Daoyin Reimagined: A Comparison of Three Embodied Traditions

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.