Best known as coauthor of Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy. Writer-editor of seven of Mantak Chia's books.
The largest Tao arts program in the west, with a faculty of 20 masters and 30 retreats. Founder and Director of Healing Tao University summer retreat program (campus at Dao Mountain in New York's Catskill Mountains).The umbrella organization for all chi kung schools, teachers, healers, & practitioners in the U.S. Past President of the National Qigong (Chi Kung) Association for two terms.25 years experience in teaching subtle energy methods, which led to a medical chi kung therapy practice.Other worldly doings (for nervous types who trust resumes):
He leads regular trips to China to open the doorway between Western and Chinese internal alchemy adepts of the Tao. He has been an organizer of the National Qigong Annual Conference since its inception in 1997. Each year he invites top masters to teach at Healing Tao University such as Li Jun Feng and Wang Yan. Winn has traveled to China seven times, to meditate in the caves of its holy Tao mountains and sacred places, and to study medical chi kung in Beijing hospitals with the World Academic Medical Qigong Society. He studied Northern Wu style with David Dolbear (USA gold medalist) and his master Liu Jiang Chang in Beijing. His Wu style tai chi teacher was grandmaster Ed Yu in New York's Chinatown ( Mantak Chia's tai chi teacher). Frantzis and edited his first book, as well as several books for Tao master Ni Hua Ching. He studied with dozens of different masters, often only to get one superb movement or tiny but valuable insight they had. He tested over sixty different chi kung ( qigong) forms and Tao meditation systems. All this shaped his spiritual practice, but he always returned to his roots in the Tao because of its natural simplicity and practicality in honoring the body. He took many teachings and initiations with the Dalai Lama, and worked closely for years with Paramhamsa Hariharananda (successor in India to Yogananda), and edited his Bhagavad Gita in the Light of Kriya Yoga. He will release a book on this latter topic shortly. Besides various Daoist/Taoist schools, he studied tantric kundalini yoga, kriya yoga, dzogchen (Bon), Tibetan Buddhist vajrayana practices, and Atlantean internal alchemy (original, pre-Egyptian Kaballah). He hoped to find the most effective methods of improving health and refining spiritual awareness. During his wanderings, Winn began exploring different esoteric systems, mostly to "demystify" for himself the ancient Mystery Schools. He eventually switched from outer travel adventure to inner spiritual adventure.
He met his second and current wife, Joyce Gayheart, at a Healing Tao retreat in 1983. This was near the beginning of a long love affair with the Tao. In 19 he spent a total of five months following Marco Polo's route over the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and 4000 miles overland across China's vast western deserts and along the length of the Great Wall. He hitchhiked across the Sahara desert for another story. It ultimately led to their mass exodus back to their promised land in Israel.įor one of his stories he locked himself inside the Great Pyramid overnight. During this period Winn, a "goy" or gentile, organized and operated an "underground railway" that smuggled over twenty white Jewish missions into Ethiopia to bring medicine and support for a struggling tribe of Black Jews (falasha). He later opened Abyssinia Ethiopian Restaurant in New York's Soho in 1980, and ran it for 20 years as a side business. His first break came in 1978 when he was thrown into prison in Ethiopia during its civil war and got a scoop on the Soviets running its torture system. After getting fired from a New York publishing job for being "too creative", he succeeded as a war correspondent and photojournalist in Africa. His first wife was Ethiopian, Shamai (Candlelight) Abebe. Later he participated on a first descent of the upper gorges of the Mekong River in China. His first job was as a Grand Canyon white water guide, which led to him running a 1981 rafting expedition to North Yemen for National Geographic. He has visited 90 countries, a modern wandering Daoist (Taoist). Winn graduated from Dartmouth College in 1973 as a Senior Fellow in Russian and Comparative Literature. Chinese astrology typically looks at earthly feng shui influences as well as planetary forces. According to Tao master Ni Hua Ching's astrology reading, the Golden Gate, a symbolic bridge between Asia and America, shaped his destiny. Michael Winn was born in San Francisco's Presidio in 1951, next to the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. Michael Winn in inner smiling state (Photo taken after deep meditation).