Facing Myself Through the Camera Lens

When we first began filming My Father, The Healer, I thought we were telling a story I already understood—the story of my life.

It was based on my memoir, Whole Body Prayer: The Life-Changing Power of Self-Healing, a book I wrote to share what I had learned about healing after decades of teaching and practice. The film was meant to capture that arc—my childhood in Maoist China, where I had to keep my energy gifts a secret, the thousands I later helped through QiGong, and the dramatic fall from grace that followed. We reenacted scenes from my youth: the harshness, the fear, the hunger. It was powerful. But it wasn't complete.

Even with all the beauty we were capturing, something essential was missing.

The story had no resolution — because I had not yet lived it.

It was Paola di Florio, our Emmy & Oscar-nominated Executive Producer, who felt it most strongly. As someone who has spent her life telling transformational stories, she recognized that the film — and perhaps my life — needed a different kind of closure. She said to me gently but firmly: "You have to go back."

Back to Shenyang.
Back to where it all began.
Back to the unhealed wound I thought I'd already transcended.

I resisted at first. For decades, I had buried that part of myself. I had transformed pain into wisdom—or so I believed. But wisdom that is not fully embodied has a way of hiding in the body, waiting for its moment.

So, I said yes.

We returned as a family.

My son Alex, who had so many questions. My wife, Sandra, who had stood by me through my years of silence. And Tom Pritchard, our co-director and cinematographer, who came alone, without a crew, filming discreetly as we traveled through alleys I hadn't walked in forty years.

There were no big cinematic moments. No dramatic confrontations. Just quiet steps, breath by breath, memory by memory. I stood in front of the building where I was beaten as a child. I walked past the hospital where I'd witnessed things no child should ever see. We found the clinic where I had begun my practice. By the time we flew home, the tightly-bundled emotions burst out of me. I cried for the first time in decades.

And I realized this: Sometimes the deepest healing doesn't happen on the mountaintop. It happens when we return to the place we swore we'd never go back to — and discover that we can survive it, this time with love.

I thought I was making a film about healing.
In the end, it was the film that helped heal me.

— Master Li