Daoism, Divination, and Healing Arts
Our 5th Conference invites you to journey deeper into how the wisdom of Chinese classics lives and breathes in our everyday lives. What began five years ago, amid the pandemic, continues today—a gathering without borders, where we explore Daoist thought in philosophy, medicine, religion, ritual, scholarship, and culture, and how these timeless traditions continue to shape and enrich our modern world.
Join us for this FREE event
Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82508964808?pwd=7UA2AdBwdXWw31e5bRhygjtzovOfDo.1
Meeting ID: 825 0896 4808
Passcode: 951099
Meet Master Zhou Xuan Yun, Advisor and Founder of the Daoist Gate Center
Founder of the Daoist Gate Center, a non-profit organization, Master Zhou’s mission is to promote cross-cultural East and West understanding and Daoist solidarity. At 13, Master Zhou was sent to live on Wudang Mountain, where he was a student and later an instructor of Taiji, Kung Fu, and Qi Gong. Living at the Daoist Association Martial Arts Academy, in the Purple Cloud Temple, he was accepted into the 24th generation of the Wudang Long Men (Lóng ménpài 龙门派) lineage. At 16, he vowed to become a Daoist Monk and began his study of Daoist philosophy and religious practices. He was trained in ritual arts, chanting, divination, and internal alchemy. Master Zhou is a formally recognized disciple of Master Li Guang Fu 李光富, the Chairman of the Chinese Taoist Association (中国道教协会会长). Master Zhou divided his time between teaching at the center and abroad.
Meet Sam Wuest – Moderator for the Daoist Gate Conference
Sam Wuest is a certified Daoist Gate Wudang Arts teacher and a 25th-generation lay disciple of the Chunyang Sect of Wudang Daoism (Daoist Name: 信罡; Xin Gang), having studied in immersive settings with Lindsey Wei and Li Shifu in the Pacific Northwest and China. A former apprentice of master Japanese Acupuncturist T. Koei Kuwahara, Sam has served as team acupuncturist and massage therapist for Columbia University and ran an acupuncture clinic & teaching Taiji, Qigong, & Meditation in Southern California. Before becoming an acupuncturist, Sam coached college and professional track and field athletes and was a Division 1 athlete and national high jump silver medalist in 2024. Sam practices Daoist and Chinese Medicine, teaches Taiji and Qigong, and coaches other embodied movement arts in San José, Costa Rica. He also teaches online classes to connect the worlds of athletic/movement professionals and Traditional Chinese Medicine as Meridians Move.
Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82508964808?pwd=7UA2AdBwdXWw31e5bRhygjtzovOfDo.1
Meeting ID: 825 0896 4808
Passcode: 951099
Program At A Glance
Program Schedule
| Saturday, October 4 | Sunday, October 5 |
| Introduction by Sam Wuest 9:00 – 9:15 AM EST | Introduction by Sam Wuest 9:00 – 9:15 AM EST |
| Livia Kohn – Dimensions of Time in Daoist Healing 9:15 – 10:15 AM EST | Angelica Devis – Live Your Virtues from the Refinement of Your Emotions Five Element Theory Applied to Daily Life 9:15 – 10:15 AM EST |
| Cynthia Hajjar – Sacred Home, Sacred Self: Feng Shui Principles for Living in Harmony 10:30 – 11:30 AM EST | Henry McCann – Tung’s Acupuncture and Distant Point Needling: Understanding Connection and Resonance 10:30 – 11:30 AM EST |
Louis Komjathy – “On the (Im)possibility of ‘Daoist Medicine'” 11:45 – 12:45 PM EST | Dolly Yang – Medieval Chinese Therapeutic Exercises 11:45–12:45 PM EST |
Stargazer Li – Divinatory Conversation with the Seasonality Dances of Sun, Moon, and Earth 1 – 2 PM EST | Master Zhou Xuan Yun – Divination with Traditional Chinese Medicine 1 – 2 PM EST |
Lorraine Wilcox – Did Ancient Doctors Divine? 2:15-3:15 PM EST |
Program Speaker’s Topic and Bio
Livia Kohn
Dimensions of Time in Daoist Healing
Saturday, October 4, 9:15 – 10:15 EST
As defined by Julius Fraser, the founder of time studies, time comes in six major dimensions that each have relevance for Daoist healing. They reach from social time with its clocks and calendars through biological time with daily and annual rhythms to the ultimate creative power of timelessness. Daoists utilize time in healing by adjusting to various cycles, both man-made and natural, as well as through exercises, divination, and meditation, aiming to overcome the limitations of biological determination, flowing with subtle cosmic currents, and reach a state of unified perfection in the ultimate fulfillment of healing.
BIO
Livia Kohn, Ph. D., is Professor Emerita of Religion and East Asian Studies at Boston University. The author and editor of sixty-plus books and over a hundred articles, she gives lectures, runs workshops, and serves as the executive editor of Three Pines Press.
Cynthia Hajjar
Sacred Home, Sacred Self: Feng Shui Principles for Living in Harmony
Saturday, October 4, 10:30 – 11:30 EST
Discover how to transform your home into a sacred, high-vibrational space using Feng Shui. In this presentation, Cynthia Hajjar shares practical techniques for applying the Bagua map to land, home, and room layouts, while integrating color therapy, directional energy, crystals, music, and sacred objects like flowers and incense. Rooted in spiritual tradition and holistic design, this session offers accessible tools to bring balance, intention, and harmony into every corner of your living space.
BIO
Cynthia is a sustainability consultant and holistic practitioner with over 25 years of experience creating nature-based education programs that inspire children and adults to connect with the natural world. Holding Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Sustainability, Environmental Management, and Psychology from Harvard University Extension School, she blends environmental science, human development, and holistic healing practices to promote balance and well-being. Through her private consulting practice, she guides individuals and families in cultivating ecological harmony and spiritual awareness using tools such as Feng Shui, astrology, herbal medicine, sound and color therapy, and sacred space design. Certified as a Universal Life Church Minister, Master Teacher in Magnified Healing, Herbalist, and Raw Food Chef, she weaves diverse traditions into an integrated approach to living consciously and in alignment with nature’s rhythms.
Louis Komjathy
ON THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF ‘DAOIST MEDICINE’”
Saturday, October 4, 11:45 – 12:45 EST
This presentation is a contemplative inquiry, a public thought-experiment if you will, on the (im)possibility of “Daoist medicine.” The latter is increasingly being employed without the requisite religious literacy about Daoism as such or critical reflection on the use and misuse of this modern category. In the current presentation, I will begin with some reflections on conceptions of illness and earlier attempts to identify traditional Chinese medical trajectories related to Daoism. Next, I will outline what I consider to be more viable frameworks for (re)imagining and possibly reconstructing something along the lines of pre-modern “Daoist medicine.” This will include a more general typology with reference to specific historical periods and Daoist movements. I will conclude by exploring some dimensions that may be relevant for an applied, committed, and lived/living approach to the topic of illness and wellness from a tradition-based Daoist perspective. In the process, I hope to encourage and ideally inspire deeper investigation of the relationship between classical Chinese medicine and the Daoist tradition. This relates to what I refer to as New Daoist Studies (NDS) and more recently Global-Critical Daoist Studies (GCDS), or a decolonial and de-Orientalist Daoist Studies.
BIO
Louis Komjathy 康思奇/修靜/萬瑞 (United States), Ph.D. (Religious Studies; Boston University), is Director, Chóngxuán 重玄 Chair, and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Daoist Studies 道學中心 (est. 2003), the education and research branch of the Daoist Foundation 道教基金會 (est. 2007). A leading international Daoist scholar-practitioner and translator of Daoist literature, he has published fourteen books and some thirty academic articles and book chapters, including translations of forty Daoist texts to date. His most recent book-length publications include Dàodé jīng 道德經: A Contextual, Contemplative and Annotated Bilingual Translation (Square Inch Press, 2023) and Traces of a Daoist Immortal: Chén Tuán 陳摶 of the Western Marchmount (Brill, 2024). He is currently working on Daoist commentaries on the Dàodé jīng 道德經 (Scripture on the Dao and Inner Power) and Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 (Book of Master Zhuang), among other projects. He is also an ordained Daoist priest of the Huàshān 華山 (Mount Hua) lineage (26th generation; ord. 2006) of Quánzhēn 全眞 (Complete Perfection) Daoism. Along these lines, he is the featured Daoist scholar-practitioner in Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality (University of Chicago Press, 2017). He lives in semi-seclusion in Ravinia, Illinois, with his wife Kate Townsend 唐鄉恩/抱靜/萬清 and dog-companion Takota (Friend-to-Everyone).
Stargazer Li
Divinatory Conversation with the Seasonality Dances of Sun, Moon, and Earth
Saturday, October 4, 1 – 2 pm EST
Participants are invited into embodied divinatory conversation with the actualness of the seasonality dances of Sun, Moon, and Earth, as experienced and expressed two ways: in the YiJing Tidal Hexagrams and Originating Sky BaGua interplay of light & shadow
in the Trailing Sky BaGua tracings of the temple house of Sun and Moon. Engaging in direct relatedness with these diverse expressions of yang and yin directionality and seasonality teaches us, through lived experience, ever-deepening ways of perceiving
and moving with the organic, here and now unfolding of rhythmic change…
For more than two decades, Stargazer Li, aka Cheryl “Li” Walter, Ph.D., has been conversing with the Universe and Keeping Time as a way of life. Her highly unique approach involves deep presence in engaging with the unfolding story of the moment, living natural rhythms, offering starry experiences under the night sky, making and sharing planetary essences and essence elixirs, and generally geeking out on the amazingness of life.
Li has conversed with the YiJing for more than four decades. Her deepening into living Chinese cosmology developed through a decade of living inside a home and land (where she built an open-field Stumphenge aligned with the solstices and equinoxes) that was daily storied by the living cosmology of black Sun birds cawing in the Mulberry tree of East in the mornings and flying in from all directions to honor sunset in the Ruo tree of West, before overnighting along the convergence of two creeks in the watery North. This experience shaped her being through a profound experience of mythopoetic grace.
In recent years, Li has been invited by Life into reading and remembering cosmological experiences and ways of relating from which the ancient Chinese characters and bagua emerged, and has since been deeply engaged in learning, rehydrating, teaching, and expressing an intimate, Dao-ish sense of ecosystemic aliveness.
Lorraine Wilcox
Did Ancient Doctors Divine?
Saturday, October 4, 2:15 -3:15 pm EST
As I’ve read ancient Chinese medical texts, I’ve looked for stories or guidance on medical divination. We know medical divination has always occurred, but I was surprised to find that ancient doctors did not write about it. They may have practiced it, but they did not admit it in their texts, even when they wrote about adjacent topics. This talk explores the question through translations of the writings of scholar physicians from imperial China.
Lorraine Wilcox became a licensed practitioner of Chinese medicine in California since 1989. Soon after, she taught herself to read medical Chinese and texts on divination, day selection, and fēngshuǐ. Wilcox has translated six ancient medical books, including Tán Yǔnxián’s Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor (Nǚyī Záyán). Her next publication will be the 19th-century text Medical Cases from the Flower Charm Studio (Huāyùn Lóu Yī’àn) by Gù Déhuá.
Angelica Devis
Live Your Virtues from the Refinement of Your Emotions – Five Element Theory Applied to Daily Life
Sunday, October 5, 9:15 – 10:15 AM EST
Acquiring emotions is part of the path. Learning how to name them, what triggers them, where to feel them in the body, and then to be able to accept them, will give you a clear way to follow.
Using the five element to support each other so you can really integrate as one will give you the discernment, courage, and wisdom to express your true self.
BIO
Angelica Devis walks the path where science meets spirit. Trained first as a medical doctor and anesthesiologist in Colombia, she later followed her calling to Traditional Chinese Medicine, studying acupuncture at Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and earning advanced credentials in Medical Qigong at International College of Medical Qigong in the US. Her devotion to Daoist wisdom has taken her to sacred mountains in China, where she was initiated as a Daoist priest in the Long Men tradition of the 22nd generation of the Quanzhen lineage, Qing Cheng Shan. For 14 years, she has shared Qigong across Colombia and the U.S., weaving her clinical knowledge with ancient healing traditions. She is known for creating spaces where movement flows into stillness, awareness opens into connection, and community becomes a source of empowerment and renewal.
Henry McCann
Tung’s Acupuncture and Distant Point Needling: Understanding Connection and Resonance
Sunday, October 5, 10:30 – 11:30 AM EST
BIO
Dr. Henry McCann, DAOM, LAc, 馬爾博 is a practitioner of East Asian medicine with a clinical practice in New Jersey. He is the author of Practical Atlas of Tung’s Acupuncture and Pricking the Vessels: Bloodletting Therapy in Chinese Medicine. He regularly lectures worldwide on various aspects of East Asian medicine and is on the faculty for several schools in the United States.
Dr. McCann is a lineage holding disciple of Chen Taijiquan (12th generation), Hunyuan Taijiquan (3rd generation), Cheng Baguazhang (6th generation), and a system of Daoist Neigong that originated with Chen Tuan.
Dolly Yang
Medieval Chinese Therapeutic Exercises
Sunday, October 5, 11:45 – 12:45 PM EST
In this presentation, I will give an overview of the history of Chinese therapeutic exercises, known as Daoyin, between the 3rd century BCE, when the earliest extant sources related to Daoyin were recorded, to the 7th century CE, when Daoyin became institutionalized as a key component of state medicine. This development reflected the centralizing power of the Sui dynasty, which unified China after nearly 400 years of political fragmentation since the Han period. Participants will have the opportunity to practice some daoyin exercises from the Zhubing yuanhou lun (Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Medical Disorders), a 7th-century state-sponsored medical text compiled under the decree of the second Sui Emperor. These exercises were intended to be prescribed by physicians during the Sui period. They could also potentially be incorporated into medical prescriptions by practitioners of Chinese medicine today who recognize the therapeutic benefits of these exercises, as well as by individuals for their health and well-being.
BIO
Dolly Yang is a researcher of premodern Chinese medicine and bodily practices. Born in Taiwan, she moved to the UK in 1992, earning a first-class degree in Religious Studies from the University of Wales and a PhD from University College London on therapeutic exercise in Sui China. A former postdoc at Academia Sinica, she now works as a freelance researcher, editor, and translator. She co-edited Asian Medicine (2021, 2024) and the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (2024). She teaches tai chi and qigong and facilitates an online study group on medieval Chinese therapeutic exercises based on her first book, Exercise Prescription in Sui China (581–618 CE). She is currently writing her second book on horse medicine in premodern China.
Master Zhou Xuan Yun
Divination with Traditional Chinese Medicine
Sunday, October 4, 1 – 2 PM EST
BIO
Founder of the Daoist Gate Center, a non-profit organization, Master Zhou’s mission is to promote cross-cultural East and West understanding and Daoist solidarity. At 13, Master Zhou was sent to live on Wudang Mountain, where he was a student and later an instructor of Taiji, Kung Fu, and Qi Gong. Living at the Daoist Association Martial Arts Academy, in the Purple Cloud Temple, he was accepted into the 24th generation of the Wudang Long Men (Lóng ménpài 龙门派) lineage. At 16, he vowed to become a Daoist Monk and began his study of Daoist philosophy and religious practices. He was trained in ritual arts, chanting, divination, and internal alchemy. Master Zhou is a formally recognized disciple of Master Li Guang Fu 李光富, the Chairman of the Chinese Daoist Association (中国道教协会会长). Master Zhou divides his time between teaching at the center and abroad.