waters of winter :: how slow can we go?
book release [ daoyin prescriptions ] + wild tea_death/rebirth_divination_tattoo acupuncture
It’s been a whole season, since last sharing. I’ve become much more insular about how and what I share, altering my relationship to urgency and learning to slow down into a way of resting, that I’ve never known before.
As winter comes further in, I reflect on how much I’ve changed since I moved to the West Coast. How I’ve migrated to the land of the white tiger, the land where my grief can live unabashed, unafraid, unbound to the feeling of turbulence beneath and around me. Weaving into a new geography, knowing very few people here has wrung out the remnants of what I left from childhood, from a city that encouraged a level of expansion, that fissures formed to reveal rotting wood in the crevices. A place I would coil so far into myself, that constrain became a coping comfort.
I would take on personas, masks that I never made, ones I never carved, smoothed, or painted myself. I would wear them as if they were my own, momentarily mitigating my pain, so I could press on.
I’m learning to take things slow—
amidst all of it—
to feel again…
At the end of September, I started a dear friend, death doula, artist, writer, Mangda’s BACII | YU:EXIST A Death and Rebirth Journey.
My bones were trying to tell me, how much the ghost of grief was holding—gripping my body like someone who’s already gone, staring at cave walls without wanting or knowing a tunnel to carry me out.
My admiration and respect for Mangda and her work has connected me to her since 2017, a year after my mom left her body. We met in the flesh, for the first time in 2023 and felt a kind of eerie parallel and kinship, to where my grief, my trust could be held with her.
Among many of her offerings, ’s newsletter helps keep in the loop about all the incredible depth of projects and rituals. It was with YU : EXIST, I was held in emulating my own death, to write my last words, and to move through things I have not allowed myself to feel before.
As I continue to question what intimacy means to me, this was an opening to what that could feel like in my body. Releasing the need to preserve it for a particular way of expression, rather unfurling into a fluidity that gave me freedom to forget the freneticism of the world. How much of me still knew how to let go?
It’s almost familiar, the sense of doing the most—to a fault. A space of inhibition where my bones frost into ice, my tenderness immobile, my precious power proselytized to fear. All my body knew was how to do. I am grateful for this space to grieve in a way where that ghost can be witnessed, to be warm with other phantoms, waiting to exist together.
Grief has come in many forms, not just in the form of loss, but in the form of an opening, a small space of return. For me, grief has become a place of continuity, a strange place of safety—when trying to grapple with daily dysfunction and dystopic delusion, how can we come back to the places, the people, the things, that make us feel that we’re not alone—that we are a part of something that will circulate and cradle us. When we feel that things are out of our hands, out of our control, where is our center?
As things leave my body, I thank them for helping me get to a place where I can feel myself again. I remember what it’s like to feel excited to learn again, to try new things, and to lean away from isolation.
As the season shifts to winter, from Dragon to Snake, I’m reminded in my dear friend, Meng, aka Miss TangQ : 余華夢, artist, teacher, geomancer, bāzì and [ 易經 ] ì chīng divinator of TIGER EYE ASTROLOGY. Her lecture, Daoist Gate // Yu Hua Meng: From Dragon to Snake: Visions of Hybridity and the Strange, can be briefly summarized: we are leaving a year where the thunder has struck and has left a crevice for the snake to restore, to decompose with the yin wood that lays at the bottom, as mycelial networks breaks down to bridge the dead to life.
Before my trip to Duwamish Lands, so-called Seattle, at the end of August—I had a consult with Flo, who just before ours, had a reading from, Meng. Transformation, resting/stepping into a new era, along with a double horse bāzì placement, we synchronistically collaborated on a piece that involved the meridians of the calf and other energetics from Flo’s chart.
The calf culminates the tail end of the bladder meridian, a channel that eliminates what’s no longer needed. In this particular area, there are two major acupuncture points [ 承山 chéngshān - support/recieve the mountain + 飛陽 fēiyáng - soaring toward yang ]. The bladder channel is the yang pair to the yin, kidney channel—they are inextricably bonded with the element of water. The bladder channel creates a reservoir of ancestral origins that the kidneys hold, aiding in undam [n] ing us for what needs to pass through, and nourish the natural path water wills to move.
This piece incorporates the three levels; heaven, person, and earth—as well as the energetics of the upper, middle, and lower burners ( 上中下焦 ). By working with the transformation of the triple burner, 三焦sānjiǎo, the water can bubble, churn, evaporate, to be returned to the cycle.
As water 💧 is what we are made of, they are the most sentient life form on this earth… what if we let water guide, in all aspects of life?
Thank you to Sorry Sorry Sea Studio, love you Raychelle!
I had the pleasure of being served tea at Blue Willow Teaspot—by 劉蕊 Rui Liu, a Guizhou 贵州 native, founder of GRASS PEOPLE TREE. A woman of deep wisdom and wit, she works together with, “wild… primeval forests (beyond organic,” indigenous tea trees that are 300-1,500 years old. They use slow, seasonal, ancient methods to uplift the natural and medicinal benefits.
A letter by Rui (Ray) from her GPT website:
Dear friends of the world, I hope you are well.
Thank you for visiting the digital landscape of my home: Guizhou. My name is Rui (pronounced as “Ray”) and I am the founder of Grass People Tree.
As a girl growing up in the wild mountains, I spent my days floating amongst the water buffaloes in the river and watching the fishermen on their bamboo rafts with their hungry pelicans diving for fish. Before primary school, I was taught first by mother nature and by my community which lived and worked in harmony with nature.
When I was old enough to hang out in the tea house, besides school, I got to learn from the elders around the tea table. The oldest one, of course, being the tea itself. Each and every day, wisdom, guidance, and untold stories were passed down through countless cups of tea. Growing up I didn't realise how precious this way of living and learning was, until 2008 when I moved to the West.
What I experienced was a world so fast-paced that I felt constantly overwhelmed, exhausted and confused. I started sharing tea with friends in London who felt the same way and, through intentional sitting with tea, we were able to step out of the tension and complexities, to hold a grounding place for us city dwellers to return to nature, to the naturalness of ourselves.
I began to understand the importance of that silent teaching from tea and how our elders were showing us the wisdom of simple, intentional living. I also began to realise that its lack in the modern world has resulted in both conscious and unconscious degrees of pain, anxiety and imbalance that we experience in our daily lives.
I founded GPT so that the hidden benefits of tea drinking can become more accessible, relatable and practical to more people. Five thousand years ago in China, tea was first made as medicine. Beyond treating acute, physical symptoms, tea was applied to enrich us with the “big vision”: a holistic and preventative approach to life that cultivates our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, with the critical recognition that we are part of nature and are all interconnected.
When the Chinese words for “grass” “people” and “tree” are put together, they transform into the word “tea” 茶 (Chá).
Tea is the art that cultivates the harmonious relationship between humans and nature; it is the container of ancient wisdom.
So whether it is a journey to enjoy the flavours or health benefits of our tea, to learn the ways to brew and styles of rituals, to look within and explore self-love and empowerment, or to become a facilitator for what the world desperately needs… What we’ll have received in the cup is entirely based on the clarity of our intention and the quality of our open-mindedness.
Welcome to the forests, the mountains and their inexhaustible ways of making you smile. Wherever the journey takes you, may each cup be the vessel for your soft landing.
With love and gratitude,
劉蕊 Rui Liu
Here is one project I’m really excited to share with you all. Towards the end of summer, beginning of autumn, a three-year-involved collaboration was finally released to the public by Purple Cloud Press: Exercise Prescription in Sui China (581–618 CE) by Dolly Yang (Translator) and Mugen Chiang (Illustrator).
It was such an immense pleasure to work with Dr. Dolly Yang. She’s a profound historian, translator, and gifted writer, with her expansive thinking and way of orienting to the world.
As we got to know each other more over the years, I’ve come to learn that Dolly is truly an amazing person, through and through. I feel blessed to have gotten a chance to illustrate these postures in the first English translation of this medieval text. She would send me images of her interpretations of the prescriptive poses and I would re-create them.
“In a highly innovative medical endeavour initiated by Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty (r. 604–618 CE), as part of his radical medical reforms, therapeutic exercises, known as daoyin, were brought together in a medical text entitled Zhubing yuanhou lun諸病源候論 (Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Medical Disorders). Essentially a nosological text, Zhubing yuanhou lun gives descriptions of 1739 diseases under 71 categories. It also details approximately 200 different daoyin exercises for treating various diseases. The inclusion of daoyin in this state-sponsored text created a more formal and standardised approach to the teaching and learning of these exercises and facilitated their prescription by doctors to their patients.
Exercise Prescription in Sui China (581–618 CE) gives a complete translation by Dr. Dolly Yang of the daoyin exercises in Zhubing yuanhou lun with 250 illustrations by Mugen Chiang, transforming the written descriptions into visual guides for readers to explore and practise. With the original Chinese text alongside an English translation, this book will assist those seeking to immerse themselves in these ancient therapeutic exercises, previously accessible only to a Chinese readership, enabling a wider readership to unlock long-hidden treasures and discover their transformative potential.”
You can find a review of the book by renowned doctor, Henry McCann, DAOM, LAc, Dipl OM on his Institute for Classical Asian Medicine website. For anyone interested in getting a glimpse into Dolly’s mind and into the book.
In her interview on podcast, DAOI Talks, she shares with us that a unique attribute of this book is that it’s one of the only known curative, rather than preventative, dǎoyǐn 導引, yǎngshēng 養生, or qìgōng 氣功 texts. She also touches on how the zhūbìngyuánhòulùn 諸病源候論 (Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Medical Disorders) was originally created as a way to unify healing for folx of privilege during that time.
Something of deep interest to me, is how holistic can Chinese/Asian medicine really be? I believe in offering a vast spectrum of tools for the practitioner and patient to try in their healing journey. Generally when we think of allopathic or “Western” medicine, it’s often through the lens of pharmaceutical prescriptions, surgery, taking blood, testing, etc.
What if the methodology of Asian medicine gives us agency to feel what is right for our own bodies? To give every day people access to their own healing?
If you have read or tried some of these prescriptions, please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences here :)
STORIES OF INTEREST:
+ Kaguya-Hime, Bamboo Cutter and The Moonlight Princess
+ No Name Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston
OTHER OFFERINGS:
+ Daoist Sister and Teacher Lindsey Wei 誠靈 just announced her new Water Taiji and I Ching Immersion from April 2-8, 2025 at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Detroit, OR.
+ Daoist Sister and Teacher LoAn Guylaine Tran 誠風 is currently offering a six-month, “…dawn and dusk liturgy (早晚功课 Zao wan gong ka) is a ritual practiced daily in the temples of the Daoist lineage of the Dragon Gate of Complete Reality (全真龙门 Quan zhen long men) through China.” Although the course has begun, I encourage folx to take a look at her offerings: 武当韵玄门早课 Dawn liturgy of the Mystery Gate in Wudang musical style.
DONATIONS/MUTUAL AID:
+ Consider following + Highly Human IG (if you haven’t already) who just put on an incredible Part II event in Tongva Land, so-called LA, CA—Divine Tropika! Her gift to bring queer community together, to center social justice, spiritual practice, I am so grateful to know such an expansive, loving being. Below are QR codes where folx could donate at the DT event:
As time moves, I’m learning to heal old wounds that made it hard for me to find my voice, to write and share in earnest. Thank you, again, for your patience as I continue to discover how and what to share with y’all, as this process can be deeply internal and lately, more time is spent in yin gestation, rather than externalizing into yang.
Please keep caring for yourself and each other, build and support your community and find new ways to love in collective liberation.
Much love,
mugen
Loved reading through all these offerings and reflections on slowness 💙💙💙