Tao Articles

China Dream Trip May 10-28. Mt. Changbai (option to June 1) is root sacred mountain of the Healing Tao. Wandering Taoist One Cloud attained breatharian state here. He was well supported by its powerful alchemical Kan & Li (Water & Fire) Qi field.

Heavenly Lake sits atop China’s most active volcano, generating a field of “steam” that radiates Original Breath / Yuan Qi hundreds of miles. This is China’s “crown chakra” in its pristine Siberia. See photos of this amazing itinerary.

————

Earth Year of Pig Discounts: up to 35% off all Winn products: ENDS FEB.28.

• 35% discount on purchase price (before S/H) of $300. +

• 25% discount on purchase price (before S/H) of $200. +

• 15% discount on purchase price (before S/H) of $100. +

• To get Year of the Pig discounts, please contact Zach  Office Manager: info.healingtaousa@earthlink.net. or call (864) 419-4502

————

ALERT:  TWO Great New Pages – just posted!

A. Medical Qigong: FAQS, Certification, Products

https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/medical-qigong/

B. Tao Sexology: Jade Eggs, Sexual Qigong, Books/DVDs/retreats

https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/product/sexual-vitality-qigong-dvd/

 C. Don’t forget – all DVDs and Audio are now downloadable. If you don’t see what you are looking for, contact Zachary Office Manager. for downloads, go to homepage menu PRODUCTS, scroll down, select  “DVDs”, or “Audio” downloads. The Best Buy Package link: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/download-packages/

Spring 2019 Tao Events

Register for spring 2019 workshop: info.healingtaousa@earthlink.net
call 888-999-0555 (USA only) or (864) 419-4502 to speak with Zachary Fant, office manager

1.  March 9 -10, Sat/Sun, 2019. 9 am – 6 pm

• Fusion of Five Elements 1  – Emotional Alchemy

•  Neutralize negative reactive emotions. Form a soul-elixir Pearl to capture Original Feelings of Self-Love. Pearl holds our internal ground. Essay below has new insights on Neutral Ego, Positive Ego, and Negative Ego. And why you should NOT “shoot your pearl out the crown” as taught by Mantak Chia – it’s a risky borrowed Tibetan method.

2.   March 5 – April 9, 2019.  Tues. eves: 6-8:30 pm,  Black Mtn. NC

Daoist Sacred Embodiment for Women

by Jem Minor (my wife). L.Ac. Master of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine

Practices to Clear Sexual Trauma & Cultivate Sexual Vitality

• ——————————

•  FREE EVENT: Wed. March 20, 2019.  7:15 – 10 pm.

• Spring Equinox Green Dragon Ceremony & Crystal Bowl Concert with Malana, + Spring Qigong for Liver/Expansion. At Winn home,  RSVP: hit reply or email: winn AT healingdao.com

———————————

3. April 21-22, Sat/Sun, 2019. 9 am – 6 pm

• Fusion of Five Elements 2 & 3  – Psychic/Soul Alchemy

• Open 8 Extraordinary Channels (Macro-cosmic Orbit). Run high voltage Qi through your Energy Body. Details: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/product/fusion-of-the-five-elements-1-2-3-digital-packageemotional-psychic-alchemyaudio-cds-8-extra-vessels-qigong-dvd/

4. May 10 – 28, 2019 +  Mt. Changbai option May 28- June 1.

• China Dream Trip – Beauty of the South, Power of Flower Mountain

•  Give yourself this fantastic spiritual adventure. Still open – Book Soon!

• 

——————————————————————–

June 21-July 24, 2019  — Asheville, N.C.

FIVE Weeks of FABULOUS Summer Retreats

– Book NOW with a small deposit. Pay tuition only.

Book online: https://www.HealingTaoRetreats.com

Week 2: June 28 – July 3, 2019 (Fri-Wed)

2a. Healing Love: Taoist Sexual Secrets Michael Winn & wife Jem Minor

Note: This is a spliced-together transcript taken from introductory talks given at 2001 and 2003 Fusion 1 workshops.   I am always amazed at how the same basic methods can generate such varied yet effective results in different people, due to each of us having a unique 5-element constitution.

Audio courses may differ in their focus as well. The 2005 CD course goes deeper into the causes of ego resistance. If you want to purchase a different version of tany audio course,  it is half price (call the office to order).

Contents of these introductory lectures on Fusion 1:

1. Emotional Body of Westerner & Chinese is Different
2. Five Shen Theory: Taoist Depth Psychology
3. Danger of Emotional Bypass & Spiritual Head Trips
4. Pathless Process: Transforming the Sea of Emotion
5. Dantian: Cauldron for Cooking the Body-Mind
6. Clearing the Confusion over the Fusion Book
7. The Language of Chi: Learning “Whole-Body Speak”
8. Fusion Allows Deeper Inner Smile
9. Fusing the Five Phases to Embody Original Flow of Chi
10. Merging Fusion of Five Phases and Yin-Yang of Orbit
11. Energy Body: Interface between Lesser and Greater Self
12. Five Colored Pearls as Energy Bodies of Five Shen
13. Creating the Perfect Inner Weather
14. Cultivating Our Original Feeling of Self-Love
15. Imagination is the Free Will that Shapes Reality
16. Cultivating the Inner Pearl of Direct Perception
17. Fusion Applied to Energy Healing

Emotional Body of Westerner & Chinese is Different

When I first learned Fusion back in 1980, I learned the microcosmic orbit one weekend andFusion of theFiveElements the next weekend from Mantak Chia. A bit of an overload, butI was not starting off as a beginner. Of courseI spent the next 20 years understanding whatI was learning, integrating it with all the other yogic and meditative systemsI had studied, along with Western depth psychology and other hard sciences.

I also found it necessary to refine and adapt Fusion to Western energy bodies. I define the Energy Body as the sum total of all underlying energetic patterns that shape our body­ mind. Every thought, every dream image, every emotion, every sexual impulse, every physical sensation is powered by subtle energy fields moving in patterns that can be made conscious, experienced, and directed.

Another way of putting this: the autonomic nervous system is only autonomous until we take control of it.

Westerners have different ways of managing their Energy Body than Orientals do, and it’s important to understand those differences. The Chinese have a collective mind-set; that’s why they are concerned about “not losing face” with their peers. Westerners are more individuated, particularly when it comes to emotional expression. We take individual emotional freedom for granted, like an inalienable right, even if it disrupts others; the Chinese feel it is proper to suppress anything that disturbs the collective order.

That’s why I adapted Fusion practice to reflect the emotional nature of Westerners, which is so very different from Orientals. If you don’t make these adjustments the Fusion formulas can become a little bit mechanical or forced, like putting on a mask that doesn’t quite fit your psyche. You can end up mentally moving your chi around to match an ideal pattern of inner harmony, but not get into the core of your actual feeling nature.

Five Shen Theory: Taoist Depth Psychology

Western head trippers can also fool themselves with a lot of chi manipulations in their Energy Body that don’t produce lasting results. Many get a lot of Fusion fireworks in the beginning, only to wonder why it fizzled out after a few years. Observing a high dropout rate amongst Healing Tao practitioners is what inspired me to introduce the Taoist five shen theory into the Fusion process. Five shen theory is the Taoist understanding of the working of ego, or personal self, called “heart-mind” (xin) in Chinese.

Five Shen theory (wujingshen) is an integral part of One Cloud’s School of Inner Gods type of internal alchemy. The Taoist canon (daozang) or “bible” of nearly 1500 texts is filled with references and scriptures about the inner body spirits. The connection between the five shen and the vital organs is a staple of Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM), and dates to the earliest medical texts of the Yellow Emperor Internal Classic in 215 bee.

The Maoists largely suppressed the emphasis on body spirits when they formulated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the l 950’s, as they considered anything spiritual to be unmeasurable, unscientific and thus feudal. Mantak Chia told me he left it out of his teachings because it seemed too complicated. It is in fact very difficult to extract a clear picture of the five shen because the Taoist alchemical texts are so poetically obscure. I also suspect Mantak Chia didn’t have deep enough a grasp of western psychology to make it simple, and perhaps wisely left it alone.

In modern western acupuncture schools, the Worsley Five Elements School in England (with USA branch at Tai Sophia School of Acupuncture in Baltimore) offers the closest parallels in medical theory to the Healing Tao Fusion of the Five Elements practice.

There is little available in English to read on the subject of the five shen. The best is Lonny Jarrett’s Nurturing Destiny, a textbook for Chinese medical practitioners, and the first to acknowledge that neidangong (inner alchemy) is the fundamental basis for Chinese medicine. His text is also required reading for Healing Tao instructor certification, and can usually be ordered from my office.

It took me a decade of research and deep study of the Fusion process to make the five shen dynamic a workable, user-friendly part of the Fusion and Kan & Li meditative practices. This required careful testing in the teaching environment to see what worked for Western practitioners. Ultimately, opening a relationship with the five body spirits makes all the inner alchemy practices more simple, far more powerful, and less likely to be mentally forced chi patterns.

Five Shen theory will, I predict, eventually revitalize Western psychology, and reveal more clearly the energetic foundation of the blossoming body-centered “energy psychology” movement that is attempting to integrate acupuncture and psychotherapy. Five shen theory offers Jungian psychologists a personal interface to archetype theory.

It fills in the huge gaps in Jung’s only partially successful attempt to reconstruct western alchemy as a process of psychic transformation. Grasping the influence and functions of our body spirits builds a bridge between shamans and neuro-scientists. It clarifies how all divination systems work, whether it’s the Chinese I Ching or the Egyptian Tarot.

It opens the doors to understanding that the human soul, like the brain, is binary in nature. That we are divided into yin and yang polar aspects that are often in conflict with each other. The ultimate purpose of inner alchemy is to integrate the warring halves of our soul. When successful, the true self or spiritual immortality is achieved. This topic is covered deeply in the Kan & LI (Water & Fire) Enlightenment courses.

In general, awakening our five body spirits offers Western adepts practicing qigong and meditation a new and deeper level of integration between their biology, their psychology, and their spirituality.

Danger of Emotional Bypass & Spiritual Head Trips

At the time I took my first Fusion workshop in 1980 I was still very intensively involved with kundalini yoga. I had been going through very intensive spiritual transformation.

Being self-employed, I would practice minimum of two hours a day kundalini yoga, and sometimes as much as six or eight ours including meditation time.

I was pretty fanatic about my yoga path. I was really taking these Taoist workshops out of half-idle curiosity. I remember thinking, “I’ll just check out what the Chinese are doing”. I was very happy with all the information and the yogic technology I got from India – I was flying high, my kundalini was cooking, and I was tripping 24/7. I had found the healthy alternative to LSD – the kundalini trip.

I wasn’t planning to ever drop my yogic practices. They were my life time commitment. I was just going to look into this Tao trip to see if there was a little piece I could borrow from it, or find out if there was some minutiae along the path I had missed. Well, what I found out from doing Fusion I is that I was missing a huge piece of my consciousness – namely, all kinds of emotional issues that I had bypassed. And that I was exhausting my kidneys and no grounding.

I was running a strong current of kundalini energy up my spine and out my crown. There was a constant sexual pulsing between my balls and my brain. My third eye was wide open to the cosmos, and I thought I must be pretty Holy. I was waiting for angels to appear and take me the rest of the way, beyond those last few inches above my crown chakra. The Promise of nirvana would become Absolute Enlightenment once I got out of the city to a quiet country retreat or ashram, away from the distraction of city life.

But when I started doing the Microcosmic orbit, I wondered why parts of my spine were numb. Then I got into the Fusion process of working with emotions, and I started running into all kinds of”stuff’. I couldn’t believe that stuff still existed inside my angelic little self. When you do that much kundalini yoga all day long – chant for hours and do breath of fire with your arms above your head for 33 minutes, dozens of different asanas (yogic postures) -you think you are clean.

I later discovered you also can burn up your essence, your jing, with an excess of pranayama. I had noticed I was getting colder in winter, even though my body was constantly on fire. Its because all the fire was leaking out of my head instead of being captured in my inner space/cauldron. I am grateful to Mantak Chia for pointing it out to me early on, in simple terms:”You are heating the room”, he said.

I had been doing this heavy yogic sadhana (practice) for years. I was just absolutely stunned by what Fusion revealed to me. I just can’t tell you the shock I felt to suddenly discover that I had all this anger and other unprocessed stuff. That I had wired myself to completely ignore it in order to focus on other levels of my higher and greater self. When I practiced Fusion, I started getting in touch with my lost emotional self. I realized I had completely abandoned huge parts of myself. What I thought was imminent transcendence was a case of chronic escapism.

It was really sobering. I realized I had no choice but to basically start over again, go back to square one. I resigned from the illusory perch atop my head, closed up my third eye shop, and I signed up for Tao kindergarten. I began working from my lower dantian rather than my third eye. I had huge resistance to the notion that my belly center was somehow spiritual, as previously I viewed it with some distain as the center of lower desire. But being truth driven, I now realized that the lowest place had to become the throne of the highest spiritual development. Anything else would create a dualistic split between body and mind, between sexual and spiritual self.

I had started over on a new spiritual path on several previous occasions. It is a lot of work, I knew. There was only one thing mitigating my disappointment and frustration at having to start over. That was my curiosity over what exciting new discoveries lay hidden within the Taoist alchemical work of One Cloud’s Seven Formulas for Attaining Immortality.

Looking back, I was never disappointed. I think it is because the Tao is a process, not about achieving some fixed ideal state of enlightenment. So it has become a process for me that always stays fresh. I’ve learned to greet the present moment like big arms embracing a new and unknown lover. Who taught me that lesson? An ingenious and elusive Tao Master, who goes by the name Nothing-Else-Works.

Pathless Process: Transforming the Sea of Emotion

Thus began a long process of reclaiming fragments of my missing self, and bringing them into harmony with the process of my greater self and the natural universe. I continued doing my yoga, and assumed I would just do it alongside my new Tao practices.

Eventually my kundalini yoga practice dropped away of its own weight. What was that weight?

The yogic breathing and chanting required what seemed like excessive external effort compared to the organic flow of Taoist inner alchemy. I got a huge benefit from doing the yoga. It totally transformed my life and health. But the discovery of how to silently and more effortlessly navigate my inner space with the Taoist methods inexorably took over. I woke up one day, and realized I had switched from yogic path to the Pathless Path of Tao. It wouldn’t be long before my Taoist guides/Immortals showed up- but that is a story I will save for the Kan & Li retreat.

The Fusion emotional work continues to this day, even though I do it from an entirely different place. I have moved on through One Cloud’s three Kan and Li (Water & Fire) Enlightenment and the three Star, Heaven & Earth and Tao immortality formulas. So why would I still practice Fusion process, which is One Cloud’s first formula?

I find even though I emotionally I’ve gotten very clear (most of the time!) and have done many levels of higher practice, that as a human being new feelings keep arising from the process of living. Whenever negative or stuck emotion gets directed at me or attracted to me for whatever reason, it still needs to be received and processed at the level of the human heart.

Coming into emotional balance is a never-ending process, par t of the matrix of human social life. We are all surrounded by people tossing their emotions out unconsciously, looking for a safe place to dump them. Society is a vessel for the virtual sea of emotional pollution around us. TV, films, magazines, and video games are filled with low level emotional junk or violence, which is one reason I am very selective about allowing them into my heart-mind space. War is the ultimate in emotional numbness, and there is virtual war happening all around us.

Yes, I now have a huge cosmic Fusion support team from doing the higher alchemical formulas. I am wired into higher octaves of the Fusion process – the five sacred directions of the Earth, the five planets, the five stellar quadrants of the zodiac. But all that has to be stepped down into the human level of simple feeling. Fusion gets to be spontaneous response after years of practice.

Because of my Fusion training, I’m able to live much more deeply from my inner heart. I can feel simultaneously at many different levels of my Energy Body, which adds a rich texture and depth to my life. I am much more skilled at balancing and harmonizing the fluctuating sea of chi that we’re all swimming in. But human feelings are unique; planets and stars just don’t have them. At times it seems troublesome, but ultimately am grateful for and I appreciate my ability to feel more clearly at the simple level of exchange between human hearts.

Dantian: Cauldron for Cooking the Body-Mind

The first important step in Fusion of the five elements is to get deeper into your body. What does that mean? It actually means getting into your energy body and its connection to physicality. You can’t really get out of your body unless you die, so you’re stuck here with a body and all the challenges it presents. It is a question of the relationships within your body-mind. Don’t even think for one minute about your body being separate from your mind. That is a common illusion and trap for western cultivators.

What defines all internal body-mind relationships is subtle breath, or chi. What is chi? Chi is the flowing waves of subtle energy that define the relationship between our field of awareness we call spirit (shen) and the particle we call body Uing).

Chi is everything that moves and weaves in between jing and shen, body particle and spirit field. Change the pattern of chi flow, you change the experience of both your body and your spirit. Jing, chi, and shen exist on an alchemical continuum; they transmute endlessly, each into the other. But chi is the middle player in the process, so it the leverage point of change.

I find the ancient Taoist model of human mind is much more sophisticated and less mechanistic than the western dualistic concept of mind vs. body. Is there a meeting point of jing, chi, and shen within our body? They interface at many different energetic levels. But their first stable meeting point is at our body’s center of gravity, also known to ancient Taoists as the “small” (xiao) or lower dantian. Dantian function is really, really important to understanding of the Fusion of five elements. It took me a long time to get out of my head to really experience my belly brain and its spiritual power center.

‘Tian” means the field or the heavenly/formless space where the chi comes to seek completion. Dan means the elixir or pearl that forms in that field. The ancient character for dantian could have meant the place where the chi completes its transformation.

Dantian (aka Tantian) is symbolized by the cauldron, a pot that can hold and cook all the ingredients necessary for our life’s transformation.

It’s very important to understand dantian is not a physical place. It’s an energetic place and when you start going into anything that’s energetic it doesn’t have a fixed point. It’s moving. It’s pulsating. This is basic yin yang theory. The universe is alive. It’s breathing. And so whenever you start to focus in on those energetic qualities you’re going to get into that. That’s why doing lots of Ocean Breathing qigong is important. It effortlessly activates your belly brain.

Clearing the Confusion over the Fusion Book

That’s the big overview. Let me make a few prefatory comments. How many of you have looked at the book “The Fusion of the Five Elements”, or read it? Okay. Just a few of you. There is a book out on this which I edited and I will be giving you a handout from that book. It has the main diagrams and things just as a visual support. I don’t follow the sequence of the formulas in the book. There are nine formulas in that book. Only the first four and a half are actually Fusion I.

So the Fusion book is really mislabeled in a sense. It says basic and advanced Fusion formulas. The advanced formulas in there are actually borrowed from kan and li, they’re not even Fusion 2 and 3. And kan and li is the water and fire practices. The other formulas of internal alchemy practice involve the same principles as Fusion. You’re just doing it at levels of greater collective consciousness. You are fusing at the global level. You’re fusing at planetary, galactic, dimensional levels. You’re doing it with the elements outside you.

Mantak Chia decided to put fragments of the higher kan and Ii formulas in the Fusion l book. He felt that people were having spontaneous experiences beyond the Fusion practice, so we should just teach them up front .I edited them out, as I felt they undercut the progressive training of the ancient Taoists. He put them back in, where they remained despite my strong protest. So I’m constantly reminding people that it’s important not to try and race ahead even though they are just fragments of those formulas in there. The added in formulas basically teach you how to shoot OUT of your body and expand out into the cosmos.

I have found the main problem modern people have is being physically and emotionally IN their body. Practically speaking, this means being in their energy body, and integrating it to their physical body. So there’s no rush in trying to get out of your body. Astral travel is just a sideshow. A lot of people are into astral travel, but the benefits of that are very limited unless you’re deeply centered.

So that’s why you really need to do Fusion 1. That’s the first four formulas in that book and the things taught in this workshop. And not worry about those other things yet. Those will evolve naturally and spontaneously. And when you study them and learn the other formulas, which means really studying the channels and their relationships and how you can manage the energy flow. So I just want to make that clear because the Fusion book will not follow exactly the sequence that I’m teaching.

The first thing I found is most important is for people to get a physical sense of the five phases internally. So you’ve started this already just by doing the healing sounds. You start noticing, what’s the quality of feeling as I release heart energy. Okay, it’s warmer. It’s more fiery. Or I start working the kidneys. Well, that’s kind of tight, up tight and cold and frozen, you know? It’s harder for me to feel.

And then we’re going to start creating collection points. We’re going to start points that hold the energy, the frequency of each element or each phase inside our body. This is really in our energy body. We link them with our physical body so they have a space, physical space for us. And those are different colors and they relate to the different elements and then we’re going to empower those, connect them ….

The Language of Chi (Qi) : Learning “Whole-Body Speak”

Relax, sit down. We’ve warmed up our five inner animals, a nice review ofQigong Fundamentals 1. Ocean Breathing, the Five Animals and Six Healing Sounds use the simple method of breathing in and out to release stuck chi. Now what we need to do is set up a more sophisticated communication system, recalling the general theory that qigong and neidan gong is essentially about learning about how to talk to the life force. Inner alchemy – literally “internal elixir skill” – is just a fancy way of talking about the process of change, how elements of our psyche and nature are constantly transmuting.

There are core patterns of communication we need to know, so all of the skills we are learning in the qigong (chi kung), and neigong practices are essentially about learning the strokes of the alphabet. We learn how to connect those strokes together to form whole words, and how to connect those words to form whole sentences, and this way your being can communicate through the matrix of the life-force, all the way from Source to Creation and back again.

It’s not an ordinary left-brain language we’re learning to speak here; it is a form of “whole-body speak”, where the body is viewed as the vocal organ of the soul, and chi flow is what gets expressed.

The chi ( qi) field is the all-penetrating field of energy, the all-creating and all-knowing field. Not to be confused with any divine entity or nameable God that is trying to control the process of creation – that responsibility belongs to the collective flow of consciousness, to the process itself.

Humans are a crystallization of the life force, we are a point of consciousness in that flowing, pulsating field. Most humans feel cut off from that field, because our vibrational feeling is so slowed down, even though we do not exist separate from the field.

In order to crystallize ourselves into physical form on earth, we had to radically slow our soul vibration down to form a body that would resonate with earth reality. So once that is accomplished, we relate more to the forms of Earth than with the totality of the formless­ form field. Incarnation is thus a kind of spiritual sacrifice; we give up higher soul consciousness in order to learn something new and profound about embodied consciousness. Earth is the playground, the school, but lessons here are transferred to the larger field.

The larger chi field is vibrating so fast it can penetrate into all dimensions like a big giant supercomputer or mind. It has to vibrate fast to calculate all the things needed to run creation and keep the big show in balance. But we humans are running on a tiny five watt light bulb, just enough to see right around us, to run our little show. Its enough juice so we can functions through our tiny sense openings. It allows us to see “that is a pretty mountain over there”, or say “I like the way you look, do you like the color of my shirt?”. We don’t notice the gamma rays and neutrinos sailing through the vast inner space of our body.

Our power of vision, just one power of sensory knowing, doesn’t extend very far because the chi coming through us is slowed down to match the frequency of our body. But our mind does not need to stay at this slow frequency. Part of it does need to stay slow in order to monitor the environment; to feed and clean the body, and take care of it’s needs so its doesn’t stumble and trip. But other parts of our body-mind can be vibrating much faster and perceiving the larger flow of intelligence. It can remember and vibrate with the energies that are shaping our reality. The key point: after you learn to receive the flow of chi, you can learn how to shape it.

Fusion Allows Deeper Inner Smile

This is where learning the alphabet is important. What is the alphabet? The energetic alphabet: first you learned the inner smile. This is like ground zero, the point from which you speak, your inner being. This is connected to your yuan shen, your inner heart, the smile as direct expression of original spirit. View this gentle smiling presence as your neutral inner witness, out of which all the communications flow.

The purpose of Fusion 1 practice is to help make that inner being more present. Because it is connected to the whole life-force, our Original Spirit is a part of us that is totally integrated at the level of pure awareness; it potentially “knows it all”. ln short, it holds our potential for enlightenment. The problem is that the expanded awareness of our enlightenment may be held in other dimensions of our greater (collective) self.

Our shen or spirit has to wait for a long time until conditions are right for its awareness to be downloaded to our personal body-mind. It needs a proper vessel to download into, that can absorb and stabilize that awareness in the physical plane. The Taoists call this vessel our “essence”, orjing. Everyone’s jing on earth is shaped differently.

It means we each have a unique destiny, and are designed to gather and hold different kinds of awareness on earth. Humanity is a single entity, each human soul is one cell seeking to grow. The main resistance to downloading Original Spirit into the essence of our body-mind is emotional. Fusion works on dissolving that emotional resistance.

We can also observe that our Inner Witness/Original Spirit may be all-knowing, but it is not all-powerful. In fact it is suppressed, repressed, and – until we wake up- temporarily banished from functioning in the physical plane. Our Original Spirit is deep inside of us, but it is watching our life unfold from a very distant point of view.

The inner smile, which you can practice 24- 7, is always gently encouraging our core inner presence to manifest. Of course, you need dream practice training to practice smiling at night. But night or day, there is a tension between our Original Spirit and its manipulative and divided ego fragments that Fusion helps resolve.

It’s easy to observe that our inner witness doesn’t have a very deep sense of body; it lacks solidity. That’s why most people don’t trust it. It’s the feeling of we know somebody is watching inside us, we know we have some deeper identity, but it’s not functional for us. It watches us go through all our changes, all our life cycles; choice of soul pattern, birth, child, teenager, adult, life, death, possible rebirth again.

There is an inner “I” that knows there is an outer “me” doing the thinking, feeling, acting, sensing. But we (the acting personality) don’t ordinarily have good communication with the inner self. We usually don’t invest our main identity inward into it. It’s far easier to identify with the outer self and with its body.

We kind of know some deep self or soul is there inside us, but we don’t really allow it to be present in our personality. We perceive our ordinary body-mind as operating according to a different set of needs than the soul. So the inner smile is the most important practice, because it creates a space that is sufficiently neutral (or non-dual, non-polar) for our Original Spirit to shine through the filters of both our soul pattern and our personality.

I describe in my Inner Smile book that holding that neutral inner space – for ourselves

and for others – is the true Inner Smile practice of “unconditional acceptance”. The Fusion 1 practice takes the Inner Smile and gives it a deeper sense of substance. This involves formation of an “inner pearl” as a vessel to hold the vibration of our Original Spirit.

Fusion thus allows us to add “jing” or substance to the most ineffable aspect of us, the original spirit of our inner self.

Fusing the Five Phases to Embody Original Flow of Chi

Second stroke of the alphabet: we start with the six healing sounds or five animals. The healing sounds/five animals allow you to feel a hidden rhythm: it is known as the cycle of the five elements, or five phases. The movement of the one unified field of the life-force

-call it Original Breath or Original Chi – flowing through a rhythm of five-ness is a central key to speaking this subtle energy language.

I want everyone to put their fingers up and count how many fingers they have there. Every one has five, right? It’s the signature of the five phases right here in our body. But what connects the five finger all together? Isn’t there only one hand? If there weren’t the one hand, the five fingers wouldn’t be very functional would they?

The five elements are the same way; there are five phases but they are really one single flow of awareness. Just think of the integration of the five elements as the hand of the life force. A hand with five fingers shapes itself into so many different things. We can connect our “small hand” to the super powered “Cosmic Hand of Creation”. The different combinations of its five fingers c an shape itself into anything, it can create any destiny it chooses.

You find this fivefold pattern at every level of creation, whether it is the galactic, stellar level, planetary level; the earthly seasons of nature, the cycling of the organs in the human body. Even modern physicists are seeking the fifth unifying force that will hold the other four together.

Essentially what all these Taoist alchemical formulas are doing is training us to directly speak this five phase language at different octaves of ourselves. Direction perception is sought, without going through any intermediary deity. At our human level, we first want to know, is how does this energy language impact on our physical human body health.

That is what the he aling sounds, animals, and chi self-massage are about.

In Fusion 1, we are going to work at the level of the emotional body. So we naturally ask, how do these five phases operate? How does the fivefold nature of the life force relate to our psychology, to our emotions and our feelings? Later, when we get into the practical methods, we will draw a distinction between habitual emotions and in-the-moment feelings.

Merging Fusion of Five Phases and Yin-Yang of Orbit

The third stroke of the Energetic Alphabet is the microcosmic orbit. The orbit regulates our basic yin yang polarity. Harmonizing these two forces within our body is part of a larger matrix known as the eight primal forces. In the I Ching, the ancient Book of Changes, they are called the eight trigrams. They are given different names in different time continuums, but it is basically the underlying matrix of time and space on which the five elements unfold. We learn to activate all eight of these deep channels in Fusion 2 & 3.

The five phases are the rhythm and the cycle of things on this yin-yang grid that divides out three times to become eight. The five phases themselves embody the yin-yang principle. For example, the life force radiates out as (yang) fire, but as fire retreats it contracts in (yin fire). Gold (metal) and wood are the transitional stages between fire and water, but each has a yin or yang phase to their rising and sinking movements. The earth is holding the center, yet it expands and contracts our sense of core self as well.

Essentially these are the five movements of the life-force, they each have a different quality they express in their yin and yang mode.

The five phases need a matrix in which those five rhythms operate, and that is the matrix of time and space. That matrix is defined by yin-yang polarity; front and back, left and right, above and below. That is the matrix that defines where we are. Our personal point of consciousness is located at a particular point in this grid of time and space. Castaneda called it “the assemblage point” – his most useful concept.

We are shaped in this matrix as creatures, and everything else is also shaped in this matrix. We’ve got a molecular structure, a psychic structure, a social structure, a soul structure that is built around a moving assemblage point. We have to fit into the energetic grid of some universal structure, otherwise creation can’t keep track of itself, can’t flow in harmony with itself. Creation needs an internal map of itself, of its grid, to talk to itself.

So there are two core universal patterns according to the ancients that define the grid: the five elements/phases, and the yin yang polarity. Yin-yang translates in practice as the eight extraordinary channels, taught in Fusion 2 and 3. This Fusion 1 practice is how to harmonize the fivefold nature/phases within ourselves.

Fusion thus offers us the key to understanding why and how we sabotage ourselves. Have you ever felt that one part of yourself wants to go ahead and do something, and another part can’t/won’t agree to do it? And why is it that one part of us (usually connected to one vital organ) gets sick while another organ still feels healthy?

Energy Body: Interface between Lesser and Greater Self

Tao inner alchemy is the spiritual-scientific process to set up a language of subtle energy communication. You’ve got a physical body. But if you operate only through the physical body senses, your perceptions are too slow, and you can’t communicate easily with higher levels of the life force. But if you start to shift into the great formless ocean of the chi field, it is so amorphous, and vibrating so fast, how can your personality possibly talk to it? How does a drop of water talk to the whole ocean, how does one piece of sand talk to the whole beach?

But if you think about it, we have already mastered this art of bridging the gap between the tiny self and the greater/collective self. How many cells do we have in our body?

Maybe 80 trillion cells. Are they communicating? Yes, we feel it in the rich flow of our consciousness, each cell knows that it belongs to a larger self and serves it accordingly. How do they do it, what bridges the gap between cell and self? Good question! It is entirely an unconscious process. I will give you a clue: the nervous system is not it, way too slow and too limited.

There is an internal system of communication already in place that is mostly unconscious to our personality. The ancient Chinese mapped it through a series of thousands of energy channels. The energy channels themselves are actually just manifestations, printouts of deeper patterns. Fusion 1 takes us to a deeper level of these patterns.

In order to create a conscious interface between the tiny and the vast dimensions of Self, we need an energetic software so the little “I” can communicate to the larger field of the life-force. This is where our the subtle body that governs our feelings – sometimes called the Emotional Body, as one layer of the Energy Body- can be used to make that bridge. Our feelings are capable of making incredibly rapid and powerful shifts in vibrational focus. If we are sufficiently grounded and centered, clear feelings can allow us to communicate with deep aspects of our greater self.

Annihilating or dissolving the self or little “I” in meditation can produce a temporary mystical experience of unity. But most people will return to the body-focused state of our little “I” again, drawn back to our body’s center of gravity. Everyone has the innate capacity to have the mystical experience of a vast, oceanic self. But we still need the functional interface, the “Fusion software” that allows us enough stability to live in an inner state of unity while simultaneously responding to demands from the polarized outer world.

This intermediary pattern of communication between our spiritual self and our physical self is called the Energy Body or Chi Body. This energy body holds different subtle language patterns in order to speak with the infinite variety of its self-expression. You could say the Energy Body is the definable and functional pattern of your body-mind. It is the feeling layer of the Energy Body that most concerns us in Fusion. It helps us to have authentic, in-the-moment feelings that are not just broken-record replays of past traumas and old identities.

Five Colored Pearls as Energy Bodies of Five Shen

In Fusion I, we create a special software to communicate with the five phase flow of our feelings. To talk to that rhythm of the life-force, we create five pearls inside our Energy Body. You could say these are five “chi balls”, or five energetic “spheres” of influence. Manfred Porkert, the great scholar of Chinese medicine, translates the vital organ shen as the “five orbs”. The five shen control our feelings, as part of their biological and psychological processes.

The five colored pearls used in this Energy Body are not solid. If you cut your body open, you would not find them. You have to grow them, it is a free will choice, a way of giving more substance to the five shen. Some eastern schools (as well as scientific western materialists) might call these pearls an illusion of the mind. But then you have to consider all the contents of your mind illusory, and the word “illusory” itself becomes meaningless and illusory.

I am saying this five phase pattern of feeling exists inside me, it has a real function or real influence in my life. I am giving the pattern form through my Fusion practice. That is the power of my free will to shape myself. The experience is subjectively real to me, and nobody’s scientific experiment or different metaphysical belief can take that experience away from me.

The five phases of chi flows through the organs, it continuously moves through them in repeating cycles. Our goal is to communicate with the five shen and manage changes in their cycles. So we need to set up five energy spheres to act as the clearing house for all our body-mind communications, in this case especially our feelings. For the Heart element, we set up a red sphere, for the water element we set up a blue one, for the metal/gold element, we set up a white pearl. Each vital organ spirit needs its own energy body/pearl, to absorb and concentrate the life force from the environment.

Each pearl is based on color vibration; the wood element is a green sphere, for spring, and the earth element is yellow. This is already the information you have from learning the healing sounds and five animals; it’s the same set of resonant vibrational patterns. We are just learning a deeper level of the same software. We’re moving from beginner Healing Sounds/Five Animals to intermediate with Fusion. Kan and Li gets into more advanced, more subtle levels of our core vibration.

We are cleaning out the cobwebs with the healing sounds, moving out stagnant chi. We’re starting a new kind of communication with the five shen/body spirits. We begin by acknowledging that each one of these five aspects of ourselves has a sound, breath, and feeling pathway. Each has its own will (intention) and direction of movement. When all five of the shen cooperate, a new reality is generated. In Fusion 1 we seek to stabilize this new process, and make it more of a two-way communication between inner and outer chi fields. Not just releasing energy stuck inside our body, but absorbing back into our body fresh clean chi/energy from nature.

But I ‘ve found in teaching Fusion, for most people this Energy Body with five colored pearls is initially a bit abstract to feel right away. So what we need, in order to set up a very grounded communication system, is to first ask: what is the physical level of fire in our body? What is the physical level of water? Because normally our awareness is operating closer to the physical, and we are thinking, that’s hot and that’s cold. Hot things are like fire, cold things like water.

Creating the Perfect Inner Weather

We are going to learn a new communication pattern, a meditation called “Creating the Perfect Inner Weather”. We are going to create an internal natural environment inside of us that has all five of these elemental qualities. Trying to balance them internally is going to tell us right away what the internal landscape of our psychic weather is really like.

We’ll find out if at the constitutional level our body has stored more heat, or more cold, more wind, moisture, or more dry elements that we didn’t even knew existed. These excesses or deficiencies already exist inside our body-mind; the meditation brings their power to life. We’ll find out how well we can communicate with our five body spirits to inspire them to co-create a completely balanced internal environment.

We will ask these elements to blend together to form what we call the “perfect inner weather”. Perfect, of course, is different for everyone, depending on our elemental constitution. We begin at a psycho-biological level of our inner reality or weather. Later in the Fusion process we will examine the spiritual levels of that reality and the expression of our five innate virtues or spiritual powers.

A lot of times we suffer through lousy external emotional weather. Perhaps someone has cast an unfair judgment on us, and we feel internally for a long time like that negative thought is still raining on our parade. Or it’s the general bad emotional weather of the people around you – they are grumpy, angry, morose, depressed, and it feels like its being dumped on you in some way. Or we keep reading or seeing on TV how bad and violent things are happening in the world, and you absorb that and it puts a damper on your feelings about your life.

These external weather factors usually are what determine peoples’ inner emotional weather. Whatever “bad” is going on in the outer weather, they take it in and think to themselves, this is a bad day. The Taoists point of view is that there is a microcosm and there is a macrocosm; they constitute our inner world and our outer world.

If you create a powerful inner world, and manage your energy well at the microcosmic level, that positive shape will hold its integrity even if the outer world is shaped differently. In short, you can feel good internally even if bad things are happening all around you. This is not living in a state of denial. Its living from your inner spiritual truth.

The surface appearance of things is very misleading – things can look bad on the outside and they can be good on the inside, or they can look good on the outside, but they can be rotten on the inside. To know which is real, you have to go deep inside things. You could meet someone and they could look physically very attractive and sexy, but inside they may be a wreck psychically, emotionally, and spiritually. But you don’t find out until the morning after, when you discover there was a heavy price tag for having sex. That’s when you realize you have volunteered to fix up the emotional wreck hidden inside the nice looking body.

Cultivating Our Original Feeling of Self-love

What is the real point of this meditation? By creating this perfect inner weather, it trains us to start managing the flow of our inner five elements/phases. It eventually allows us to capture the fleeting flow of sensations of subtle chi and feelings and concentrate them into five pearls, so they can be fused into one single feeling, concentrated in your lower dantian/center of gravity.

This Fusion process creates a state of mind that the Taoists call clarity. This neutral state of “clear feeling” is the feeling that arises out of stillness, from your Original Spirit. I call this feeling state of natural calmness “Original Feeling”. It is essentially the feeling ability of your soul, unfiltered by your personality with its elemental imbalances and struggles. When we can fuse the five Yin organ spirits into a single “soul pearl”, we are able to love ourselves from this neutral higher spiritual dimension of ourselves.

When you get in touch with your Original Feeling, all the secondary layers of reactive personality-centered feeling stop controlling you. It allows you to let go of these old emotions that keep recycling inside you. But we don’t throw away the old, stuck, “bad” emotions. That would be a waste of good chi. In stead, we recycle them. Fusion I teaches you to capture all the negative reactive feelings and re-shape their chi into useful creative energy and in-the-moment feelings that enrich your life. All negative essences are gradually transformed and alchemically re-concentrated into our inner pearl.

In Fusion 2 & 3 and later in the Kan & Li formulas, we learn to gradually shift our power of neutral feeling and use it to open up ever expanding layers of feeling, perception, and subtle energy. But you have to begin simple. ln the inner weather meditation we will connect our heart/ fire element to the sun, and connect our water element to an inner pool/kidneys. We are going to create of natural appearing scene inside ourselves, and then we are going to enter inside that reality.

Imagination is the Free Will that Shapes Reality

Some might say this Fusion meditation on Perfect Inner Weather is “just” an exercise in imagination. And yes, this is true. But your imagination is actually what manages the life force. So to say something is “just your imagination”, is like saying it’s “just the control panel to your reality”. Fine, you can call it whatever you want. You can hold negative judgments about imagination. Or you can project all your power of imagination onto a creator God or Buddha or a team of deities. Or project it into a material modern scientific hypothesis about how the brain works.

But whatever you believe is holding the power of imagination or creation, that belief is itself an act of imagination, one that you use to shape your reality. There is some power of imagination that is exercising its free will and shaping reality. It is irrelevant where you locate its origins in your belief system. What’s important is that humans, being a microcosm of the whole, have that spark of imaginative free will hidden within themselves. The power of imagination flows through us and is available to us.

But the power of human imagination must be cultivated and activated to be fully realized. Religious or scientific imagination is one way to activate it. I propose that the inner alchemical act of imagination is the most direct act of transformation, and gives us a very pure experience of truth. Alchemy, in tapping natural forces, has fewer mediating cultural symbols, thus allowing for the direct perception of self and Nature.

Direct perception is another way to describe authentic or truthful unfolding of one’s essence. When we really get clear, our personal essence makes direct contact with the essence of everything we encounter. Fusion meditation helps us feel the inner truth of things and people in our life, instead of chasing after their misleading surface.

Imagination is how we shape our emotions, thoughts and our body. Whether we use imagination to feel good or to feel bad is irrelevant. Usually the imaginative function is unconscious. We are imagining our reality all the time, we just don’t identify it as such. How can we label something we are unconscious of? We are constantly re-shaping our perceptions, in response to people or to events. Re-shaping ourself is the same thing as re­ imagining ourself. There has to be an “agent” with some level of free will that is doing the imagining.

You have to ask yourself, who is creating my body in this moment? Is it a creative force inside my body-mind, or a force outside of me? The Taoists would say that we, the “form/body”, are appearing from the formless chi field hidden inside us. That this yin­ yang or dual soul nature together form our reality. They would agree with the alchemical maxim: “As above, so below; as within, so without”. Our human body-mind is thus a

reflection of the Tao. The Tao imagines a cosmos governed by principles of yin-yang and five phases. And this cosmos is populated by humans who imitate the Tao.

Cultivating the Inner Pearl of Direct Perception

By consciously claiming these deep levels of our imagination, and dealing with all the core cycles that control/imagine our psyche, we start to bring them into consciousness and a new level of clarity. What is the unconscious cycle here? It is defined by the yin-yang or positive-negative emotional patterns of our five shen, our vital organ “body gods”. When you practice Fusion of the Five Elements, you begin to engage this level of yourself and bring it into a more pure level of consciousness that is not so easily manipulated by the various polar forces in our lives.

If we are successful with the Fusion process, the unconscious forces buried deep within our psyche are no longer controlling us. Instead, they become responsive to our imagination, to our free will. So this gets into free will issues; who is doing the imagining, is it god imagining my reality? Is it society, is it president Bush and the cabinet imagining my reality, is it my family, my parents imagining my reality, or am I going to do it? Take your pick.

The alchemical goal is jjjto cultivate a state of direct perception, unmediated by all these “outside” religious, political, or familial authority figures. Direct means the authority you accept is the Life Force itself, and its governing principles of Balance (yin-yang) and Harmony (five phases).

Some people will say let god do all the imagining, and then I won’t have any responsibility. If my life comes out bad, God can take all the blame. Now you’ve just disconnected yourself from your true free will. A lot of people say, I want to have control over my life. But they feel isolated, and exhausted by the struggle of “poor little me” against the Big Everything Else.

The point is that the “little you” is connected to the big field of the life force. You could call the big field the god force, the Tao or whatever your religious or spiritual belief system calls it, it doesn’t matter, its just words. If you have a communication system in place it allows you to tap into the Big Field to imagine something. Then that power flows through your imagination and becomes even more powerful the more you use it. It requires trusting yourself, and allowing your intention to actually create and shape your reality. It requires accepting your free will.

Create is actually not the right word. It is a new age platitude to say “you create your own reality”. But the “little you” doesn’t actually create anything. The life force is creating everything, and you are just moving it around, shaping it. We take this piece and move it over here, like they are building blocks or psychic furniture. Fusion 1 is focused on moving around the emotional blockages so you become more free to shape a new reality .

So shaping reality is really what we are learning in the Fusion process, how your imagination shapes the life force and fuses it into a new and more powerfully focused level of consciousness. It shapes it into an inner pearl through the language of the five phases, and it also shapes it through playing with many different yin-yang polarities.

The yin-yang and five phases are two simultaneous cycles going on. They are, in the Taoist viewpoint, the natural expression of your innate virtues or spiritual powers. We are going to take just one, the five phases and work with that in this meditation on Creating the Perfect Inner Weather.

All right, enough talk. Its time to road test our connection to the five phases/five shen using the meditation on Creating the Perfect Inner Weather. Please get centered. Sit on your chair as if it were a meditation throne at the center of the universe. Open your heart to stepping into the Supreme Mystery of the unknown, the uncreated. Invite in any spiritual guides or helpers who are able and willing to assist the unfolding of your imagination and your free will within this body….

Fusion Process Applied to Energy Healing

Many people have developed sensitivity to energy but they don’t necessarily have a center of gravity and good grounding for their energy body. That is the main cause of healer burnout. Even if you are not doing energy healing, you can become very sensitive to energy and find yourself completely lost in a sea of energy. When you really surrender to it, it can be overwhelming. You need a compass and navigational system. There are many such systems, but I’ve found Fusion offers the most practical understanding.

Part of the problem is that one of your vital organ spirits might become very open to sensing chi flow in others. You can confuse that new faculty, thinking it represents your entire energy body. You need to keep that hyper-sensitive aspect in balance. I’ve worked on healers who lost the ability to keep boundary between themselves and their clients.

Or sudden new input can be very un-balancing for you and even scare you, and you could back off from it. Sometimes people open up certain energetic capacities, but they don’t understand how to use the chi flow or express it appropriately. This is where I have found the Daoist teachings to be extremely practical and grounded.

Many people are interested in healing today. The purpose of the Fusion of the five elements is not specifically oriented toward healing other people. It is oriented toward understanding and managing your own energy flow. But by acquiring that skill and understanding of the experience of the five phases within your own body-mind, you will develop greater sensitivity in doing energy work of any kind. The dysfunctional patterns in others become easy to spot.

In this way Fusion practice will increase your power as a healer because you’re going to understand your chi better and manage your flow with others. You’ll know more clearly what’s arising within your energy field and what is arising from other people. That is critical if you are in the healing business; it can mean the difference between healer burnout and a healer growing more powerful with each treatment.

In a sense we’re all healers because we’re all dealing with the trauma of being in a body and dealing with the negativity that exists here in the physical plane. So whether or not you call yourself a healer, if you’re in a relationship to anybody — children, family, spouse, co-workers, there’s always healing that’s going on and there’s often wounding that’s going on.

Fusion gives us a way of understanding our relationships energetically. The applications of these Taoist inner alchemy techniques are infinite, because life is infinite. Whether you do them alone for yourself or whether you are applying it into your family and business life, or working as an energy healer, understanding these yin-yang and five phase principles can make a huge difference in speeding up your transformation time.

Fusion 1 is one of the most key, most crucial practices to learn. It’s really a treasure that captures the essence of Chinese medicine, psychology, and inner alchemy development­ all at the same time! Like all alchemical practices, the Fusion techniques initiate what eventually becomes a spontaneous process. It’s not like we’re going to master Fusion 1 this weekend or even before we begin learning Fusion 2 or 3. Over time you gain more skill, and the longer you study both the yin and the yang Fusion practices you begin to see how they begin to effortlessly influence your daily life.

The Chinese had an absolute genius and clarity of insight on how to be functional in the physical world in a practical way at the same time that you’re expanding your spiritual awareness. That you can move in both directions at once, inner and outer, yet end up feeling more integrated. This is what Taoists call cultivating life (ming) and cultivating essence (xing).

This is the trademark ofDaoist internal practice. We cultivate both our inner and outer life at the same time. Our complex outer life, the challenge of finding our destiny in the physical world, often stands in sharp contrast to our simple inner presence. Fusion blends our passion for social life with our need for quiet harmony within.

In 1980 I was on a spiritual track to get out of my body, out my crown and into some absolute level of universal being. I was unconsciously creating a split from my body that I think happens to many Western people in their spiritual path. There are varying levels of awareness of this and how to deal with it. Fusion is one of the most crucial tools I have found.

Alchemical transformation is ultimately about centering. It’s how to be centered at progressively dee per levels. Centered in your physical body, centered in your feeling body, centered in all the other layers ofyour energy body up to your soul and the collective spiritual body ofhumanity. So Fusion offive elements means bringing the five phases to the center and understanding their relationship to the center. So ultimately it’s just that simple – in the flux oflife, am I centered? Am I the moving point ofbalance?

How do I stay in that point and understand where that point is, even as everything around me cycles through their yin-yang and five phase changes.

The healing sounds and the five animals are about releasing. They’re about clearing out and moving each one ofthose elements. Fusion ofthe five ele ments uses the same modality but instead ofreleasing it, it dissolves it inward . It reverses the direction ofchi flow. And this is what allows you to form the pearl to form a center ofconsciousness for your energy body.

Talk does not cook the rice. Let’s get into the internal practice.

TESTk

Spiritual Tai Chi is designed to help you cross the bridge between the personal and the cosmic. Read the 50 page introduction (45 illustrations)to my forthcoming book Primordial Tai Chi: The Way of Enlightened Self-Love. https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/articles/primordial-tai-chi-book-one-introduction/ —————————————————————— ALERT – Major Technology Upgrade! You can now DOWNLOAD my DVDs and Audio courses. Download DVDs: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/downloadable-dvds/ Download AUDIO: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/downloadable-audio/ Access these links under PRODUCT MENU on my homepage.”Package downloads”(DVD+Audio) coming soon. ——————————————————————— Michael Winn Tao Events – Fall 2018 Register for paid events: info.healingtaousa@earthlink.net Or call Mystical Number 888-999-0555 (in USA only) or (864) 419-4502 to speak with Zachary Fant, new office manager. 1. Nov. 17 – 18, 2018 in Asheville, N.C. Primordial Tai Chi for Enlightened Self-Love Doubles as Certification Training (Certificate issued if you have practiced extensively from DVD prior). Includes Feldenkrais super-learning. Location: Asheville Training Center, 261 Ashland Ave. (2 blocks south of downtown) Price: $185. weekend. $125. review. 2. Dec. 8 – 9, 2018 Medical & Spiritual Qigong Fundamentals 3 & 4  Co-taught with Jem Minor (my wife)  3 types of Taoist Internal Qi Breathing, Bone Breathing and Rooting Prevent chronic disease, Blissful Breathing Qigong for quick energy; heal Ancestral issues. • FREE EVENT Sat. Dec. 22,  2018. Winter Solstice Black Dragon Ceremony & Crystal Bowl Concert To RVSP, hit reply. ——————- Details on Fall 2018 & Spring  2019 Events, full descriptions, costs, location, travel info, certification: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/workshops/current-teaching-schedule/ —————– 3. NOW BOOKING – An Amazing Spiritual Adventure: China Dream Trip: May 10 – 28, 2019   Beauty of the South, Power of Flower Mountain https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/china-trip/current-dream-trip/                                                      Fabulous photos – take a virtual tour of China!              SUBSCRIBE TO NEW BLOG   Click here to SUBSCRIBE to my new blog,  Loving the Tao of Now. https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/tao-of-now-blog/ This page has sample of first short blog post. Can unsubscribe separate from newsletter. The next blog post will be sent shortly. Technical glitch slowed the start. ——————————————— Please HIT REPLY – I love hearing from you! Dear Lovers of Tai Chi, Tai Chi (taiji in pinyin) is a phrase taken from Taoist cosmology. It means “Great Ultimate Pole”, used to describe the cosmic spiral of Yin Qi and Yang Qi around the neutral central axis of Heaven-Earth. Think of it as a cosmic “barbershop pole” – as it turns, Qi flows in spirals from Origin, radiating outwards in pulsing Yin-Yang waves to become what we call Nature (patterns of manifest Qi). When you add the word “chuan/quan” to make Tai Chi Chuan, it means the manifesting Qi is in the form of a fist, implying martial skill in applying internal Qi to an external situation/opponent. The HISTORY of Tai Chi Chuan is very controversial. In discussions between different lineages, you have to treat it gingerly, as if discussing someone’s personal religion. Best to respect others beliefs while not surrendering your own. It brings up the old Tai Chi joke: How many tai chi players does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: 100. One player to change the bulb, and 99 players to tell you how their school does it better. We’re talking about some highly competitive folks. But one thing is clear: what we now call “Qigong” and “Tai Chi” originated from “yangsheng” (Nurturing Life) or “Dao Yin” (stretching & breathing exercises) in ancient times. These non-martial forms of medical and spiritual cultivation historically were the Mother of all modern Tai Chi schools and styles. The ancient principles (yin-yang, five phase, 8 trigrams) evolved in medieval and modern times into longer Tai Chi forms with sophisticated applications of self-defense. But many martial tai chi players feel they are simultaneously evolving spiritually at the same time by employing these ancient principles. Perhaps the most CONTROVERSIAL CHARACTER is Chang  (or Zhang) San Feng, a 13th century master famed for internal alchemy who lived for a while on Mt. Wudang. There are multiple claims in multiple centuries that he appeared for over 400 years after his death. (There are scholars who will claim Chang never existed, just as scholars claim Lao Tzu never existed, but I’m not going to debate them here). He is credited with creating two styles, one a 13 movement martial form that Taoist monks could use for self-defense without killing the many bandits that threatened local folks. The other was a softer-looking tai chi form for spiritual development, today known both as Primordial Qigong or Primordial Tai Chi. It also had 13 movements: a 12-movement Earth Cycle and a 13th Heaven Cycle, a single movment repeatd 50 times. It’s Chinese name is Wu Ji Gong.The first time I saw it performed, I was frankly appalled. I called it “tofu tai chi”, and ridiculed it as TOO SOFT to have any internal power. I said to myself,”I will never practice that form.” What is instructional is to understand the difference between Chang San Feng’s martial and his spiritual tai chi form, and the extent this applies to modern martial forms. Let me be clear as to my own bias: I have none. I practice a martial long Northern Wu taijiquan style daily, and I practice the Primordial Tai Chi form daily. I love them both. There are many mysterious changes unleashed by practice of tai chi. Here is one the best explanation as to why people are so passionate about their tai chi form: If Love were a writing style, it would be Poetry. Taiji is love, and poetry, recited by your body, until it is memorized by your unconscious actions.  — David Dorian Ross The idea that all forms of Tai Chi LIBERATES DEEP SUB-CONSCIOUS BLOCKS is very powerful, perhaps the core allure of all sacred movement. Martial and spiritual styles are both poetry, but they produce very different poems, i.e. Qi effects. We could also describe each as different kinds of love. This raises many intriguing “why” questions. We don’t really need to know why, but we are humans, and so we ask. I simply align my intent according to which style I’m practicing. My felt experience is my answer to all questions, asked and unasked. I asked my Primordial Tai Chi teacher Zhu Hui in 1999: “What’s the main difference between Primordial Tai Chi, and martial styles of taijiquan?” Zhu, 84 years old at the time, still looking spry and young, was an accomplished martial artist who toured China in his youth to display his fighting prowess. He was Junior Tai Chi Sword Champion in China in his youth. His answer floored me: “Wu Ji Gong looks similar to taiji quan on the outside. But inside, they are energetically the opposite…Think of Primordial Tai Chi as Anti-taiji. In it the Qi flows inward. In martial taiji the Qi flows outward.” His answer reminded me of a famous Tai Chi theorIst using the I Ching symbols to describe the forward flow and reverse flow of Qi:: The ultimate method of cultivation is called ‘The way of inverse movement’. This method turns Qian (Heaven-Creative) and Kun (Earth-Receptive), revolving the Qi in reverse until the post-heaven Qi functions return to the pre-heaven state….This Qi is called Tai Ji.” – Sun Lutang, A Study of Taijiquan. Ch. 1, “A Study of Wu Ji”. The problem is that most martial arts forms in my experience are NOT taking practitioners into the pre-natal heaven reversed spinning Pole of  Tai Ji as the entry gate into the realm of wuji, the Un-knowable Origin. Instead, tai chi players are busy with the complex choreography and exploring its practical (worldly) applications. I never heard a martial artist claim “I returned to Origin!” from doing a fighting form. I will list some of the main differences in the two kinds of tai chi, taken from a chapter in Bamboo Scroll #4 of my five part eBook series I will begin to publish next year as Primordial Tai Chi: Way of Enlightened Self-Love. I use the ritual alchemy aspects of this spiritual tai chi form as a spring board and shortcut to kickstart meditative internal alchemy. The subtitle of the book series is: Tao Inner Alchemy Science of Transmuting Heart/Mind <­–> Soul <–> Pure Love Qi Here are a few of the points in this chapter (too many to include them all): 1. Anti-Tai Chi moves Qi towards core of the body. Martial tai chi styles are mostly used to cause internal Qi (in core of their body, or earth Qi rising up through their body) to move outward into the tai chi player’s auric field, where it can be used to deflect or otherwise shape the Qi of their opponent. Spiritual tai chi does the opposite: it gathers Qi from the external Qi field into the core of the body, where it is concentrated into a “pearl” or Qi ball. This is impossible to see from the outside, which is why I initially was fooled by what appeared to be a lack of  power in the Primordial Tai Chi form. Zhu: “Primordial taiji moves Qi from outside the body to inside the body. Almost every one of the Wu Ji Gong movements gathers the Qi from outside to flow inside the body. Martial taiji is the opposite. It directs Qi from inside the body to move outside, for purpose of self-defense or deflecting an opponent’s Qi”. This is not to put down the value of improving the flow of Post-natal Qi. During my martial style practice, I feel post-natal earth Qi get pumped through my body, and radiate out into my aura and the space all around me. I get totally present to my IMMEDIATE space, the space of manifestation. My dantian is pulsing like a pussycat when I’m done. My 12 ordinary meridians are full. I love it. 2. Primordial Cultivates Pre-natal Qi (left side) vs. Post-natal Qi (right side). Zhu: “The Qi in the right core channel of our body is post-natal or manifest Qi. The left core channel carries pre-natal or unmanifest Qi. These are also known in Taoist cosmology as post-birth energy of Later Heaven (on right), and pre-birth energy of Early Heaven (on left). The Qi in al taijiquan is flowing towards the manifest side. This cultivates our acquired Qi, the energy we gather after we are born. Its applications are designed to be martial. So its medical and spiritual benefits are less significant than in the Wu Ji form.” The Wuji gong form always leads from the right side to the left, moving Qi from manifest state into un-manifest. The entire form spirals to the left. This is one of many ways it helps us cultivate a feeling of Return to Origin. This counter-clockwise movement is also said to reverse the flow of linear time. This gradually spirals the adept into a more formless space, some might call it mystical. Afterwards, you easily forget your name, who you are, where you are. It’s blissful. This doesn’t mean that people don’t have cosmic experiences doing martial styles of Tai Chi. You can have a cosmic experience doing anything – brushing your teeth. It’s just that styles designed for fighting are not targeting cosmic experience, they are targeting self-defense. Anything else is accidental or secondary benefit. In spiritual tai chi, it’s the primary benefit. 3. Round vs. Angular Movements. Zhu: “Most of the Wu Ji Gong movements are round, like the movements of a snake, and the shape of the form follows the roundness of a turtle shell. Martial Tai Chi has many more angular movements, strikes, kicks, etc. Its overall form tends to be more square or rectangular”. I do a martial Wu style regularly, and love it because the “angular movements” works my body and joints in different ways.  I allow the experience to be one of my Qi flowing as deeply as possible. But martial tai chi simply isn’t designed to communicate with the spirits of heaven. It’s an earth-centered science and art. When I want the “roundness” of heavenly Qi flow, and its causal power, I do Primordial Tai Chi. 4. No Imaginary Opponent in Primordial Tai Chi. When I do martial forms,I imagine a shadow opponent invisibly sparring with me, who absorbs my kicks and is deflected by my Qi. Martial taijiquan (and support practices like Push-Hands) is designed to create and play with energetic boundaries for the purpose of self-defense and developing one’s root. Physical rooting is different from “spiritual rooting”.  Primordial Tai Chi offers fantastic spiritual grounding, and its hundreds of weight shifts support physical rooting as well. One never imagines in Primordial Tai Chi there is an opponent trying to penetrate your wei Qi (defensive energy field). There is not a single movement designed for fighting or self-defense.  It takes a cosmic, more inclusive, less combative approach to self-cultivation.  If you expand your Energy Body to include the entirety of the cosmos, there is no opponent. All “opposing” Yin-Yang polarities are gathered within you. It is a more powerful way to communicate with the universe. The ritual partner here is not an opponent, but rather is the whole Cosmic Being or Nature (choose the language that suits you). The “opposing challenge” is how to internalize its cosmic vastness, to embrace its innate wholeness within one’s body and life. How do we put to use ritual movements to shape one’s personal destiny and “de” integrity that has been given to us by the Tao so we can live and contribute our part to the greater whole? There is nothing to defend or fight against when I’m doing Wu Ji Gong. I dissolve all boundary, standing in the center of an open circle that extends out to infinity. I open different centers in my body to receive the flow of Pre-Natal Qi from Heaven’s sphere in the shape of a Torus (donut) flow. The strategy in Primordial Tai Chi is to condense the vast cosmos down into a Pearl within our dantian. To do that, you ritually dance the patterns of Time and Space – the 12 Earthly Branches, the 10 Heavenly Stems (both from Chinese calendar), gather the Qi from the cardinal directions and the 8 Trigram forces. All the major patterns of Taoist cosmology, rolled into one ball of Qi, a.k.a. the Elixir. 5. Primordial Tai Chi Supports a Loving Intent. Wu Ji Gong, or Primoridal Tai Chi, is a way to link our heart and the heart of the Cosmos. I tried doing my martial Northern Wu style taijiquan holding the intent of expressing Pure Love radiating from Origin. The martial design of the form resisted this quality of Love Qi from flowing easily. How do you love an imaginary opponent while you are blocking, kicking, and striking him/her? Using martial tai chi to create defensive boundaries can be said to be compassionate, in a kind of tough love way: “I’m kicking you because you deserve and need it.” Instead of going into rage that someone has violated my space and killing them, I’m neutrally and calmly deflecting them, setting them on a different path that doesn’t interfere with my own. But this feels like a kind of conditional love between two personalities; it’s not Pure Love that I easily invoke while doing Primordial Tai Chi. There are tai chi players who ignore the martial design of the form and focus their imagination on poetic images. But are they dissociating their mind from what their body is actually doing? I reframe my martial form practice as “loving my body” and dissolving internal boundaries between my body and mind (even as I’m creating boundary with my imaginary opponent). It feels loving to open up my body, work all my joints, test my balance during kicks, and track my ability to stay present as eyes, limbs, breath, and torso turn, expand, defend, listen, adhere, all as one smooth process. Tai Chi for Enlightened Self-Love is designed to bring Pure (divine) Love from source into our stressed and contracted human body. It gathers Qi inward from the four directions and heaven and earth in graceful spirals. It is designed to embrace all Beings, all energies from all dimensions, all situations, even the dark forces attacking us. The ceremony, by being all-inclusive, brings our shadow dark side into balance with our conscious  light side. It feeds our soul by grounding the Original Breath of the cosmos into our body with its ordinary post-natal breath.. I do Wu Ji Gong/ Tai Chi for Enlightened Self-Love by gathering Qi inside me for a specific intent, that I set at the beginning of the ceremony. I know and trust the design of the sacred movement dance will support any intnet I choose. I may do the ceremony with my wife or friends or students to create greater harmony, love, and balance with the cosmos. I invoke all my spirit Teachers, including the Tao Immortals, and ask for their support in manifesting my intent. 6. Primordial Tai Chi is perfect movement partner with Internal Alchemy. Wu Ji Gong strengthens my ability to focus Qi. I internally practice various levels of One Cloud’s alchemical meditation practices while I do the form. Each level of “Kan & Li “ or water & fire alchemy produces a unique effect in synergy with the form. The form and its lineage immortals are alive and co-creating with me every time I do the ceremony. This is a deep topic hard to describe to those not initiated to inner alchemy. The story that is more easily grasped is that the form allows the adept to “absorb and transform” the local Qi field of the space where the ceremony is performed. I’ve done it in the Forbidden City at the spot the Emperor read his declarations to the thousands in the square below – and felt I was guided to resolve issues in the collective political psyche of China. I did it in Tiger Leaping gorge of the headwaters of the Yangtse River. I absorbed so much water Qi that I felt heavy and could hardly walk away afterwards. 7. Wu Ji Gong Stationary Pole vs. Martial Moving Pole. Taiji pole between Heaven & Earth has three forces held in equilibrium: still force (yuan qi) in the center, and yin and yang Qi rotating around it. In Wu Ji Gong, the adept stands in one spot and never leaves it, even as one spirals. The adept’s body BECOMES a stationary-yet-spiralling-taiji pole. The continuous spinning pole concentrates the Yin-Yang Qi from the external Qi field into a still point along the axis between heaven and earth. The arms reach out from the adept’s permanently rooted position in the center, and gather in the Qi of the Six Directions, or playfully spin the Qi ball or Pearl through the 12-branch and 10-stem cycles of the Chinese calendar. Even in the midst of all these arm movements, the core channel of the Wu Ji adept never loses its commanding position. The central axis is held steady, as s/he turns eight times around that axis as they “dance the labyrinth” of the eight trigram cycles of the I Ching mandala. Primordial Tai Chi can be called a form of “jailhouse tai chi” because it can be done in the space of tiny jail cell. In fact, I myself have done it in a tiny Japanese “businessman hotel” in Tokyo, because the form only need four square feet. By contrast, martial taiji forms generally have a “runway” that moves back and forth along a line that is about ten feet long. This means the central pole of the martial tai chi player’s core channel constantly changes position in space. It’s a choreographed “dance-fight”. The martial player’s feet necessarily advances and retreats, moves left and right, as one’s “fist” deflects or manages the Qi of one’s imaginary opponent in many directions. This moving center is the very virtue of martial tai chi that I love most. It trains us to stay centered as we move through life’s struggles and its battles and victories. It’s about life as a moveable battle and/or feast. That is why it looks dramatic and is enjoyable to watch at a public demonstration – there is visible action in its display of what is popularly known as “shadow boxing”. The movements are stimulating, thus makes for good theatre. By contrast, when I do Primordial Tai Chi in public spaces, it has a pacifying, relaxing, mesmerizing effect. I often do the form in airports before boarding a long flight, to harmonize my Energy Body as it travels through changing time zones and vertical shifts. It puts the people around me into a kind of a peaceful trance. 33 Primordial Tai Chi adepts atop the Great Wall on 2016 China Dream Trip. We’re about to begin the form, but first are attuning to the Dragon ley line flowing within the Great Wall. This form has the power to capture Dragon Qi internally. In summary, Primordial Tai Chi is an especially powerful kind of sacred movement. I call it a “cosmological qigong” form. It cultivates a more multi-dimensional Qi than martial or medical forms. That is built into its design. Even if you are a total beginner and are completely oblivious to what you are invoking, the form works its magic. Read the amazing testimonials below, some from accomplished martial artists. ————– When I praise Primordial Tai as a shortcut to higher Qi states, it upsets some diehard martial artists in online forums. They accuse me of selling Tai Chi Snake Oil, New Age Qigong that isn’t the “real” or “quality” martial stuff that requires years of hard training. They cannot believe Wu Ji Gong produces so much energy from so little physical work. I Soget why they feel that way, I used to think the same. Until I actually DID the form. Talk is cheap, it does not cook the rice. It takes two hours to learn, so there’e no great risk in trying it.  TESTIMONIALS Just Amazing! Totally in a Class of its Own I have practiced Chen style taiji, 24, 42 and 48 style standardized forms, two different styles of bagua zhang. I found the Tai Chi for Enlightenment form is the most completing and satisfying form I have ever encountered and totally in a class of its own. I look forward to, and love to practice it! Physically it is also a great form for free hip movement, that is the basis of initiating full body movement in most internal styles. I like your analysis of martial styles that are lacking spiritual basis. My Fu style bagua I like for its animal twisting, coiling and stretching movements, but the guy who created it, Fu Zhen Song was apparently quite a vicious dude. For meditation, it is just amazing, and has brought me intuitive guidance in areas I would have never imagined. It creates a deep sense of balance and harmony within my body and even my environment that I feel throughout the day. — C. Dewreede, Vancouver BC Easiest & Most Complete Tai Chi Form Ever I sweated for years to learn a short form of Yang family (martial) Tai Chi, but gave it up because I didn’t feel I was really getting anywhere deep. Then one day when I arrived at a Healing Tao summer retreat, I saw some people swinging their arms and doing a form that looked so pleasantly simple and happy. I instantly knew “this is my form”. It was the Tai Chi for Enlightenment form. It is the easiest form I ever learned. I learned the form within an hour and refined it the next day. It is the most complete form I ever experienced. Over a few years time I gradually stopped doing other forms. I feel all other forms are integrated by this Primordial Tai Chi. With time it only gets better. What I love most is that it connects me with all physical and spiritual aspects of myself. While doing the form I experience the blessing of naturally creating a wonderful new spiraling DNA energy within myself. – Forever Grateful, F. Kabiro, Amsterdam Wow! Exhilarating Feeling – it Quiets my Monkey Mind I studied 24-step Tai Chi Chuan, but had difficulty practicing at home due to limited floor space. Then I learned Tai Chi for Enlightenment from the video, and can practice it anywhere in 4 square feet. After practicing for some months I observe my Monkey Mind (inner dialog) is growing quiet and I feel all tingly inside. Wow! What an exhilarating feeling! Practicing Primordial Qigong/ Tai Chi For Enlightenment is great for starting the day, or as a getaway break during the day. Now I can practice in the kitchen, or at the local state park by the lake or on a hiking trail… Doing it, I can feel the strong earth Qi in a natural setting. It helps me to keep my life simple. I can leave this make-believe world that we call planet earth, and go to the realm of the spirit for a while with this particular form…very relaxing. Michael Winn does an excellent job, in the video and on the summary sheet included, of explaining the “how’s” and “why’s” of the form. Practicing helps me remain grounded and centered in the moment, where life truly exists, on the path to happiness. John Travis, “All of life is but a tool in the evolution of the soul.” This Form Opens Chi Flow Better than Yang Tai Chi I like Primordial Tai Chi because it has a much gentler energy than martial forms. The feedback I get from friends and family that I have taught both your primordial form and the original 13 movement Yang style Tai Chi Chi Kung, is that they are able to feel the chi much quicker using the Primordial form. In doing primordial tai chi you can concentrate on the chi flow instead of keeping your mind busy on all the components necessary for Tai Chi Chi Kung. Even those learning the Yang Style, should begin class with the Primordial Chi Kung form. It will greatly improve their tai chi. I find people can learn the Primordial Tai Chi in four or five sessions and are experiencing movement of chi by the end of the second lesson. Those friends who are into healing or other metaphysical practices love it because it enhances the energy of their other practices. Both me and my students find it much easier to access and move chi using the primordial. I find the biggest problem in getting people interested is that no one seems to believe you can learn such a powerful form in only four or five sessions. One of my students at the high school is the father of a tai chi teacher. He said she told him not to bother taking my class because it was impossible to learn a form in four weeks. By the end of the class, he said he was going home to teach it to her. — J. C., Tai Chi Teacher, Upstate New York This Tai Chi Form is Unexplainable! I have studied judo, karate, tai kwan do, and martial tai chi at different times, over my sixty years of life. This primordial tai chi has been the most beneficial in comparison to all the different studies taken as a young man and now a seasoned adult. I have disciplined myself to execute this form at least once a day, primarily, at the beginning of each day. The benefits are physical, mental and spiritual and so the discipline is “easy”. This practice can help to bring one an abundance of insights into life’s voyage. In comparison to other products I have purchased, this item has given me returns that cannot be expressed in words. Unexplainable…. – John Jorif, Ocala, Florida The Apex of Taoist Spiritual Science I have a 12 year background in martial arts including Southern Mantis, Hsing I, Ba Gua, and taichi, as well as meditation and other qigong forms. My current ‘fist’ is the compact frame Wu style tai chi. Primordial Qi Gong is nothing like martial tai chi. The internal development in Primordial Qi Gong represents the apex of Taoist body centered spiritual science. The door is open. Wuji Gong is the most balanced and powerful practice I have studied. – U.K. martial artist ASHEVILLE WORKSHOP. There’s still space at my workshop in Asheville on Nov. 17-18 (details below). There is a powerful transmission that happens when we practice it together, and I cover many aspects not in the DVD.This live training  doubles as a Certification Training for those who have been practicing from the video. You’ll get a special certificate form Healing Tao  USA. It also counts towards Healing Tao Instructor certification. If you cannot attend the workshop, consider getting the Advanced Training DVD + Audio package: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/taichi/   PRIMORDIAL TAI CHI for ENLIGHTENED SELF-LOVE     with Feldenkrais for Effortless Super Learning of movements. Nov. 17-18, 2018 (Sat/Sun): Asheville, N.C.      Sat 9-6; Sun 9:30 am – 6 pm. Does spiritual tai chi activate a different experience of Qi than martial tai chi? Read the FREE PDF DOWNLOAD from the Introduction to my forthcoming book: Primordial Tai Chi: Way of Enlightened Self-Love. Magical, powerful 800 year old lineage qigong ceremony. Integrates the magic square of feng shui, the dynamic inner coupling of Taoist alchemy, the healing benefits of medical qigong, sacred geometry and Tao numerology, I Ching divination science, sound toning, and the earthly transmission power of China’s original tai chi form. WOW! We gather the directional Qi (chi) of Heaven and Earth in graceful spirals. This is one of my favorite forms, but requires deeper commitment (15 min. practice length). Combined with Feldenkrais, it opens up many levels of healing energy and ease of movement amazingly quickly. I go far beyond the DVD during this class, revealing many things about the inner structure of the form, and how to intensify it with toning and focused intent. For more about the form, and numerous testimonials about how amazing the form is, please see http://www.taichi-enlightenment.com Cost: $185. ($90. deposit). Reviewers: $125. Call: (864) 419-4502 contact: info.HealingTaoUSA@earthlink.net    Note: The course is the certification course for Primordial   QiGong/Tai Chi for Enlightened Self-Love. You receive a teaching certificate from Healing Tao University. Those seeking certification should have been practicing the form well in advance, if only from a DVD. Mantak Chia learned this form from me on a China Dream Trip in 2010, and loved it! He has made it a part of his Healing Tao curriculum, so you can now use this course as hours towards becoming a Healing Tao Instructor. For more info: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/instructorbecome.html Location: We will be at our old location – lots of free parking. Asheville Training Center, 261 Ashland Ave., Asheville NC. 2 long blocks south of downtown. Enter alley behind Town & Mountain Realty, there is now access from either end of the building.. http://ashevilletrainingcenter.com/directions.html Don’t forget to download the (draft) introduction PDF file to my forthcoming book with 45 images. It will take you deeper into the Tao. My introduction is titled:Awaken Self-Love with Sacred Movement: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/articles/primordial-tai-chi-book-one-introduction/   —————————————————————- Are you ready to join Your Heart to the Cosmic heart?   Loving the infinitely deep Primordial Tai Chi Feeling of Self-Love, Michael Winn “Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home, the Tao as his door, and who becomes change — is a Sage.” — Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters “The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away. Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.” — Taoist Sage, 200 B.C