Invite a Magical Flow into your Life
An article explaining Tai Chi for Enlightenment
by Michael Winn

As adults, we must keep our inner will power involved, or outer stress may bog down our natural enlightenment process. Stress and trauma are just the scattering or suppression of your personal chi and spirit until you gradually lose your will to live. That's why most adults are slowly exhausted by life. They don't have a strong energetic or spiritual centre that lets them bounce back.
People lack the proper tools to help them focus their chi or concentrate their spirit in one centre. That leads us to seek the religion or spiritual path of our choice in the hope that a God or power beyond us will help us. Tai Chi for Enlightenment is compatible with any religious belief.
People used to be worried that yoga was a weird eastern religion, and now its is commonly taught in Christian church centres. Some Western fundamentalists have tried to demonise Taoism, but that will also fade away as people learn about spiritual science. Taoists in China accept all religions as carrying valid truth for their believers. Tao is neutral and natural. It is simply the "Way" our inner self unfolds. In China it is common to hear a Buddhist or a Confucianism to say that they follow the Tao. My first Taoist teacher, Mantak Chia, is also a Christian; his mother was a minister. He is both Taoist and Christian. Invite a Magical Flow into your Life!
By Michael Winn

About 800 years ago Chang San Feng was the founder of the original Tai Chi Chuan 13-movement form for self-defense. It was a gentle form focused on the yielding principles of the Tao, so monks could defend themselves from bandits without falling into aggressive killing techniques that would spoil their spiritual path.

But few are aware that Grandmaster Chang San Feng created a second short form that applied tai chi for enlightenment rather than self-defense. It also has 13 movements: 12 movements of Earth and one movement of Heaven that is done 50 times, ten times in each of the five directions. It was secretly practiced by a lineage of Taoist masters for the last 800 years.

This secret Tai Chi for Enlightenment form was taught to me by the 81-year old Zhu Hui, a kindly Chinese master with a smile that made your heart melt. (You can see him in the video). He says the form cured his liver cancer and protected him from violent abuse during the Cultural Revolution. He learned it from a 106-year old Taoist Master Li Tong, who lived on Wudang Mountain. Zhu Hui was the national tai chi sword champion of China when he was younger, and Master Li Tong took a liking to him.

Wudang Mountain is where Chang San Feng lived in the 13th century, a mystical mountain recently made famous by the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In his time Chang San Feng was mostly famous as a spiritual sage and adept of inner alchemy, not as a martial artist. The Emperor of China sent 30,000 men to build a temple on Wudang Mountain, just to curry favor with him. Refusing to appear at the Imperial court, Chang San Feng instead disappeared at age 95 into the wild Wudang Mountains. He then, according to written records, re-appeared regularly for hundreds of years afterward to teach people the secrets of the Tao. This reappearing act is how he got a reputation for being a "Tao immortal".

Tai Chi for Enlightenment was never taught to outsiders until a few years ago. I am one of the first teachers certified to teach it in the West. In China it was kept secret for 800 years mostly because it was considered too powerful to be released to an untrained public.

Fortunately for us, times have changed. This secret tai chi form has now escaped from China's mystical mountains and can be at your doorstep within days

What exactly is Tai Chi for Enlightenment?

This secret Tai Chi for Enlightenment form combines tai chi, feng shui, chi kung (qigong), and inner alchemy, a powerful form of Taoist meditation. It is designed to capture the "subtle breath" or chi ("qi") flow of Heaven and Earth, and fuse it into the human body. It gathers chi inward to the core of one's being in graceful beautiful, effortless spirals. Energetically, it is the opposite of martial tai chi forms. They emit chi outwardly for self-defense or focus on manipulating an opponent's chi.

Tai Chi for Enlightenment gradually dissolves all the physical and karmic layers of tension in both your physical and Energy Body. It ultimately opens up a profound inner space inside your body, where your Original Spirit, the "face of your soul before you were born", can reveal itself. This inner space is called "wuji" (Supreme Unknown).

The design of the form incorporates every aspect of Tao theory: Yin-Yang body channels, 5 Elements vital organ and seasonal cycles, feng shui (directionology) of the 8 Trigram forces (Pakua), water and fire alchemy, the 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Branches of the Chinese calendar, body-spirit and microcosm-macrocosm resonance, Taoist sexual-numerology, jing-chi-shen-wu stages of inner alchemy, tai chi body movement principles, Original Chi -Tai Chi -Wuji cosmology. It is truly amazing how much is packed into one tiny little form!

At the time Chang San Feng created this form, Chinese spiritual culture had elevated the science of inner alchemy to its highest peak. This secret tai chi form can be considered one of the crown jewels of China's spiritual development, the result of generations of previous Tao masters focusing deeply on developing a practical science of change. Inner alchemy is simply a way of speeding up your natural energetic evolution. Yet you don't have to understand the dynamics of internal alchemy to activate this quickening, because it is built into this tai chi form.

If you want to explore the secrets of inner alchemy I have written numerous articles about this topic. Inner alchemy is older than Lao Tzu, older than the ancient Chinese Dragon chart and Turtle Writing (magic square) from which the I Ching is derived. I did decades of research, but my greatest source was practice of the Seven Alchemy Formulas for Immortality transmitted from a Taoist hermit named One Cloud to Mantak Chia to me. These seven alchemy formulas are from the same period as Chang San Feng's secret Tai Chi form.

It was my twenty years practice of inner alchemy meditation that allowed me to recognize and decode Chang San form. Zhu Hui did not have training in inner alchemy, although he knew the form was derived from it. I've incorporated this tai chi form into my higher level alchemy training. The tai chi form doesn't change, but you are able to use to connect to more subtle forces.
But most people don't need and aren't ready for that level of information or meditation skill. All they need a simple, graceful, easy to learn, easy to practice, in the body form that effortlessly does it

Who can benefit from Tai Chi for Enlightenment?
This Tai Chi for Enlightenment form is so magical that almost anyone who does it - including rank beginners here in the West - has profound feelings of deep soul centering and expanded chi flow. These can best be described as enlightenment experiences. More incredible, it doesn't go away, but gets better with practice. Repeat practice of the form deepens the blissful sense of peace, the feeling of returning to your true inner self.
Who may practice it? Any age, race, sex or religious group. No previous training in any form of tai chi, chi kung, or meditation is required. Both the sick and weak as well as healthy and strong benefit from it. The amount of space needed is minimal - an area of about three feet by three feet (a square yard) is enough. Nor is it limited by the weather such as cold or hot, rainy or windy, unlike most tai chi and chi kung forms.
Although the form is designed for Enlightenment, it has many beneficial medical effects. Dr. Zhu Hui had a major clinic in China and used it to treat more than ten types of chronic diseases, especially heart diseases and high blood pressure, and for people with weak kidneys or chi deficiency.
This form is also recommended to Seniors who might injure their knees with more vigorous forms. This form puts no stress on the physical body, and uses easy weight shifts and balanced movements to activate the Energy Body. Few seniors are interested in martial applications anyway, and will find more joy and grace in these movements. Seniors are also at a time in their life when they seek completion, and this form helps to achieve a sense of internal completion.

This form is amazingly easy to learn. It is so simple to practice you literally don't even have to think. This "not thinking" state is also one of the pre-requisites to allowing your own Enlightenment process to naturally unfold!

Can Enlightenment conflict with my religious beliefs?
Trust that enlightenment is a gradual process, even if it has big or dramatic moments. It's not a fixed event or state defined by someone else or by some strange cult. Everyone is eligible to experience enlightenment - it's our birthright as humans. When a child first learns to tie their shoe, that is a mini-moment of enlightenment.
There are an infinite number of such moments possible. All these mini-moments can become a continuous flow of greater enlightenment. But we must initiate and support the process, or it simply won't continue to happen. Many adults sadly have given up on recovering the natural enlightenment they spontaneously felt as children. Kids feel immortal, like they are living in a timeless universe of endless discovery - because that is their actual reality! But we don't have to abandon that state!

Simply practicing Tai Chi for Enlightenment focuses your inner will to be enlightened. We could use religious language and say it awakens the God power hidden within you. It would also be appropriate to describe this tai chi process as "God helps those who help themselves".

This special tai chi form automatically centres you in your own being. When you do the form, your inner sense of divine power meets your ego body-mind halfway, and they do a sacred dance together. Whether you want to call it the spirit of Tao Immortals or Holy Spirit or Buddha nature or sub-atomic quarks having a party that is your own private business.

Why is spiritual lineage important in this Tai Chi form?

Believe me, I am very sceptical of most lineage claims after 25 years of testing over 60 different internal arts systems. A lot of Chinese lineage claims are just a way to protect someone's fragile ego by associating themselves with venerable "ancestors". They don't have to prove themselves, because the lineage claim does it for them. It's also used as a way to discourage students from studying with other teachers, as they are threatened with dishonouring their ancestral lineage.
Most publicly taught lineages in China are fairly modern styles. Under scrutiny, they really only go back one or two hundred years (as opposed to 800 years). Most tai chi chuan lineages lead to martial artists, people who made their living as bodyguards, not as spiritual masters. This has led to a common blindness among modern martial artists - they don't know the difference between "powerful chi" and "high spiritual presence". Westerners think bigger is better. But "big chi + lack of spiritual refinement = Big Demon" in the Tao spiritual tradition.

The day Zhu Hui first taught me this enlightenment form; I was in a state of total resistance. I didn't even try to memorize the movements. I frankly thought this form was a wimpy version of "real" tai chi and that I would never repeat it again! Master Zhu looked at me while I was practicing in this state of total resistance and out of the blue said, "you will be an excellent teacher of this". I smiled back politely, but said to myself, "Fat chance!". Obviously, Zhu's inner vision proved to be a lot clearer than mine.

I totally discounted at the time Zhu's explanation that this form actually came from Chang San Feng, the founder of tai chi chuan. How many times had I heard THAT story from self-important egotistical martial artists? Later I had Zhu Hui's book translated, and saw that he had done very thorough research into the historical records on Chang San Feng (which are contradictory and thus incite wide dispute amongst historians).

Zhu also had the benefit of the 106-year-old Taoist monk Li's oral history as an insider at Wudang Mountain. You only need six or seven more Taoist adepts like him to get back to Chang San Feng. Tao adepts are famous for their longevity. Note that famous martial artists in China don't seem to live longer. It's the spiritual art that is key.

It was only a few minutes after I first learned Tai Chi for Enlightenment that the immediate powerful chi astounded me flow in my body and felt a profound shift in my soul. I felt my heart tingling and opening in a way I never had before. There was a new quality of presence in me. Since I teach Taoist meditation, which is deeply embodied, I am quite aware of what is going on inside me at many different levels. At first I thought, "this can't be real, maybe I am just feeling ultra sensitive today".
So I taught it to my wife Joyce Gayheart as an objective test. She is a 35 year seasoned veteran of just about every alternative health-care, meditation and movement method ever taught, and is not easily wowed. Yet she immediately had the same "wow!" magical experience after practicing - just one time - Tai Chi for Enlightenment. She is now as addicted as I am. Addicted like the thousands of other "chi-aholics" from all walks of life to whom we have taught this form. Joyce uses Feldenkrais (lying down movements) and Taoist flower essences to help people go even deeper into the Tai Chi for Enlightenment experience. Her tai chi-feldenkrais tapes will be available shortly.

I spent years energetically analyzing how the ingenious design of this tai chi form worked its magic. Yet for all its richness and genius, I finally concluded that the presence of the lineage masters themselves is what makes the difference between a form that generates "strong chi flow" versus an "enlightenment experience of higher presence". I overcame my deep scepticism and now personally accept the likelihood of its origin with Chang San Feng.

But I do not distinguish him from other great Taoist adepts whose presence I feel when I do the form. Chang San Feng certainly had guidance in creating such an ingenious form and probably had to merge with his Immortal Tao guides to accomplish it. This is the really wild level of this Enlightenment form. When you do the form with a sincere heart, the fused Original Spirit of the Tao Immortals (known in the West as "ascended masters") show up and do it with you!

What is "Tai Chi mind" in Tao Cosmology?

These ascended Tao masters are said to hang out in a state of pure openness called wuji. It looks like emptiness, but its not. It is filled with the original Oneness, called in China Original Breath (Yuan Chi). Wuji is the Taoist equivalent of the Godhead, the direct doorway to the Tao itself, from which Original Chi first breathes life into Creation. Tao is the indefinable totality of Nature. It embraces non-being as well, so Tao is even beyond our concept of a Creator-God.
Wuji is thus like the Godhead without a God or Goddess sitting in it. It the closest that humans can aspire to returning to the Origin, the formless One source of all life before Creation begins birthing what Lao Tzu calls "the ten thousand things". The Tao Immortals only leave this Oneness state of pure potential if we sincerely call upon them to help us evolve spiritually. They will only meet us if we come halfway. Doing this Tai Chi form - created by a Tao Immortal - acts as a kind of sacred dance, a ritual communication between us humans and the Tao Immortals.

Tai Chi (or "taiga") is a cosmological term. "Tai Chi mind" refers to a state of consciousness. Tai chi literally means "Great Ultimate". It has nothing to do with martial arts. It is an enlightenment term, describing the stage where female yin (condensing) chi and male yang (expanding) chi flow in harmony. Tai Chi for Enlightenment helps us to cultivate Original Chi, which is what births all yin and yang chi, and maintains the harmony between them.

Tai Chi is the state of mind that precedes entrance into the higher Wuji state of Original Chi. Thus Tai Chi for Enlightenment is also called wuji qigong, meaning "skill at entering the Supreme Unknown". When we practice Tai Chi for Enlightenment, it signals to the Tao Immortals to help us open an effortless tai chi path between our human ego state and the Wuji state of original Oneness.

Why is this form spreading like wild flowers?
I will confess to you up front that I feel a subtle and steady spiritual pressure from these Tao Immortals. This is what is compelling me to share this valuable Tai Chi for Enlightenment video with you. In short, my primary motive is not to hustle a buck out of your wallet. I have enough money, and would be quite content to practice quietly by myself at home. This form is really spreading by itself, like wild flowers. Like me, everyone falls in love with the magical energies and gracious spirit embedded in the form. I urge you to pass on your experiences after you have learned the form. Seed some wildflowers of your own.
I have come to realize that nobody gains Enlightenment by individual effort. No man is an island. We have to help each other on this journey through life. I operate on the principle that your Enlightenment contributes to my Enlightenment, and vice versa. It has to - we all come from the same field of Being, called Original Spirit by the Taoists. Someday, I envision huge spontaneous gatherings of people doing this form as expressions of our communal spiritual solidarity.

How is martial Tai Chi different from Tai Chi for Enlightenment?

Please understand how very different Tai Chi for Enlightenment is from the Tai Chi Chuan martial art long forms taught today. "Chuan" means "fist". Most tai chi forms are designed for fighting, are complicated to learn, and take years to master the body skills needed to really get the chi flowing and understand the martial application of the movements.

I love these martial forms; they are a good workout for your joints and tendons. But you must have strong discipline and be ready to spend years in training, which I did. So I am speaking from experience when I say they are a worthwhile investment for the right type of person, but are not the best way to open up your Energy Body.

If you want to learn self-defense and at the same time want to strengthen your body's tendon and bone rooting power, you are best off learning a short 8 movement/5 directions form called tai chi kung. The book describing this form, The Inner Structure of Tai Chi , by Mantak Chia and Juan Li, is the best book that you will find on Tai Chi in a market glutted with mediocre texts.

It gives 9 levels of practicing the same form, i.e. it goes short and deep rather than long and wide like most tai chi books. This 13 movement Yang Family "inner form" - what they mainly practiced at home - was likely derived from Chang San Feng's original 13 movement 12th century tai chi chuan fighting form. But martial training alone won't deliver enlightenment, and doesn't claim to. If you want to both fight and be enlightened, the Tai Chi for Enlightenment form mixes well with any fighting form. Just do it at the end of your martial training session.

Is "health Tai Chi" different from "medical Chi Kung"?

Some modern teachers have simplified the long tai chi fighting forms down into simple stress-relief exercises that are also very nice. These simple "tai chi for health" forms are a bit closer to the origins of all martial tai chi chuan, which arose from what is known as "medical chi kung" (qigong). Think of chi Kung as the Mother of Tai Chi Chuan. Chi kung goes back at least 3000 years in recorded history, while the term "tai chi chuan" is only 800 years old. Chi kung was originally called "yang sheng" or "nourishing life", and probably goes back tens of thousands of years into pre-history. All tai chi is really just a modern application of ancient chi kung principles.

Chi kung activates your chi circulation in certain energy channels. I also teach China's most ancient shamanic forms of medical chi kung such as the Five Animals Play and Six Healing Sounds in my Chi Kung Fundamentals #1 audio-video course. This awakens the vital organ spirits in the body. Chi Kung Fundamentals #2 teaches you to Open Chi Flow in the Orbit, the most famous Taoist meditation for harmonizing yin-yang chi flow.

Chi Kung Fundamentals #3 is to open belly power (dantian) with Internal Chi Breathing and #4 opens your inner skeletal structure with Internal Bone Breathing and Rooting. Other chi kung forms are customized to build your kidney chi with Sexual Vitality Chi Kung. Deep Healing Chi Kung is a long form of medical chi kung mixed with internal alchemy for people with deep physical, emotional, and spiritual illness. I often recommend it to people with chronic or terminal illness (like cancer) in conjunction with the Tai Chi for Enlightenment.

Most of the medical chi kung practices I teach are short (five movements), easy to learn, and produce a very sweet chi flow. They are short because repetition is more important than variety to stimulate a particular effect, and I've found modern people will actually practice them if they are short.
Medical chi kung gives faster results for self-healing and building chi flow than martial tai chi forms, long or short. If you are only interested in improving your health, it is more effective to practice medical chi kung than simplified tai chi because the tai chi movements are originally designed for fighting. Both of them circulate your chi, but the direction of circulation for fighting is often not the best for healing.

Again, neither medical chi kung nor the recently re-invented "health tai chi" promises nor do they deliver the deep centering combined with expanded awareness that is characteristic of enlightenment. But they are a good preparation for Tai Chi Enlightenment. They deepen its effect by helping to stabilize chi and spirit functions in the body.

I teach other spiritual chi kung forms (known as "nei kung") such as Gods Playing in the Cauldron of Original Chi. This is more powerful when accompanied by the internal mind training of the Inner Sexual Alchemy (Lesser Water and Fire).

As a stand-alone practice I still recommend Tai Chi for Enlightenment. It is simply the best, most balanced; most all-inclusive, and most profound form yet created, and can be performed by anyone, at any level of skill, with powerful results.

To summarize, neither the long tai chi chuan fighting forms nor the shorter tai chi-chi kung health forms activate the Enlightenment process. In addition to the reasons cited above, it is also because most tai chi forms are based on cultivating earth chi. If you want to explore your soul's higher potential in life, and experience a feeing of unified energy quickly, buy the Tai Chi for Enlightenment video. It cultivates both earth chi, heaven chi, and human heart chi. It immediately activates your Energy Body and begins the process of awakening your Original Spirit. I assure you, if you buy it you will never regret it.

What guarantee do I have that this form delivers?

There is no way to guarantee enlightenment, as that involves subjective perception, which varies from person to person.

But I can make a guarantee to you - based on my reputation. This is built on 25 years teaching experience of yoga, tai chi, chi kung and meditation; as past President (two terms) of the National Qigong (Chi Kung) Association -USA; as President of Healing Tao University where I regularly hire the top masters in the world to teach a wide variety of Chinese internal arts systems for fighting and healing and enlightenment.

I am happy to put my international reputation on the line with a personal guarantee that Tai Chi for Enlightenment offers a much bigger "bang for the buck" than ANY long tai chi martial form or ANY simplified tai chi health exercise. Practice the enlightenment form for a couple of weeks. If you do it fast, it takes 12 minutes. If you slip into a meditative trance, it can go 15-25 minutes. Is Enlightenment worth that much of your time? If I am wrong, just send the video back for a full refund, no questions asked.

Please consider the cost of the video itself as essentially FREE - you are really just covering my cost of producing and delivering this precious gift to you. A few remaining dollars are donated to a non-profit foundation whose sole mission is to spread Taoist spiritual science. The real "buck" you are paying is the time you invest learning something new vs. the return you get energetically and spiritually from the practice of it.

For me, the return-on-investment was so much bigger compared to other forms that I immediately stopped teaching martial Tai Chi Chuan. I now only teach this Enlightenment form, along with medical chi kung. I still practice my martial tai chi long form, because I have already made that investment, and still get unique pleasure from it. Many of my students stop or reduce practice of other martial tai chi forms once they learn this form - because they quickly get ten times as much energy and spiritual bliss, and it is effortless!

Still sound too good to be true? I also thought so when I first discovered this form. You may ask, is there a hidden downside to doing this form? After teaching it for the last six years, I have found the main reason people quit doing the form is because they aren't ready to accept the higher spiritual energies that the form activates.

In short, Tai Chi for Enlightenment works too well! Some folks cannot handle its increased energy or the voice of their true self that begins to emerge. It's no problem, there are no major ill side effects; you just stop practice if it gets too intense. But most people are starved for more energy and spiritual centering. That is the kind of "downside" that I am happy to stand behind! The worst thing that can happen is that you might not feel enlightened. You might only experience improvements to your physical and psychological health from being more centred. Still a happy outcome.

To sum it up: If I were banished to a desert island, and could only practice one form,
it would be Tai Chi for Enlightenment.
All tai chi and chi kung forms are lovely,
but Tai Chi for Enlightenment is easy and graceful and wonderful and fantastic!

Importance of Smiling in Tai Chi

There is one other skill that will greatly speed your exciting journey to Enlightenment. It's the secret of Taoist inner soul alchemy, a simple practice called the Inner Smile. It assures that your innermost heart is present every moment of your daily life, and especially during your practice of Tai Chi for Enlightenment. It magically opens of your chi flow. One of my many masters taught me, "If you smile while practicing tai chi, your chi is ten times more powerful!" Some people think they can't meditate, but everyone knows how to smile. The power of Taoist meditation is always to tap what happens spontaneously in nature. The ancient masters had an extraordinary genius that allowed them to take a simple ability like smiling and turn it into a powerful pathway to Enlightenment.
Michael Winn 2003