Zhong Yuan Qigong: First Stage of  Ascent: Relaxation
Grand Master Mingtang Xu, professor of TCM, the founder and director of the medical scientific research institute “Kundawell” in Beijing, China and Seattle, USA, executive consulter of Worldwide Chinese Medical federation, vice-president of World Academic Society of Medical Qigong, president of the international foundation “Mingtang”, graduated from Beijing University with a major in software engineering in 1987. He apprenticed at the American Center of Modern Computer Technologies, worked in the software laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and served as a senior specialist at the Special Abilities Research Institute in Beijing. Xu comes from a family of famous surgeons in China’s Hunan Province. Since early childhood, Xu practiced Wushu from his great grandfather and learned Wu Yi, a Chinese form of shamanism, from his grandmother. In his school years, he started to learn spiritual methods of healing and practice with his first teacher, an eighty-year Shaman woman. This was the beginning of his ZYQ education.  In addition to his technical studies, Xu studied Traditional Chinese Medicine. During his third year of the university, he worked for a hospital as a diagnostician. Since 1998, Xu has run annual international ZYQ trainings in Shaolin. He currently conducts ZYQ seminars and demonstrates healing methods throughout the world. Dr. Tamara Martynova, a board member of the Ukrainian Association of ZYQ and Kiev’s ZYQ Center, coauthor of more than ten ZYQ books, videos, and educational programs. After graduating from Kiev Polytechnic Institute in 1969, she worked till 1998 at the E. O. Paton Institute of Electric Welding of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Martynova also took courses in parapsychology at the Institute of Psychology of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in the eighties. In addition, she served on the board of the A. Popov Scientific-Technical Society of Radio Technology, Electronics, and Communications Specialists, where she taught classes on the extension of consciousness. In 1991, she met Master Xu Mingtang, who introduced her to ZYQ. Deeply impressed by the comprehensive logic of Qigong, she became the first organizer and translator of Xu’s seminars in Ukraine and Russia. Starting in 1993, she has been teaching ZYQ all over the world, and, from 1998 to date, she has been a regular participant in ZYQ’s annual international retreats held in Shaolin, China.