasimeter, and pursued at each stop by throngs of reporters, Edison sought to leverage the eclipse to cement his place in history. What he learned on the frontier, in fact, would help him illuminate the world.

With memorable accounts of train robberies and Indian skirmishes, David Baron’s page-turning drama refracts nineteenth-century science through the mythologized age of the Wild West, revealing a history no less fierce and fantastical.

About the author: 

David Baron is an award-winning journalist and author who writes about science, nature, and the American West. Formerly a science correspondent for NPR and science editor for the public radio program The World, he has also written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and other publications. While conducting research for his latest book, THE MARTIANS, he served as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation. David is an avid eclipse chaser, and his TED Talk on the subject has been viewed more than 2 million times. An affiliate of the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism, he lives in Boulder.