The Cauldron Is You: A Halloween Evening on Transformation and Daoist Alchemy

A free clinical and self-cultivation webinar on Rebellious Qi, Heart pains, and Stage Two of Alchemy

This workshop is for anyone who is interested in learning to become an Alchemist, either for their own spiritual growth or in order to enhance their clinical healing practice. While we provide CEUs for practitioners, we believe that Alchemical Healing begins with the healer’s own “self-cultivation.”

For the Daoist Alchemists of ancient China, the cauldron was built to be extraordinarily strong. It had to hold powerful catalysts while they reacted and changed, without cracking or exploding, and the Alchemists understood that a human being needs this same kind of vessel inside in order to transform. In the Nine Stages of Alchemy in Alchemical Chinese Medicine, building that inner vessel is the work of Stage Two.

Stage Two depends on the foundation laid in Stage One. Before anyone can safely turn toward deep emotional material, there needs to be some stability in life, and Stage One creates it by releasing Rebellious Qi and the counterflow patterns that keep a person reactive, scattered, and unable to settle. Once that ground is steady, the cauldron can begin to form. In a human being, the cauldron is a safe inner place from which to look at the Heart pains that most people will do almost anything to avoid, and the strength of that vessel comes from self-love, a settled knowing of one’s own goodness that allows criticism or disapproval to pass through without collapse.

In this webinar we’ll explore how the Alchemists understood the cauldron, how Stage One prepares the ground, and what it means to build this vessel in ourselves and in the people we care for. This webinar begins with YOU and your inner cauldron before facilitating transformation in another.

If you’re a practitioner, you will also learn to recognize the clinical signs that a patient is not yet stable enough for deeper emotional work, the signs that the inner cauldron is forming, and how to sequence treatment so that stability comes before depth.

Self-cultivators will come away with a clearer understanding of why some old pains have felt impossible to face, and how that begins to change when the vessel is strong enough to hold them. We’ll close with a guided cauldron meditation that can be practiced personally or adapted for patients as self-care.

No background in Chinese Medicine, Daoism, or Alchemy is needed, and licensed acupuncturists can earn 2 NCCAOM PDA points (PENDING) or 2 California CEUs (PENDING).

You’re welcome to light a candle beside you and come exactly as you are. If you can’t attend live, please register anyway and we’ll send you the replay.