Is that a core practice or how does that look? For someone who wants to practice this, can you talk about that practice?

Well, we have in Taoist practice, we have three main energy centers in our body, sometimes called elixir fields or dantians.

The first one is in our lower abdomen, directly behind our navel, which is a pretty large area.

And then the middle dantian is in the heart center, the upper dantian in the third eye center.

so correlating somewhat with yoga but the foundation of most of these qigong nadan meditation practices is working with the lower dantian putting our attention in our lower dantian which is also where our reproductive organs beginning of life when we're in our mama's belly in the womb all our nutrition is coming through our navel right through the umbilical cord And so when we are born into this world, that gets cut.

So our deep energetic connection to our mother gets cut.

And so we do a lot of work with, especially in the beginning, but even in many advanced Qigong practices, we're focusing on that lower Dan Tian.

I didn't know that.

When you first came into Taoist practice and Qigong, tea ceremony, and what has kept you so devoted to this path for so many years? Wow, great question.

I got involved with Eastern philosophy in 1968.

I think it was my last year in high school, and I lived in a little town called Methuen, Massachusetts, a little north of Boston.

And in my local library, I found a book by a guy from the next town over, Lowell, named Jack Kerouac, who had a very similar background of French-Canadian, Roman Catholic, working-class family as I had.

And he wrote a book called The Dharma of Bombs, which was a fairly thinly autobiography of himself, especially his relationship with Gary Snyder, who he had a different name for.

I can't remember the name he used.

I was raised in Rome Catholic, and those were the days when the mass was all done in Latin.

I know this is a big question, but can you talk about maybe some of the essence of Taoism that you find so healing for people? Well, Taoism

Is that a core practice or how does that look? For someone who wants to practice this, can you talk about that practice? Well, we have in

Taoist practice, we have three main energy centers in our body, sometimes called elixir fields or dantians.

The first one is in our lower abdomen, directly behind our navel, which is a pretty large area.

And then the middle dantian is in the heart center, the upper dantian in the third eye center.

So correlating somewhat with yoga, but the foundation of most of these qigong, neidan meditation practices is working with the lower dantian, putting our attention in our lower dantian, which is also where our reproductive organs, beginning of life, when we're in our mama's belly and the womb, all our nutrition is coming through our navel, right? Through the umbilical cord.

And so when we are born into this world, that gets cut.

So our deep energetic connection to our mother gets cut.

possible health reasons or things like that and so