Daoyin Reimagined: A Comparison of Three Embodied Traditions

I am happy to announce the publication of the Journal of Daoist Studies volume 9 (2016), available at Three Pines Press.  It is $25 for the paper book and $15 for the digital book.  

Oh, and my article Daoyin Reimagined: A Comparison of Three Embodied Traditions, co-written with Daniel Mroz, is in it!

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Here is the table of contents:

Erica Brindley Spontaneous Arising: Creative Change in the Hengxian 1

Steven Burik Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy and Daoism 18

Friederike Assandri Stealing Words: Intellectual Property in Medieval China 49

Shu-Wei Hsieh Possession and Ritual: Daoist and Popular Healing in Taiwan 73

Georges Favraud Immortals’ Medicine: Daoist Healers and Social Change 101

Marnix Wells Daoism Not as We Know It 120

FORUM

Scott P. Phillips & Daniel Mroz Daoyin Reimagined: A Comparison of Three Embodied Traditions 137

Andrew Colvin Nonaction and the Art of Blending: Daoist Principles in Aikido 157

David Hessler Teaching with Dao 170

Avery Morrow How Not to Be Thinged by Things 182

Yanxia Zhao Daoist Longevity and the Aging Society 191

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I highly recommend the whole book.  In Taiwan, Shu-Wei Hsieh was extremely generous in introducing me to the people who could help with my research into the relationship between religious rituals and martial arts, and his work is extraordinary.  I stayed with Marnix Wells, the author of the now classic Scholar Boxer, when I was in London.  We are working on a project together about the earliest connections of Zhang Sanfeng to theatrical martial arts.  I love his mind.  And Georges Favraud's work is absolutely pivotal.  He is doing a type of Daoist anthropology which documents a person's entire life, showing the depth and breadth of religious experience across time. His focused, intensely intimate, and local, style of anthropology is profoundly optimistic and open-minded.

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Daoyin Reimagined has been in the works for a long time, and I'm very happy with it. Here is the abstract:

This essay investigates three transmissions of esoteric movement from the perspective that religious, theatrical, and martial arts of China are a single subject. This is a comparative and speculative exploration of personal practice contextualized by current scholarship. The practices we examine are healing exercises(daoyin) as taught by American Daoist and Buddhist initiate Liu Ming (1947--2015), those taught by American martial arts and yoga teacher Paulie Zink (b. 1954), as well as Himalayan Rigdzin Trulkhor transmitted by the Tibetan Buddhist sage Jigmé Lingpa(1729-1798) in the 18th century. We selected these practices for both systemic and phenomenological reasons: they have strong structural similarities, they treat the body in correlate ways and their effects on the practitioner are similar. 

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The world of publishing is changing wildly.  As a teacher and thinker I want as many curious people to read my work as possible, so this article is available on adademia.edu.  But I also want people to support the Journal of Daoist Studies if they can.  

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I'm expecting my article on the theatrical and religious origins orTaijiquan to come out in a book called Daoism and the Militarylater this year.  And my book Possible Origins, A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts, Theater, and Region, is finished and looking for a publisher, in case you are one!  And I've started work on a cultural religious history of Baguazhang!