Mantak Chia

Master Mantak Chia has been the only one named twice as Qigong Master of the Year by the International Congress of Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong in 1990 and 2012 and is also listed as number 18 of the 100 most Spiritually Influential people in The Watkins Review 2012. .mw-parser-output .toclimit-2 .toclevel-1 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-3 .toclevel-2 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-4 .toclevel-3 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-5 .toclevel-4 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-6 .toclevel-5 ul,.mw-parser-output .toclimit-7 .toclevel-6 ul{display:none}

He established his first Universal Healing Tao school in Thailand in 1974 after systematizing his knowledge of Taoism. He founded the Universal Healing Tao Center (originally named the Taoist Esoteric Yoga Center) in New York in 1979. The center attracted a broad variety of European and American students, and some of them greatly helped him in teaching Taoist practices to western students. He returned to Thailand in 1994 and created the Universal Tao Training Center—Tao Garden—in Chiang Mai. He not only teaches at Tao Garden but also tours to other countries of the world to teach and promote the Healing Tao practices every year.

Mantak Chia (Chinese: 謝明德, Pinyin: Xiè Míngdé, born April 24, 1944 in Bangkok, Thailand) is a Taoist Master. Mantak Chia is the creator of the Healing Tao, Tao Yoga, Universal Healing Tao System, and Tao Garden Health Spa & Resort, located in the beautiful northern countryside of Chiang Mai, Thailand. The author of more than 60 books on Taoist practices, Mantak Chia has taught countless enthusiastic students the principles of Taoist internal arts over the past years. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages, which has made the Universal Healing Tao System global. He views himself primarily as a teacher.

Mantak Chia was born to a Chinese family in Thailand in 1944. He was raised in a Christian household, with his grandfather a Baptist minister and his mother a missionary. He began studying the Buddhist method of "stilling the mind" at the age of six, and later studied Muay Thai boxing, T'ai chi ch'uan, Kung Fu and Taoist and Buddhist meditation practices from several masters. Of all his masters, the most influential one was Yi Eng (White Cloud), an eremitic member of the Dragon's Gate sect of the Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) school of Taoism (Chinese: 道家全眞龍門派), who taught Mantak Chia a complete Taoist training system and authorized him to teach and heal.