Internal alchemy (neidan) has been the dominant system of Daoist spiritual practice since the 10^th century Song dynasty, when it was defined as the complex integration of multiple forms of Daoist self-cultivation.

This book brings together the leading scholars in the field. It gives a thorough and easily accessible introduction, with a survey of cultivation methods that form the backbone of internal alchemy. It presents the major schools and discussion of key concepts, such as mind, inner nature, and destiny.

Other chapters focus on the emergence of spirit through the top of the head, the activation of internal visions in Thunder Rites, the sexual commingling of energies in duo-cultivation, body visions and techniques employed by women, contemporary alchemy in China and its transmission in the West. It concludes with comparative studies on Kundalini Yoga and Hermeticism.

LOOK INSIDE THIS BOOK:

Here's an excerpt from Michael Winn's 30 page chapter Chapter Daoist Internal Alchemy in the West. It offers a definitive overview of the growth of neidan in the West, and reveals in detail his first contact with Dao Immortals. It also has a very useful bibliography of the important Daoist Inner Alchemy books.

Daoist Internal Alchemy in the West
By Michael Winn

The Dao is very great, for it offers human beings 3,600 pathways. Each pathway has 10,000 methods to help us become who we truly are. —Daoist saying

In 1980, I was introduced to Mantak Chia in his tiny office in New York's Chinatown. A friend had alerted me his energy was "off the charts," and looking for a writer. A 36-year old Thai Chinese Daoist, Chia made his living doing energetic healing. Dr. Young, a Chinese MD with an office next door, sent Chia patients with difficult diseases Western medicine could not cure. Many recovered their health (Young 1984).

I had never met a Daoist. "What do you teach?" I asked Mantak Chia. "Immortality," he replied without hesitation. I looked at him skeptically. I was into Kundalini yoga, at the time still an underground culture. My yoga friends and the popular Indian gurus of the day only talked about enlightenment. "In China we have records of many hundreds of immortals. In the West, they only talk about one: Jesus," Chia added, as if his cultural boast allayed my skepticism.

I took the bait, and signed up for the first class ever offered to Western students, on the Microcosmic Orbit. Chia warned me it was only "kindergarten" in the One Cloud system of Daoist internal alchemy. I later realized the Orbit was the piece missing from Indian Kundalini yoga practice, which directs all qi to flow up cakras located in the fire channel of the spine, then out the crown.

The Daoist approach re-circulates Heaven-qi back down the crown into the water channel in the chest, connects to Earth-qi at the perineum, then spirals it back up the spine. The Orbit turns the human body into a refinery of whirling qi mixing fire and water qi.

Within two years I was practicing One Cloud's second formula, Lesser Water and Fire, in which the qi moves into a third neutral channel, the Penetrating Vessel in the center of the body. The fire and water qi are sexually coupled and an alchemical elixir forms. It created a wonderfully warm glowing feeling in my body, unlike any of the many other spiritual practices I had experimented with.

Thus began a lifelong journey in which I became an adept, teacher, scholar, and witness to the unfolding of neidan culture in the West……read abridged chapter (15 pages)

ORDER NOW	BACK TO TOP

PREFACE by Livia Kohn & Robin Wang

"…..The goal of internal alchemy is to identify, control, modify, and eventually transform subtle energies as they are present in the human body-mind. As scientists in biology and medicine increasingly come to see the body as an energetic system, a "living matrix" made up of bioelectricity and bioenergy, Daoist neidan has an important contribution to make.

Neidan can inspire and guide theory and practice in rapidly developing new fields, such as energy medicine and energy psychology. The only obstacle to integrating millennia of traditional Daoist knowledge and experimentation into the modern discourse is the lack of accessible presentations on the subject. That is changing with this volume". Read entire preface (3 pages)