In Thailand, Nina London is helping women improve their sexual energy through qigong.

The former columnist for The Royal Gazette began teaching classes two years ago at Tao Garden Health Spa & Resort in Chiang Mai, the place she and her husband, Bill Rosser, call home each winter.

“It's amazing energy and it's totally different from writing, of course, but it's connecting with people and helping them,” she said.

Qigong, an ancient martial art, focuses on movement, breathing and meditation for overall health. Nina incorporated flowers and dance for a special experience that she says is enjoyed by the women who drop in to her classes from around the world.

“It's a Taoist practice, but I added my own element because I thought it should be more fluent and we women need more yin, which is a female energy. We need to feel more sensual, more graceful; [we need to feel] the movement,” she said.

“The people who visit come from all over the world. This year we’ve seen a lot, of all ages, that want to take classes here.

“There are classes and treatments, massages … it's a beautiful place in northern Thailand. It's a huge garden so you feel like you're surrounded with trees and energy. It’s very special.”

The three women in her first class grew to twenty before “more and more” started coming.

Visitors often asked if she would make her classes available to them once they were back at home, either via Zoom or YouTube.

“That’s how I knew it was working,” Nina said. “I was doing it every morning and sometimes in the evening. It was their morning wake up, it filled them with energy.”

She included some of the methods that women in the Laughing Club she started here had enjoyed.

“It’s qigong, but we laugh,” Nina said. “I wanted the women to feel good. I wanted them to feel happy. I wanted them to feel light. I wanted them to start the day with a smile, with positive energy and a good stretch.”

It was her clients who suggested she offer classes focused on women and female sexuality.

Nina developed a programme based on the Taoist courses she’d taken in Thailand.

“That’s another part of Tao – passion and using movements to wake up sexual energy; movements and breathing practices that are 5,000 years old. It’s wonderful.”

Her 8am classes run seven days a week. It’s a big move from the column she wrote for nearly eight years with the help of her husband Bill.

Born in Russia, English wasn’t her first language but she was fuelled by “a desire that was so strong” that she felt compelled to write even as she battled uterine cancer and then worked on rebuilding her health.

“I just felt that I had something to say to people. I don't know how to describe the feeling but I just wanted to write about my personal stories and share my message,” said Nina, whose final column for The Royal Gazette published last week.

“I had written books, but they were in Russian and they were about business.

“So it was very interesting for me because it was the first time I shared my personal stories and my love story. It was a big decision for me but I think it was the right decision.”

Despite all that, she initially didn’t know what to write. Bermuda became her muse.

“I love Bermuda so much. I wanted to express my love for the nature and the people.”

A bonus that she didn’t at all expect was the many friends she made along the way.

“It made me more receptive to listening to people's stories and observing what they were doing – if I heard music on the beach or if I saw a painting I would stop and ask questions.

“It didn’t matter who the people were. It made me talk to them and ask questions; listen to their stories.

“It made me more understanding, more empathetic the more stories I knew and I met some really amazing people.”

Simple tales – such as stumbling across someone playing saxophone on the beach or the gift of an avocado – made it into her columns.

Among her favourites were: Hope the longtail that she and her husband saved; Tino Martinez, the saxophonist who was overweight, but transformed himself through running; the drum group Coral Beats and her beloved Bill and his work on Jacques Cousteau’s famed research vessel, Calypso.

“I wanted to share the small things and I was so really sincere and I think people felt it and they trusted me with their stories.

“There was only one time that one person said no in seven-and-a-half years and I was very surprised because that was a story I thought was really inspirational.

“But all the rest of them were so happy to share their life's experience, to show how they live, to open their hearts and to show their work.

“I'm very grateful for that experience, to have been able to connect with people on a very deep level.”

Her hope, always, was that her readers would be just as inspired by the people she wrote about as she was.

Although sad to give it up she is excited about the qigong classes she has named Radiant Flower.

“It's very hard for me when I'm not in Bermuda to write. When I’m in Bermuda it's very easy, I’m connected but I’m now concentrating on creating courses, running courses – Saturdays and Sundays too.

“I really don't think I'm working. I’m just sharing something that can change their lives and that makes me very, very happy.”