23 Jan
5:00 pm
Step Into the Path of Alchemy
Ancient Daoist Alchemy for modern transformation. We teach the Nine Stages of Alchemy, the Thirteen Ghost Points, and the esoteric wisdom of spiritual cultivation—for your own journey, and for practitioners who want to guide others.
Creating a Strong Foundation
Whether you’re new to Alchemy or already trained in the Five Elements, everyone begins here. Not because you’re starting from scratch — but because this unique lineage offers a deeper, more transformational approach to healing and self-cultivation. These foundational teachings provide the energetic language and spiritual perspective that all of our advanced work builds upon.
Wherever your path leads — self-cultivator, practitioner, or teacher — it all begins here.
Foundations of Alchemy: Where Every Path Begins
- Understanding the Five Elements
A fresh perspective on the Five Elements — not as types or temperaments, but as tools for emotional insight and soul growth. - Understanding the Nine Palaces of the Heart
Learn to see life patterns through the Nine Palaces — love, health, purpose, and more — and discover how imbalance reveals our soul’s curriculum. - Intro to Alchemy
Understand the fundamentals of the Nine Stages of Alchemy and other aspects of Alchemical Chinese Medicine.
Get Instant Access with the Curious Membership
Get Curious & Start Exploring
All of our free webinars, foundational teachings, and self-guided resources are available through the Curious Path — our free membership tier. Simply sign up to explore these transformational tools at your own pace. It’s the perfect way to begin your journey and experience the heart of Alchemy Learning Center.
No commitment. Just clarity, insight, and your first steps into the world of Alchemical Healing.
Sign Up for Free →Choose Your Path
Alchemy is not a one-size-fits-all journey. That’s why we offer two distinct paths — one for self-cultivators and one for healing practitioners. Whether you’re here to transform your own inner world or to support others in their healing, both journeys begin with the same powerful foundations and then unfold in the way that best serves your growth, purpose, and practice.
Begin a Journey of Self-Cultivation
This journey is for individuals who feel called to grow, heal, and transform from within. Whether you’re seeking more emotional balance, deeper self-awareness, or spiritual connection, this path offers a gentle but profound framework rooted in Alchemical wisdom.
Every self-cultivator begins with our foundational courses to establish a shared energetic language and core understanding of the Five Elements and the Nine Palaces of the Heart. From there, your journey becomes uniquely your own — with three distinct areas of focus to explore, based on what resonates most deeply for you:
- Embodied Healing – Focus on physical balance, energetic flow, and releasing patterns stored in the body
- Heart-Centered – Deepen emotional insight and explore your inner landscape through the lens of the Nine Palaces
- Love & Relationships – Transform how you relate to others by understanding your elemental patterns and relational dynamics
No matter which direction you choose, this path is designed to support your growth, emotional clarity, and sense of connection — within yourself and the world around you.
Schedule a Discovery Call to discuss scheduling a treatment
Need Deep Healing?
If you're dealing with trauma, grief, ancestral patterns, or things that feel like they're haunting you, the Ghost Points treatment might be what you need. This is clinical work done by trained practitioners.
Deepen Your Knowledge as a Practitioner
Our Practitioner journey is for acupuncturists, bodyworkers, energy workers, and healing professionals who want to go beyond protocols — and into the deeper energetic, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of healing. Whether you’re new to Alchemical Healing or already well-versed in the Five Elements, this path begins with our core foundational courses to establish a shared language and energetic framework. From there, you’ll gain access to advanced teachings, clinical applications, and mentorship opportunities that support both your clients’ growth — and your own.
This section is designed to expand your ability to see, feel, and treat through the lens of Alchemical Healing. Whether you’re working with physical symptoms, emotional imbalances, or spiritual stagnation, these teachings offer practical tools and advanced insights that help you transform how you approach client care.
You’ll learn how to build deep, transformative rapport, apply nuanced Five Element energetics, and confidently diagnose and treat complex patterns — all while staying rooted in the Alchemical framework. From subtle channel work to hands-on therapies like cupping and gua sha, this training meets you where you are and gives you what you need to go deeper.
Essentials Teachings
Alchemical Rapport and Professional Intimacy
Learn how to create deep, transformative connections with your clients by cultivating authentic presence and energetic intimacy — a vital skill for meaningful healing work.
Advanced Alchemical Five Element Energetics
Expand your diagnostic precision and deepen your understanding of how to work with elemental patterns and imbalances at a soul level.
Smooth Flow of Qi: Clearing Channel Blocks
Master one of the simplest yet most powerful techniques for restoring energetic flow, relieving stagnation, and initiating profound shifts in your clients’ systems.
Advanced Diagnostics & Treatments
Intro to Divergent Channels
Explore the Divergent Channels and how to use them to treat chronic and lingering conditions like arthritis, joint pain, and unresolved illnesses held deep in the body.
Dai Mai vs. Ghost Points
Learn how to distinguish between these two powerful Alchemical treatments — and when to use each — to address trauma, chaos, and deep energetic blockages.
Yin/Yang Imbalances
Gain diagnostic tools to recognize and treat critical yin/yang imbalances, including conditions that may present as life-threatening or systemically destabilizing.
Finding Balance: Left/Right Channel Imbalances
Discover how to detect and correct subtle energetic imbalances between the left and right sides of the body, restoring harmony and flow at the root level.
Bodywork (Optional)
Learn Cupping
Master the fundamentals of cupping therapy to relieve pain, release stagnation, and support deep energetic clearing in your clients.
Learn Gua Sha
Learn how to use this traditional scraping technique to move stuck qi, reduce inflammation, and promote natural healing in the body.
Learn Facial Cupping & Gua Sha
Explore gentle facial techniques that support lymphatic flow, reduce tension, and enhance both energetic and aesthetic rejuvenation.
You can’t guide clients through Alchemy without doing your own work first. These meditations are the heart of that inner transformation. Rooted in ancient Taoist principles, each stage helps you peel back layers of emotional and energetic stagnation — from surface tension to lifetime patterns to ancestral imprints. This practice not only deepens your personal healing journey, it prepares you to hold space for others with greater clarity, compassion, and integrity.
Whether you’re just beginning or already on the practitioner path, this is where true Alchemy begins — within.
Intro to Alchemical Meditations
Begin your meditation practice with foundational techniques that help you center, ground, and connect to the energetics of Alchemical Healing.
Alchemical Meditations (Stages 1 - 3)
Stage 1 Meditations
Cultivate internal stillness and emotional ease by learning to gently clear surface-level tensions and settle the spirit.
Stage 2 Meditations
Go deeper to release the emotional and energetic patterns accumulated in this lifetime that may be holding you back.
Stage 3 Meditations
Work with ancestral and inherited patterns to clear deep-rooted imbalances and restore harmony across generations.
For practitioners ready to immerse themselves in a focused area of Alchemical Healing, these 12-week trainings offer a powerful next step. Each program explores a unique dimension of the work — from stones and plants to heart-field energetics — and is designed to deepen your clinical application, intuitive skills, and personal transformation.
Choose based on what’s calling you — these are parallel paths, not a progression. Whether you’re drawn to the grounding presence of stones, the whisper of plant allies, or the transformative space of the heart, each program stands on its own and supports you in becoming a more attuned and aligned healer.
Alchemy Stone Medicine – Level 1 (Starting February 2026)
Learn to work with stones as healing allies in your clinical practice. This immersive training teaches the energetic properties of specific stones, how to use them in treatment protocols, and how to develop intuitive relationships with the mineral realm for deep, grounded healing.
Join the Waitlist
Alchemy Plant Spirit Medicine – Level 1 (Starting May 2026)
Step into sacred relationship with plant allies and learn to incorporate their spirit-based wisdom into your healing work. This 12-week journey blends Taoist Alchemy, seasonal energetics, and intuitive connection to guide you in using plant medicine beyond the physical — for emotional and spiritual transformation.
Join the Waitlist
Heart-Centered Alchemy – Level 1 (Upcoming)
Explore the profound space of the void within the heart — the still point from which true healing begins. In this deep and subtle training, you’ll learn how to access the heart field in yourself and others, cultivate resonance, and hold space for transformation through presence, not doing.
Join the Waitlist
For practitioners ready to fully embody the path of the Alchemical Healer, our Mastery-level offerings provide the most in-depth and transformational training available. These immersive programs are designed not only to teach advanced clinical techniques — but to facilitate your own profound inner transformation.
This is where Alchemy becomes lived, not just practiced. You’ll gain access to advanced protocols, energetic diagnostics, and mentorship in esoteric Chinese Medicine — while being deeply supported in your own evolution as a healer and guide.
Whether you’re beginning the Master Alchemy Apprenticeship Program (MAAP) or continuing into the Alchemy Life Strategy Intensive, this level of work prepares you to hold space for life-changing healing in others because you’ve walked through it yourself.
Who We Are
We’re Leta Herman and Jaye McElroy. We run the Alchemy Healing Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, where we practice what we teach. And we created the Alchemy Learning Center because Daoist Inner Alchemy changed our lives completely.
For over two decades, we’ve immersed ourselves in esoteric traditions—studying with teachers in the Shang Qing lineage of Daoist alchemy, plant spirit medicine practitioners, and bodywork masters. We’ve synthesized all of this into a comprehensive teaching system that honors the ancient wisdom while making it accessible for modern seekers and practitioners.
This isn’t about collecting more techniques. It’s about transformation—yours first, then maybe helping others with theirs.
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Quick Links
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Free Resources
- Through the Mystery Gate audiobook
- Connecting Your Circle book
- Free Webinars
- Intro to Alchemical Meditations
Programs
- Alchemy Stone Medicine
- Five Spirits (coming soon)
- Plant Spirit Medicine (coming soon)
- Heart-Centered Alchemy (coming soon)
Contact Us
- questions@alchemylearningcenter.com
- Alchemy Healing Center
Northampton, Massachusetts
