Johan has a martial arts background which eventually brought him to the Five Immortals Temple where he spent more than 5 years under the tutelage of Li Shifu. There he studied a variety of subjects including Tai Ji, longevity exercises, Dao Yin (guiding and leading of Qi), alchemy, swordsmanship, martial arts, Feng Shui, Yi Jing (The Book of Changes) divination, Daoist healing, and entering the 24th Dragon Gate lineage. Johan currently works as a Chinese medicine practitioner, taiji and...

Jonathan (Jed) H Edwards, LAc practices East Asian Medicine with a focus on internal medicine. A longtime student of divination traditions from the Yijing to Jyotisa (Vedic astrology), he also deals with subtle/spiritual aspects of health. He finds that disease often falls away when people reorient their lives to include an understanding of karmic currents or the patterning of fate.  Jonathan makes his home at Heartward Sanctuary, a center in the NC Piedmont that he co-founded with his...

Lisa Rohleder has been a licensed acupuncturist in Portland, Oregon, since 1994. She founded Working Class Acupuncture (https://workingclassacupuncture.org/) in 2002 with the goal of providing low-cost acupuncture to the community through a cooperative, grassroots, financially self-sustaining model. She’s currently one of the executive directors of the POCA Technical Institute (https://pocatech.org/), the only accredited acupuncture school dedicated to training community acupuncturists. She...

Robert Coons is a resident of Toronto where he teaches Tai Chi, Meditation, and Tea Ceremony. He studied with secular Daoist disciple Hai Yang, and various teachers in China such as Yin Qin (Yang Style Taiji), He Caitong (Taiwan Cha Dao), Yu Jiang (Xin Yi Liu He Quan), and others. Today he continues to cultivate the Golden Elixir and is very happy to talk to you, so send him an email or visit his substack Immortality Study. You can also buy his tea at tcmsix.com/shop/ And check out his newest...

Lisa Rohleder has been a licensed acupuncturist in Portland, Oregon, since 1994. She founded Working Class Acupuncture (https://workingclassacupuncture.org/) in 2002 with the goal of providing low-cost acupuncture to the community through a cooperative, grassroots, financially self-sustaining model. She’s currently one of the executive directors of the POCA Technical Institute (https://pocatech.org/), the only accredited acupuncture school dedicated to training community acupuncturists. She...

LoAn Guylaine TRAN is a 24th generation disciple of the Daoist Complete Reality Dragon Gate Pure Yang lineage of Mount Wudang, under the name Sincere Phoenix 誠鳳. First an activist and professional project manager for humanitarian organisation with a focus on women’s rights in the context of anti-trafficking and prostitution, her spiritual quest took her through year-long immersions in Buddhist and Yogic practices throughout Asia, before leading her into a 9 years Daoist apprenticeship at the...

Isaac Saul is an independent political journalist and the founder of Tangle, a politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from the right and left on the big news of the day.   Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove!  Eternal gratitude to Bart Matthews for our amazing intro music!   Check out our FB page if you roll like that.   For books!   Become a Patron!   [email protected]

Lindsey Wei, Daoist Name -Wei Cheng Ling, 魏诚灵, is a 24th generation lay disciple (俗家弟子sújiā dìzǐ) of the Chun Yang Sect of Wudang Daoism.  She trained Traditional Chinese Gong Fu in a remote mountain temple in the Wudang Mountains, Hubei Province, China under her master Li Song Feng for over 9 years before returning to the US in 2010 to start her martial teaching career.  She is a practitioner of Tai Ji Quan, Qi Gong, Ba Gua, Double Edge Straight Sword (Jian), as well as other weapons...

Ken Crouse is a native of Wilkes County, NC where he has lived formost of his life. He grew up working on a farm that raised cattle,tobacco, corn, other grains, and a large vegetable patch. Havingalways had a love of plants, he went on to study horticulture andmycology and got involved in the nursery and landscaping business.Twenty-five years ago, Ken and his wife Cindy bought a place in themountains known as Peaceful Valley. At about this time, Ken wasintroduced to the concepts of...

Scoutleader Wiley is a semi-nomadic theory and ritual artist. She does not like touching slimy things, and her favourite food is potatoes. She was raised by two artists amongst the underground hip-hop and house dance community in Brooklyn, NY. She now plays freak-folk guitar music for her friends and writes systems poetry for the internet. She is the Maestra Magica at Metamodern Magick, a collaborative education platform that seeks to integrate the wisdom traditions of pre-modernity into the...

Henry Andrews stumbled into interactive theater and performance in 2015, and became enamored of its ability to invite people into meaningful authentic experiences. He performed with Barron Scott Levkoff’s Mystic Midway over the next several years and became involved with several other interactive projects in the San Francisco Bay Area. These experiences eventually combined with his interests in metamodern philosophy, Gravesian developmental theory, and Batesonian warm data in the form of...

Amba J. Sepie works in the realm of cultural ecology, soul medicine, and decolonisation. She is also a research fellow at the University of Canterbury in Aotearoa New Zealand, teaching, writing and collaborating on projects grounded in traditional knowledges and respect for Earth’s sentience.   Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove!  Eternal gratitude to Bart Matthews for our amazing intro music!   Check out our FB page if you roll like that.   For books!   Become a...

We're back at it with Josh Paynter, diving deeper into his specific Taoist lineage. It's an incredible and wild ride. Please enjoy responsibly.   Josh has been dedicated to Chinese studies for nearly thirty years. He received a B.A. in Chinese Studies from Bard College with a focus on Daoist traditions, including studying at Yunnan University in Kunming, China. His Master’s Degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine is from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine. He haa also completed training at...

Dare Sohei (they/them/cat) is an animist artist, practitioner, facilitator. Their work dances with the integration of animist/indigenous lifeways with liberatory anti-oppression principles and non-dual somatics, which can be pithily summed up as Death Practice.They are based in Chinook Lands aka Portland, OR, USA.www.bodyaltar.orgwww.patreon.com/animistarts  Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove!  Eternal gratitude to Bart Matthews for our amazing intro music!   Check out our FB page if...

Josh has been dedicated to Chinese studies for nearly thirty years. He received a B.A. in Chinese Studies from Bard College with a focus on Daoist traditions, including studying at Yunnan University in Kunming, China. His Master’s Degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine is from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine. He haa also completed training at Memorial Sloane-Kettering in acupuncture for the treatment of cancer patients.  

Ken Crouse is a native of Wilkes County, NC where he has lived formost of his life. He grew up working on a farm that raised cattle,tobacco, corn, other grains, and a large vegetable patch. Havingalways had a love of plants, he went on to study horticulture andmycology and got involved in the nursery and landscaping business.Twenty-five years ago, Ken and his wife Cindy bought a place in themountains known as Peaceful Valley. At about this time, Ken wasintroduced to the concepts of...

Bringing an infectious warmth and playful levitywherever she goes, Monica Rodgers is a tirelessadvocate for the full actualization of women,inspiring women everywhere that saying “YES tothe MESS” is the missing link to self-love andpersonal awakening. From Monica: Patriarchy impacts all people, regardless of gender, all over the world.  This unjust construct is defined by the dictionary as a "system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it”...

Hello audience! (Lukas here) I just wanted to apologize straight away for the sound quality of this episode. We will do our very best to maintain better standards in the future. It's a great conversation with someone I've admired for a long time so I think you'll enjoy it regardless. Thanks for listening! Some background from Kathy herself: I have been practicing Chinese martial arts, Tai Chi, and Qigong for over three decades. I began training at the age of six under the guidance of my...

Dare Sohei (they/them/cat) is an animist artist, practitioner, facilitator. Their work dances with the integration of animist/indigenous lifeways with liberatory anti-oppression principles and non-dual somatics, which can be pithily summed up as Death Practice.They are based in Chinook Lands aka Portland, OR, USA.www.bodyaltar.orgwww.patreon.com/animistarts  Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove!  Eternal gratitude to Bart Matthews for our amazing intro music!   Check out our FB page if...

Zoey Gong is a Traditional Chinese Medicinal (TCM) chef and nutritionist. Born in Shanghai, China, she grew up with the wisdom of medicinal cooking. She now resides in New York City, where she hosts pop-up medicinal dinners and educates the public on TCM food therapy. With a background in both western and eastern clinical nutrition, she founded Five Seasons TCM in 2021, a boutique wellness brand that shares and modernizes the knowledge of TCM food therapy. Big thanks to our sponsor The...

Artist and philosopher Michael Garfield helps people navigate our age of accelerating weirdness and cultivate the curiosity and play we'll need to thrive in it. As host and producer of both Future Fossils Podcast & The Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Podcast, Michael acts as interlocutor for a worldwide community of artists, scientists, and philosophers — a practice fed by and and feeding back into his fifteen years of synthetic and transdisciplinary "mind-jazz" performances in the form...

Like many guests we had so much to talk about we had to have a part 2.   Tyler Phan received his Ph.D. from University College London (UCL) in 2017. Before his Ph.D., he earned his M.A. in Religions of Asia (now M.A. in Buddhist Studies) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) in 2013. His research focus is in medical anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) with a relationship among religion, ontology, bodies, post-colonialism, and race in...

Bio: Carrie Melmoth is based in Southampton (UK). She generally tries to elude definition, but the following statement are nevertheless true. She sometimes writes about Philip K. Dick (with particular empahsis on him as a neoplatonist). She spends much of her time reading and walking parks and meadows and by the sea (sometimes at the same time because audiobooks exist). She is fascinated by tarot, and by signs and symbols in general - metaphors are moreish! She is in a (very protozoan) band...

Bio:  Sophie Strand is a poet, historical-fiction writer, and essayist based in the Hudson Valley with a focus on the intersection of spirituality and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine is forthcoming from Inner Traditions. She has three chapbooks: Love Song to a Blue God (Oread Press) and Those Other Flowers to Come (Dancing Girl Press) and The Approach (The Swan) Her writing...