Apricot Jam

Johan has a martial arts background which eventually brought him to the Five Immortals Temple where he spent more than 5 years under the tutelage of Li Shifu. There he studied a variety of subjects including Tai Ji, longevity exercises, Dao Yin (guiding and leading of Qi), alchemy, swordsmanship, martial arts, Feng Shui, Yi Jing (The Book of Changes) divination, Daoist healing, and entering the 24th Dragon Gate lineage. Johan currently works as a Chinese medicine practitioner, taiji and qigong teacher in a psychosomatic clinic near Cologne. He also co-founded Purple Cloud Press with the mission statement to preserve the ancient knowledge of China, especially in regards to medicine, martial arts and philosophy.

Jonathan (Jed) H Edwards, LAc practices East Asian Medicine with a focus on internal medicine. A longtime student of divination traditions from the Yijing to Jyotisa (Vedic astrology), he also deals with subtle/spiritual aspects of health. He finds that disease often falls away when people reorient their lives to include an understanding of karmic currents or the patterning of fate. 

Julia is Co-founder, Director and Liturgist at Heartward Sanctuary. She also founded The Flowjo and lovingly tended  the creative communities that gathered there for a decade. Passionate about movement as a healing practice, she facilitates movement and somatic-based grief work, ancestral healing practices, seasonal cycles and threshold work.

Julia is a certified Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner, Death Doula & Home Funeral Guide and is an Initiate of Osun and Obatalá in the Ifá/Òrìsà traditions of Yorùbá speaking West Africa. She currently resides in Silk Hope, traditional lands of the Shakori, Sissipihaw and Catawba tribes, with her beloved partner, canine companion and a wake of vultures.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Tyler Phan received his Ph.D. from University College London (UCL) in 2017. Before his Ph.D., he earned his M.A. in Religions of Asia (now M.A. in Buddhist Studies) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) in 2013. His research focus is in medical anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) with a relationship among religion, ontology, bodies, post-colonialism, and race in Asia and North America. His previous research included a cross-country ethnography of Chinese medicine in the United States, examining the historical marginalization of Asian/Asian Americans through policy and legislation, which resulted in his Ph.D. dissertation called "American Chinese Medicine" and finishing his monograph called When White People Took Our Medicine as well as the comic book series A People’s History of Acupuncture in America.

Tyler's Dissertation: American Chinese Medicine

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Robert Coons is a resident of Toronto where he teaches Tai Chi, Meditation, and Tea Ceremony. He studied with secular Daoist disciple Hai Yang, and various teachers in China such as Yin Qin (Yang Style Taiji), He Caitong (Taiwan Cha Dao), Yu Jiang (Xin Yi Liu He Quan), and others. Today he continues to cultivate the Golden Elixir and is very happy to talk to you, so send him an email or visit his substack Immortality Study. You can also buy his tea at tcmsix.com/shop/

And check out his newest online class: https://courses.qigongmeditation.online/tea-mastery-course

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Tyler Phan received his Ph.D. from University College London (UCL) in 2017. Before his Ph.D., he earned his M.A. in Religions of Asia (now M.A. in Buddhist Studies) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) in 2013. His research focus is in medical anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) with a relationship among religion, ontology, bodies, post-colonialism, and race in Asia and North America. His previous research included a cross-country ethnography of Chinese medicine in the United States, examining the historical marginalization of Asian/Asian Americans through policy and legislation, which resulted in his Ph.D. dissertation called "American Chinese Medicine" and finishing his monograph called When White People Took Our Medicine as well as the comic book series A People’s History of Acupuncture in America.

Tyler's Dissertation: American Chinese Medicine

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

LoAn Guylaine TRAN is a 24th generation disciple of the Daoist Complete Reality Dragon Gate Pure Yang lineage of Mount Wudang, under the name Sincere Phoenix 誠鳳. First an activist and professional project manager for humanitarian organisation with a focus on women’s rights in the context of anti-trafficking and prostitution, her spiritual quest took her through year-long immersions in Buddhist and Yogic practices throughout Asia, before leading her into a 9 years Daoist apprenticeship at the Five Immortals Temple, Wudang, China. She now teaches Daoist arts of Energy and Spirit and practices Chinese medicine and Daoist healing, with an ever-renewing interest for the interactions of the form and the formless. www.featherbeings.com

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Isaac Saul is an independent political journalist and the founder of Tangle, a politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from the right and left on the big news of the day.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Lindsey Wei, Daoist Name -Wei Cheng Ling, 魏诚灵, is a 24th generation lay disciple (俗家弟子sújiā dìzǐ) of the Chun Yang Sect of Wudang Daoism.  She trained Traditional Chinese Gong Fu in a remote mountain temple in the Wudang Mountains, Hubei Province, China under her master Li Song Feng for over 9 years before returning to the US in 2010 to start her martial teaching career.  She is a practitioner of Tai Ji Quan, Qi Gong, Ba Gua, Double Edge Straight Sword (Jian), as well as other weapons arts.  Her passion is combining ancestral skills and indigenous world views of how to steward the earth, exist and thrive in wild places, with the life way of internal martial arts cultivation and health practices.  She leads martial training camps in wilderness settings as the context of studying the Dao as it follows Nature.  

Wei is the author of The Valley Spirit —A Female Story of Daoist Cultivation, a personal memoir published by Singing Dragon in 2012.  Her second book is a biography of one of her martial mentors, Path of the Spiritual Warrior –Life and Teachings of Muay Thai Fighter Pedro Solana, published through Purple Cloud Press in 2020.        

Lindsey teaches online courses as well as in person camps at varying locations in southern Oregon on Takelma and Klamath native lands.  

Her website is: www.wudangwhitehorse.com

You can also follow her work on Youtube, IG @lindsey12wei and FB @lindsey.wei 

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Ken Crouse is a native of Wilkes County, NC where he has lived for
most of his life. He grew up working on a farm that raised cattle,
tobacco, corn, other grains, and a large vegetable patch. Having
always had a love of plants, he went on to study horticulture and
mycology and got involved in the nursery and landscaping business.
Twenty-five years ago, Ken and his wife Cindy bought a place in the
mountains known as Peaceful Valley. At about this time, Ken was
introduced to the concepts of permaculture and decided to adopt
these principles whenever possible. Living and working on the land
allowed him to bring together his plant knowledge and more than forty
years of study devoted to the field of mycology. Peaceful Valley is
now a botanical collection, garden, and food forest where he lives
with his wife Cindy, two cats, and a small flock of chickens. Ken often
teaches classes on mushroom identification and cultivation as well as
permaculture topics.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Scoutleader Wiley is a semi-nomadic theory and ritual artist. She does not like touching slimy things, and her favourite food is potatoes. She was raised by two artists amongst the underground hip-hop and house dance community in Brooklyn, NY. She now plays freak-folk guitar music for her friends and writes systems poetry for the internet. She is the Maestra Magica at Metamodern Magick, a collaborative education platform that seeks to integrate the wisdom traditions of pre-modernity into the post-conventional world.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove!