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!