healingways
A Female Taoist Master Speaks “5-ELEMENTS OF
POLITICS & RELIGION” T
by Tanya Storch & Jeff Primack
anya Storch, a professor of world religions, fl uent in English, Chinese and Russian, trained with qigong masters from Taoist and Siberian lineages, later emigrating to the U.S. from
the Soviet Union. She became Jeff Primack’s fi rst qigong teacher. Primack went on to become the founder of Qi Revolution and has since trained thousands of qigong teachers.
Primack: In 1998 I met Tanya at the University of Florida’s Department of Religious Studies. She was teaching classes in Taoism and Eastern religion. In my fi rst class with Professor Storch, she spoke on “lucid dreaming” wherein you become aware you are dreaming while still in the dream. Her teachings brought me closer to God and my relationship with spirit. Tanya taught me to use 5-Elements to be a more effective qigong teacher in this world. Five- Elements of Fire, Water, Metal, Soil and Tree are Tanya’s area of expertise and this is her story.
Storch: My 5-Elements education began in childhood in the high
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northern Ural Mountains. Each summer, between the ages of 4 and 10, I was taken from my family in Leningrad and forced to stay three months with my grandma of the Votyak, a small
ethnic minority who secretly practiced an ancient religion on veneration of natural forces. Children in this village barely spoke Russian but they ran barefoot on the harsh, cold fl oor. These times awakened my primordial qi and began my journey of balancing the elements of fi re and water. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union and educated by the Communist regime, I was trained to love a tiny metal star with the face of “Grandpa Lenin”. God saved me from this madness by
Central Florida natural awakenings
leading me to a master teacher of qigong and Taoist psychology. Through years of meditation and knowledge of 5-Elements, I learned to save energy from confl icts and increase energy in my body. My teacher, trained as a hereditary
Taoist master, came from a family that had preserved secret teachings for hundreds of generations about Tao, yin-yang, 5-Elements, qigong and herbal remedies. During the Chinese Revolution, an oracle advised him to marry a Russian woman and escape so his knowledge could be preserved and disseminated. He successfully escaped, avoiding torture which befell other men in his family. Because of his great talents, he became a language instructor at the Leningrad University where I studied with him for many years. In addition to this Taoist master, I managed to study with Russian Orthodox priests and Buddhist lamas. Both Christians and Buddhists supported each other during this time and hoped their united prayers would help destroy the great evil dictatorship of the USSR. In Buddhism and Orthodox Christianity, our human body is viewed as a temporary temple fi lled with eternal light, our spirit and consciousness. Purifi cation of the temple is viewed as high priority. This is why, urged by my new clergy friends, I tried several rather challenging forms of physical-spiritual purifi cation, including going for days without food. I practiced consuming only a bowl of rice per day for fi ve months, walking barefoot in deep snow, swimming in the middle of winter in water surrounded by ice, and lying dead on the hard fl oor for eight to nine hours (long enough for the soul to completely leave the body and travel).
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