Super Qi Summit Report: How Attain Tao?

               Does Attain the Tao mean to Embody the Tao? But isn’t everything already an embodiment of the Tao?

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Inside Chi Flows Naturally:          

Dear Lovers of Cultivating Qi to Fully Attain Your Way,

I recently returned from the Super Qi Summit at Omega (upstate New York), with nine great teachers each presenting a vision of how they cultivate their own Tao (Way).

Lao Tzu makes it clear in the opening line of the Tao Te Ching that there is no single universal Way (Tao) – but only the Way that each being must follow for themselves.This Super Qi Summit was a clear demonstration of that principle of many different Ways to cultivate the Tao. The question I asked myself: what do all theseWays of cultivating Qi  have in common?

This summit was a wonderful Qi Fest, a warm and loving sharing of skills with over 160 people present. It was the brainchild of Michael Gelb, whose passion for the Qi arts and sciences goes back 40 years. Hats off to Michael, this was a winner. His latest book, Creativity on Demand, I reviewed in my newsletter on Qi as Life’s Secret Creative Sauce:  https://healingtaousa.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=185

What does Gelb claim to be the secret of Creativity? Simply put: Get Your Qi Flowing! He shared some of his favorite movements designed to widen our energetic embrace of what is possible. Flexible energetic movement helps get us out of our fixed ideas of what is creatively possible. Qigong cultivates a special kind of whole-body genius.

The very idea of a Qi summit was a beautiful example of Michael’s creative thinking outside of the box. It certainly got peoples Qi flowing in many new creative directions.

Minke de Vos opened the summit with a fabulous dragon dance to the sacred directions, and led a closing circle invocation that really made everyone feel they were part of a fabulous “Qi Tribe”. I think Minke is one of the highest level western female cultivators of the Tao.

Minke is sharing her integration of different medical qigong systems in Week 3 (July 3-8) of the Healing Tao summer retreats: Medical Qigong for Energy Healers. She makes it simple and powerful. In Week 2 (June 26-July 1) Minke co-teaches the Taoist Secrets of Sex and Healing Love with me. We share methods you will not find anywhere else.

Ken Cohen gave a brilliant talk and slideshow showing how multi-cultural the art and science of qigong is around the world, even though it may be named differently. He cultivates Qi using Native American Lakota methods as well as Taoist. He quoted magnificent Taoist poetry in Chinese and English to emphasize his point that “cultivating Qi” can occur in almost any medium – not just qigong movement forms.

Roger Jahnke I have known and played with for 20 years through the National Qigong Association (which is having its 20th anniversary this July 17-19th in New Jersey, see nqa.org). He focused on the fact that the so-called “debate” over the medical effectiveness of qigong is over – it’s well proven beyond any scientific doubt. The challenge is to get it into the health system, both as personal practice and in health institutions. Roger has been a great innovator and force to bring Qi cultivation into the mainstream. One of his many skills is making it fun and easy.

Tina Zhang illustrated the link between Qi cultivation and martial arts. She is a highly talented champion of many tournaments – she has a soft sweet smile, but not someone to mess with! She gave a wonderful and deeply embodied demonstration of how grasping just a few movement principles can completely change your energetic experience. Tina is teaching her favorite Taiji quan form (and mine) this summer during Week 5 of Healing Tao Summer Retreats (July 17-22): Northern Wu Taijiquan – the Final Refinement of Classical Taijiquan. She has inspiring way to link qigong and tai chi for both health and martial skill.

Robert Peng was on the Healing Tao Retreat faculty for several years and I hope to get him back from his busy global travel schedule. He distilled the essence of qigong self-healing by demonstrating the universal effectiveness of the “Four Golden Wheels of Light”. These are the three dantian and the micro-cosmic orbit connecting them together as the key to developing one’s Energy Body for healing, self-awareness in meditation, wfor any goal. Look for his new book from Sounds True.

Robert Tangora I enjoyed getting to know. He is a fantastic tai chi teacher who walks his talk and shared so many nuggets that everyone felt enriched. He focused a lot on using standing posture and conscious turning to connect to the core channel, aka “taiji pole” that runs vertically through the body. Once we open and expand this connection to our core axis, he made the very profound point that we can shift our energetic center of gravity – our dantian – to anywhere in the body.

Mingtong Gu is another old friend, based in California. Our cabins were next door to each other. I discovered during one late night talk that we both have the same idea – to build a retreat center architectually modelled after the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. So hopefully we will have twin temples, on both the east and west coast! Mingtong has a very large bag of Qi tricks, but at his summit talk he shared his metods of toning to circulate Qi in the body and harmonize body and soul for healing. He has a powerful and transformative voice. Much of his successful work focuses on working with people with life-threatening illness.

Temple of Heaven, Beijing. Built in 14th cen.without using a single nail – only dowels. So it is held together like an intricate cosmic mystery box. The three space-ship like cones are the architectual manifestation of Taoist cosmology, which centers on trinitities – 3 Treasures, 3 Pure Ones, 3 streams of Qi (Yin, Yang, Yuan), and many others.

Michael Winn (that’s me) gave a talk on the role of Taoist sexual practices within the framework of Tao Cosmology. I focused on how cultivating sexual energy via qigong and internal alchemy meditations fits into humanity’s multi-dimensional pathway of evolution.

I feel resolving humanity’s sexual identity crisis (our splitting into separate male and female bodies, causing the mythic “Fall” of humanity) is the key to both personal health and global peace. Sexual tension underlies most chronic health and political struggle and wars. The Tao trinity for healing this issue is cultivating Jing Qi at three frequencies: male + female to re-birth an androgynous Energy Body that is both male & female.

This is part of cultivating our Inner Sage – that can live in a sexually gendered body AND simultaneously hold awareness of its soul and greater Self in other planes with different sexual and a-sexual identities.

Who or what  is the Inner Sage? We have to cultivate it – it does’t pre-exist. The fruit of our Earth-school of Learning. It’s the aspects of our fragmented self that slowly iintegrate and crytallize – in classical Taoist texts – into a golden elixir-filled pearl. But in my experience, it can take many forms of sound, light, and vibration – it is simply our True Self (zhen ren) made tangible. Different than the new age Higher Self, which is usually split off from the Lower Self.

Our Inner Sage is composed of three equal parts – yet another alchemical Taoist trinity:

1. our physical body-mind (ego): (xin, heart-mind)

2. our soul or personal Energy Body: (ling, inner heart essence)

3. our impersonal oversoul or collective Spirit Body: (da shen, great spirit)

In my experience, all three aspects of Self are needed to lovingly embrace and make tangible our relationship with Source/Tao.

When I get a copy of my talk from Omega, I will post it online.

(Note: As a point of information, publication of the first volume of my Primordial Tai Chi: Way of Enlightened Love was temporarily delayed by additional deep research I was doing into Cosmological Qigong and Tai Chi forms. Without a clear cosmological map, I feel it is difficult to advance to a deep level of practice. So I had to get super-clear on this before publishing)

Back to my original question: what is the commonality of all nine of these great Qi cultivators at the Summit? Are they just nine different and uniqiue Ways, each beautiful but separate, or are they all connected by some hidden principle?

It is a beautiful synchronicity that there were 9 presenters at the Super Qi Summit – and there are 9 points of focus in the I Ching’s bagua: the 8 trigrams and the 9th spiralling center, where Original Breath (Yuan Qi) converts itself into the polar forces of Yin Qi and Yang Qi.

What was the answer my Inner Sage came up with, when I asked within?

“Every Qi cultivator is seeking a Point of Equilibrium”.

Holding that point of balance while living in the dynamic, flowing matrix of Time, Space & Beings is what allows us to attain the Tao. It has the stability of the unmoving Yuan Qi (Original Breath), but also is a Moving Point as Yin and Yang do their dance. How these function together is a paradox and beautiful mysterious secret of the Tao.

It doesn’t matter what method we use to find that point of equilibrium – the Life Force (Qi field) has no judgments or preferences about that

        Can you find and hold a point of equilibrium in your life?

Tao is often translated as “Natural Way”. What exactly is this Way? It is not about following a structured Way of salvation as is usually defined by Big Religions. Nor does it require worshipping a single Creator or multiple deities who manage the creation process. That’s also why competition between lineages or methods is silly – they all can cultivate Tao, depending on what Way one wants to evolve. Choosing a Way is simply a question of karmic attraction, a.k.a. destiny.

Lao Tzu does suggest we honor and love the Qi field, the Life Force itself, which drives the cosmic process. Verse 42 epitomizes this: “All beings carry yin on their back and yang in their arms; this play of Qi fills the universe with harmony.”

A fundamental of Tao cosmology is we must learn to shape Yin Qi and Yang Qi to create our own personal Way. If we can accept this cosmic process, we’ll get to good health and inner peace quickly or at least more directly.

Qi arises from a “nameless” Source (lit. wu ji), but it seems to have an intent. The intent is to empower us human to personally and lovingly shape the universal Qi field into a higher level of harmony. Sometimes that involves struggle against the forces of dis-harmony, sometimes it flows effortlessly. Tao or Nature gives us infinite number of  “ways” as gifts to accomoplish our highest destiny.

One thing that the Omega Super Qi summit affirmed for me was the value of a community of Qi cultivators coming together and sharing their different Ways. That is exactly what I have sought to achieve over the last 20 years in creating and sustaining Healing Tao University’s summer retreats.

My goal was and is to encourage diversity and sharing of all the Tao arts and sciences, to allow folks to follow their own Way without being told they HAVE to do it any one way. Diversity leads to greater Joy in creativity.

So please get out of your armchair and study with the teachers and teachings that attract your soul!

Blessings on your Creative and Loving Way,

Michael Winn

ps. Please note special Qigong for Healing Cancer  Retreat led by Prof. Kevin Chen – see below.