• 30 years experience in teaching subtle energy methods internationally, from kundalini yoga in 70's to tai chi, qigong, and inner alchemy meditation today. Studied with the top spiritual teachers of this generation.
• President of the National Qigong (Chi Kung) Association for two terms. This is an umbrella organization for all the different qigong and tai chi schools, teachers, healers, & practitioners in the U.S.
• Founder and Director of Healing Tao University summer retreat program (now at Heavenly Mountain in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mtns, near Blowing Rock). The largest Tao arts program in the west.
• Writer/editor of Mantak Chia's first seven books (that helped establish his fame). Best known as co-author of the revolutionary Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy. Author of many other qigong articles & book chapters (see "long bio" below).
• Chairman of Healing Tao Instructors Association of the Americas for 9 years. It set standards for certification & ethics. One of the original Senior Instructors that launched the Healing Tao, which globally has certified over 1000 instructors and brought Tao teachings to hundreds of thousands of people. (Abroad Healing Tao is known as Universal Tao).
• Author of ten Tao home study DVD-CD courses that integrate high level medical-spiritual qigong and inner alchemy as a progressive training.
• Pioneered taking Western Taoists into caves on Flower Mountain (Huashan) in China to meditate. Has led ten+ China Dream Trips to develop relations between Western and Chinese Taoists in their sacred mountains and temples.

Winn captures his Monkey Mind, takes it to China for further training. On his T-shirt: character for "Tao", the Way.
Base of Mt. Qingcheng, sacred to Taoists.

The deeper, more personal answer:

Here are my own internal rules, honored in all the Homestudy courses:

• TEACH ONLY WHAT IS SIMPLE AND TRUE. In the books I wrote with/for Mantak Chia, some of the practices seem mentally complicated. I wanted to simplify them at the time, but did not always have final editorial control. In the many years since I wrote those books, my own practice has evolved towards the simple. The current Home Study courses were retaped many times, each time refining the practices to their simplest essence. I rigorously avoid the excess mental complexity present in some of the books, which seemed necessary to reach western minds at the time.
• NO SECRETS. Give students whatever they are ready to digest. The time for secrets is past. Many excellent Chinese teachers have unfortunately not yet realized this! The people I want to reach don't have the time or inclination to play this game of follow the leader, begging for secrets drops of wisdom. I pour them on you, hoping you can absorb any part of them, and become your own leader.
• NO GURU OR MASTER TRIPS. Hierarchies of Ego Authority bore me and stifle creative chi flow. Spiritual Transmission can occur without developing co-dependent teacher/student relationships. I'm not interested in followers clinging to my shirt tail. The Life Force itself is the True Teacher, I am just a guide to help you develop your own relationship with the Life Force. We are all brothers and sisters on the continuous two-way journey between Source and Creation.
• TEACH ONLY FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. Means no bullshit about level of personal attainment. I test every method thoroughly to make sure it works and is safe.
• HAVE FUN!!! Playing with the chi field is meant to be fun. While refining the elixir, laughter is the best medicine. If you don't get the Cosmic Joke, it may get you.
• Product Warning: Consumers of Chi Kung Home Study Courses may likely become a "Chi-aholic" and may be exposed to the epidemic "Mad Dao Disease" that has widely infected many students.

For the last 25 years I've explored many esoteric systems (called Mystery Schools in the past) to find the most effective methods of improving health and refining spiritual awareness. Principle ones (besides various Daoist/Taoist schools) include: tantric kundalini yoga, kriya yoga, dzogchen (Bon) and Tibetan Buddhist vajrayana practices, and Atlantean alchemy (Original, pre-Egyptian Kabballah).

I took many teachings and initiations with the Dalai Lama. I worked closely with Swami Hariharananda for years to edit his Bhagavad Gita in the Light of Kriya Yoga. I have a book on Atlantean alchemy nearly ready for publication. Its working title is Stellar Mind speaks: How to Shape your Life Energy. All this shaped my practice, but I always return to my roots in the Dao (Tao) because of its natural simplicity and practicality.

I have tested -- always on myself -- some 60 different chi kung forms and daoist/taoist meditation systems. I have sought out dozens of different daoist masters, often only to get one superb movement or tiny but valuable insight they had. Master T.K. Shih lived in my NYC apartment for two years. I edited BK Frantis' Opening the Energy Gates of the Body and studied his excellent neigong and pa kua chang forms. I studied wu style tai chi with Grand Master Ed Yu in China town (also Mantak Chia's tai chi teacher), and Northern Wu Tai chi style with David Dolbear, National Gold Medal champion. This particular tai chi style was infused with alchemical energetics by a daoist master.

I travelled to China 4 times, to be in the presence of its holy mountains and sacred places, and to study medical chi kung in top Beijing hospitals with the World Academic Medical Qigong Society. I am collaborating with a group of Chinese nei dan (inner alchemy) practitioners to open a Daoist Alchemy Research Institute in Beijing, China. We hope to have a team researching alchemy in China today and to interview Daoist masters before they die. The results will be published, in English and Chinese, to help re-invigorate alchemy in modern China.

Each year I invite top masters to teach at Healing Tao University, partly in order to trade secrets with them. I've been on the organizing committee for the Annual National Qigong Conference since its inception in 1997, giving me exposure to the top chi kung teachers in the U.S. and a chance to absorb their favorite methods.

Cultivating one's chi is a life long process. But no need for everyone to repeat my long journey. Better to start off equipped with the valuable tools offered in my courses, distilled from years of testing. I only teach what I myself practice. I hope you will use those tools to go to a new, higher, and unknown level that is perfect for you alone.

What's the Difference Between Michael Winn's and Mantak Chia's teaching?

Michael Winn's favorite meditation spot on Mt. Hua. Only fools and immortals dare walk the "high wire" - an ancient pine trunk growing out sideways 30-feet, off a cliff with 3000 ft sheer drop off.

Note: this is an edited version of bio that first appeared in the Empty Vessel, Journal of Contemporary Taoism.

In 1980 Winn was one of Mantak Chia's first western students in Chinatown, New York. He played a key role in founding The Healing Tao in 1982 and directly wrote or heavily edited many of Mantak Chia's books on nei gong and qigong as General Editor of Healing Tao Books. His titles included Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao, the first book in English on the microcosmic orbit; Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy; Healing Love: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy; Iron Shirt Chi Kung; Bone Marrow Nei Kung; Fusion of the Five Elements: Meditations for Transforming Negative Emotion; and Awaken Healing Light of the Tao., an advanced study of the microcosmic orbit. Winn also edited a newsletter for Healing Tao instructors entitled From the Mouth of the Immortal Child.

The noted qigong master T.K. Shih lived in Winn's New York city apartment for two years in the early 80's: "I taught him English, and T.K. taught me how to move like a cat" is how Winn described their relationship. Winn studied with many other Taoist teachers, and edited B.K. Frantzis' Opening the Energy Gates of the Body. He studied qigong and ba gua with Frantzis, and the northern wu style tai chi as taught by David Dolbear, a Wu style gold medalist and lineage holder. "I waited ten years before choosing a long form. David got a transmission in Beijing that teaches tai chi as a form of alchemy, emphasizing the changes between jing, qi, and shen." He went on to study in Beijing with David teacher, Master Liu Jiang Chang.

Winn sees his life "as an alchemical journey flowing between outer adventures and inner adventures, a process of cultivating "my worldly life" and "my inner essence".

He travelled to 30 countries before the age of 17 and ran 35 whitewater rafting expeditions as a guide down the Grand Canyon by the time he graduated from Dartmouth College in l973 as a Senior Fellow with a degree in Russian/comparative literature. After a successful meteoric three year career in New York publishing he got fired "for being too creative".

He became a free lance war correspondent and adventure travel photographer that took him on 30 trips to another 50 countries in Africa, the mideast , and Asia from 1977 to 1985. His writings and photos appeared in the New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, Outside, Village Voice, Harpers, Connoiseur, People, Adventure Travel, National Jewish Monthly, and many others. National Geographic financed his rafting expedition in North Yemen.

Included in this wanderlust period was a four month journey across China tracing Marco Polo's footsteps. Winn, who is not Jewish, ran an underground railroad smuggling white American Jews into Ethiopia and black Jews out of Ethiopia into Israel. In 1981 in New York's Soho district, Winn opened Abyssinia, the first Ethiopian restaurant in America, and operated it successfully as a side business for 20 years.

While in Africa in 1978, Winn accidentally self-induced his first kundalini awakening, which led him to begin studying and teaching kundalini (hindu tantric) yoga in the late 1970's. This eventually led him to Taoist alchemy. "In college I studied comparative literature", Winn says, "and in real life I found myself training in and comparing the esoteric alchemical methods from different cultures."

He studied kriya yoga with Swami Hariharananda, successor in India to Paramhamsa Yogananda, and kept a close friendship with this yogi renowned for mastering the breathless state of nirvikalpa samadhi. He died recently at age 97. Winn edited his The Bhagavad Gita in the Light of Kriya Yoga. Winn notes that kriya yoga, the essence of all yogas, has many parallels to Taoist alchemy but "it's finally a pure fire path. The Taoist preference is to mix the fire and water, which is more accepting of the body."

Winn also studied Dzogchen and tantric Buddhist teachings from the Dalai Lama and other rinpoches in the 1980's. "Tibetan and Hindu Tantra is philosophically very similar to yin-yang theory, but in practice uses more mantra, mudra, and deity worship. Dzogchen is the closest brother to the Tao with its emphasis on cutting through quickly to the clear or original light. But I like the refining process in Taoist alchemy, the many practical connections they developed with Original Chi (yuan qi). Taoist alchemy is a shortcut, it focuses on direct relationship with the life force. When you combine alchemy with qigong, the effect is a super-charged Energy Body."

Winn also studied the Celtic approach to earth based spirituality with R.J. Stewart. "All the mystery schools are great", Winn commented. "The ancient Celts used a mirror approach to Taoist alchemy, they first connect to the outer five elements/directions and then work their way inside the body. This is the opposite of the Eastern way. I love all the ancient meditation systems, but finally you've got to focus your practice on one approach. Ultimately, I find Taoist alchemy to be the simplest, the most practical (body-centered) and the most complete."

He reached this conclusion after 25 years of studying and testing many different systems of qigong (chi kung), with dozens of teachers in the USA and China, both famous and unknown. He uses the Seven Tao Formulas for Immortality offered by the Taoist Hermit One Cloud (Mantak Chia's teacher) as the superstructure for holding the immense knowledge and skill he has acquired.

His quest for deeper knowledge of the Tao has taken him to visit the sacred mountains of China nine times, where he has cultivated many friendships with Taoist adepts. He was the first to offer trips to China for western Taoists that included staying in caves on Huashan (Flower Mountain) used by Tao adepts for millennia.

"The Chinese have a genius for boiling down everything to its core essence", Winn notes. " I have done the same with everything I've learned from all my teachers — I just keep cooking it down, refining it to its essence, and clarifying its practical application. It's just my small part in the great collective process of the Tao. Somebody will take my refinements and improve on them. That is the experimental, evolving nature of Tao spiritual science. In fact, I hope they do it soon — I'd like to enjoy those improvements myself!"

Winn, who lives in a log home in the mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina, maintains a private practice in qigong therapy and Taoist sexology. Winn is currently finishing a book on the energy science of how people can shape the life force to manifest what they truly need. The book is inspired by contact with a spiritual being who claims to have ascended with his body - at the age of 2,300 years old - into the "Stellar Mind", i.e. a full celestial heaven immortal.

He is also working on a book on Taoist internal alchemy, but claims he is "in no rush to finish it. I don't want to put out books based on half-baked insights to make a quick buck. I'm happy to write just one high level, fully-baked book. A book based on genuine experience and that can actually be useful to others. It takes a few decades to really road-test inner alchemy and its potential interactions with qigong."

Every summer Winn organizes what has become the largest Tao energy healing, qigong and neigong (meditation) program in America, at Heavenly Mountain, in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It offers about 30 low cost, week long retreats on all aspects of Taoist meditation (with five full weeks of internal alchemy), qigong, oriental body work, Taoist dream practice, feng shui, sexology, Taoist astrology, qi healing, tai chi, tao yin (Taoist yoga), ba gua chuan, weight loss and medical qigong and more. He teaches a number of courses in the core Taoist internal alchemy & qigong curriculum.

More info on Summer Retreats and Michael Winn's Teaching Schedule in Asheville & Internationally.

Michael Winn "cooking" in a cauldron,
China"s symbol of alchemical transformation.
Temple of Heaven, Beijing. Note: this is actual photo, not photoshop!

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