Basic Practices of the Universal Healing Tao: An Illustrated Guide to Levels 1 through 6

Any serious student of Taoist and Tantric energy has benefitted from the wisdom and offerings of Mantak Chia's books. Unfortunately, for a home student, the mass of information is overwhelming and can be difficult to organize into a structured path of learning. Step 1... Step 2... Step 3.... I've read and studied and practiced from many of his books, and have had to utilize intuition and best guess work on what I needed to focus on and when. From the  Healing Light of the Tao: Foundational Practices to Awaken Chi Energy , to  The Inner Smile: Increasing Chi through the Cultivation of Joy , to  The Six Healing Sounds: Taoist Techniques for Balancing Chi , to  Iron Shirt Chi Kung , Healing Love through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy , Fusion of the Five Elements: Meditations for Transforming Negative Emotions , and many more. This book, Basic Practices of the Universal Healing Tao: An Illustrated Guide to Levels 1 through 6, is almost exactly what ever home student needs. It outlines the first 6 levels of the Universal Healing Tao practices in the order you should learn them, and includes the detailed practices from previous books in the proper order. This is invaluable reference to the student and clears up so many questions of what to practice and in what order.A couple things however:1. Each practice in each level contains a page reference and book title to the original book where the teaching was first presented. I HIGHLY recommend referencing back to those books. This current volume is a compilation of the practices, nothing more. The actual meat and preparation practices, the deeper instructions and explanations of why and how, are found in the reference book and are invaluable. You need to take the time to read them and understand them.2. The only thing the book lacks are suggested training schedules. The practices are listed in order... but no times are given. The first practice is the Inner Smile... but how often should you do it? Every day probably, as it's a base simple practice, but the book doesn't tell you. Do you drop some practices later as you move up the levels? At some point there wouldn't be enough time in the day to practice all the levels, especially if you started at Level 1 and practiced all the way through to Level 6. This book would have benefited greatly from beginning, medium, and advanced suggested daily or weekly training schedules for students. This lack of structure is the only disappointing thing about this wonderful compilation of the first 6 Levels of the Universal Healing Tao Basic Practices.

This is a great book for learning what order to read Mantak Chia's books. It separates the different books into 6 different levels. This is not a replacement for getting those other books. It has great references, reminders for what you need to know from those other books but you need to read and learn from those other books first.

It's good if you're familiar with and trained in Tai chee. There are a lot of hand drawn Tai chee diagrams that are worthless unless you're just using them to refresh your memory. The rest is taken straight from many of his books.

I am just starting to read this book. I will update this review when I finish it. So far it seems a great book, theories and exercises are explained in a very plain and easy to understand language. Drawings are very illustrative and helpful. So far so ver good. I am in love with this book.

Grand master Mantak Chia is the bridge between ancient Chinese Medicine . The key to health starts with a smile....

I love Mantak Chia's books...but never quite could find the list of what order to read his books a work on my practices...here it is, and yes, it is a really good book with the practices in order, and references to books and the pages in the book to get more in-depth information. Thank You Matak!

has a lot of important meditation work all in one book

great teaching diagrams, not for the beginner per se.

Mantak Chia, well, a "master" or not. I'll be honest folks, his techniques have nothing whatsoever to do with traditional Nei/Qi Gong and to prove my point one only has to look at traditional texts, seems to me he's culled techniques from many sources to create his own school while making an absolute fortune bringing out books with so much padding that all he says could have been done in only three or so books. This is nothing but the Chinese equivalent of new age poppycock ! There are so many good authors out there one could turn to. I know many will become upset at this but seriously, check out some real Nei/Qi Gong authors and not this one and you will see the massive difference, as for the genital massage methods this guy advises, oh good lord, I can here the Gods laughing at this dribble !!! Do yourself a favour, go else where. I hope Amazon allows this somewhat negative but truthful review.

An overall unnecessarily complicated system that misses out certain critical information (such as deep relaxation and physical stillness). And I say that as someone who's tried this for 15 years and has had personal instruction.Just try yoga instead. The Bihar School of Yoga/Satyananda yoga books are far clearer and if you don't like them you can try something else that teaches Patanjali yoga. The most comprehensive book is probably  Yoga and Kriya: A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques by Swami Satyananda Saraswati 2nd (second) Edition (2007)  since it starts from the start. Just don't rush. The books by Gregor Maehle are good as well. Yoga and Kriya: A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques by Swami Satyananda Saraswati 2nd (second) Edition (2007)

The book is excellent and full of information. Knjiga je odlična in polna informacij.

this book is amazing, I am so glad Mantak Chia has put 8 of his practices in one book, The Inner Smile is my favourite... a great book for self discovery

Very good book in a very good condition...