The 2020 MogaDao GUAN

The MogaDao Practice Tradition

​

The MogaDao practice tradition encompasses 6 disciplines: MogaDao Qigong, MogaDao Yoga, Jingshen Gongfu, MogaDao Tripartite Meditation (Empty Sky Meditation, Floating Heart Meditation, Jing Retrieval), Depth Sexuality and the Erotic Basis of Being Program, and the Heartmind Warrior Training Program. These disciplines and programs represent Zhen Dao’s original contributions to the history of qigong, yoga, martial arts, meditation, sexuality studies, trauma studies, comparative religion, and Eastern philosophy.

​

The Depth Sexology and the Erotic Basis of Being Program enlarges the scope of human sexuality into broader considerations of eros that include the sociopolitical, the ecological, the creative, and the imaginative realms of being.

​

The Heartmind Warrior Training Program employs non-vigorous, soft Jingshen Gongfu training techniques that Zhen Dao has named “Neurogenic Exercises,” to develop the Jingshen capacity for “awareness in conflict” through extraordinary sensitivity, compassion, tenderness, mutual dependency, and self-awareness.

​

MogaDao derives from no prior culture in particular, but atmospheric antecedents of MogaDao might be found in aspects of the Samurai culture of Japan, with its emphasis on martial training, poetry, and theater; in the artistic Chan and Daoist culture of the Tang Dynasty, with its emphasis on refinement of movement and thought, meditation, and the healing arts; in the Greek School of Athens of Western antiquity, with its emphasis on dialogic inquiry and ethics; and in the Jungian school of the twentieth and twenty-first century, with its foundation in archetype and mythopoetic consciousness. All of these atmospheres have, to a lesser or greater degree, been inspirations for the creation of the culture of MogaDao.

​

​

The MogaDao Institute, Santa Fe, NM

​

The MogaDao Institute, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the main training location for all of the disciplines or techne of the MogaDao tradition. Additionally, the many certified MogaDao Teachers conduct classes and workshops all over the country and the world.

​

The curriculum at the MogaDao Institute is divided into semesters, much as with American universities. Each year there is also THE GUAN, which is the three month teacher training and practice immersion that takes place from mid-January to mid-April, at the MogaDao Institute. There are also GALAXIES, or comprehensive practice intensives focusing on a single MogaDao techne or discipline, throughout the year. And each year in November there is MogaDao’s COSMOS, the 5-day practice celebration of the entire tradition, which functions as a reunion for MogaDao Teachers and an introduction to all of the practices of the tradition for new students. The COSMOS is also the main venue for MogaDao’s “Village Testing,” or teacher certification testing supported by the vast practice community, students and teachers alike.

​

​

The Philosophy of Post-Daoism

​

The tradition of MogaDao is ontologically supported by the philosophy of Post-Daoism. “Post-Daoism” is a new branch of philosophy, created by Zhen Dao, incorporating the accumulated and matured thought of thirty years of original teaching, in order to establish her radical revaluations of “inherited” or classical Daoism. Post-Daoism represents a comprehensive revisioning of nearly all aspects of classical or inherited Daoism, including new understandings of Yin-Yang Theory and the introduction of a new Daoist essence: Yun; Post-Daoist 5-Realms Theory (as distinct from inherited 5-Element Theory); sexuality and queerness based on new understandings of the Jing, rather than standard Daoist harmonies of static notions of “Yin” and “Yang”; paradigm-shifting reconceptualizations of the three essences of TCM and inherited Daoism: Jing, Qi, and Shen; the teachings of the Erotic Basis of Being and the concept of the Heartmind as a spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic, and sociopolitical human responsibility; conceptions of violence and non-violence in a Post-Daoist universe; the place of desire in the spiritual life and in Post-Daoist cosmology; theories of immanence and transcendence through a Post-Daoist lens; and new Post-Daoist definitions of power and performance.

​

​

Taking Classes at the MogaDao Institute

​

Classes at the MogaDao Institute are taught by senior MogaDao Teachers and Zhen Dao. Beginners are always welcome. Every class has a felicitous mixture of new and seasoned students and MogaDao Teachers who are continuing to refine their training with Zhen Dao. As of 2019, the great majority of students studying at the MogaDao Institute have traveled here from across the United States and the world for immersive study. Many, though by no means all, of these visiting students are preparing for the teacher training program of MogaDao. But the curriculum classes at the MogaDao Institute are decidedly not only for students training to become teachers, but for those who are seeking personal and cultural healing, intellectual stimulation and the expansion of consciousness, and fitness training and camaraderie in an inclusive, sacred practice community. The atmosphere of all classes is welcoming, magnanimous, and devout.

​

​

Certification to Become a MogaDao Teacher

​

The annual GUAN is the certification training to become a MogaDao Teacher. Students are permitted to major in two MogaDao techne or disciplines per annual GUAN. Full immersive participation in the GUAN, plus participation in a MogaDao COSMOS, qualifies one to petition to test for teacher certification in the MogaDao tradition. Testing for MogaDao certification is an experience as beautiful as it is rigorous. MogaDao’s teacher certification program is decidedly non-consumerist: no student can “buy” a MogaDao teacher certification simply by enrolling in a GUAN and a COSMOS, but must additionally unequivocally demonstrate at their test the knowledge of their fields of study and the qualities of Teacher that will enable them to impart the work of MogaDao in their unique way.

​

​