Bodymind Healing Center

Available for Workshops & Training Sessions

Michael Mayer, Ph. D.

Self-Healing Methods for Physical and Mental Health

Michael Mayer is a licensed psychologist, Tai Chi/Qigong teacher, and an award-winning author who pioneered the integration of Qigong and Western bodymind healing methods. Dr. Mayer presents his integrative approach to bodymind healing at: hospitals, universities, national/international conferences, and he is a keynote speaker. In Dr. Mayer's workshops you'll learn self-healing methods to find peace of mind and become more self- reliant about your own health treatment. Become initiated into this self-healing path that may become part of your lifetime preventative medicine program.

Qigong is a many thousand- year old way to cultivate our vital energy using breath, posture, movement, touch and awareness. Modern Scientific research has now documented Qigong's positive effects on hypertension, chronic pain, various measures of increased health and longevity, increasing balance and preventing falls amongst the elderly, and on a wide variety of chronic diseases. The Wall Street Journal calls Qigong, "the hottest trend in stress relief," and Time Magazine calls Tai Chi (the best known system of Qigong) " the perfect exercise."Dr Memmot Oz recently advocated for Qigong on the Oprah Winfrey show and said, "If you want to be healthy and live to 100, do Qigong... Qigong reverses the aging process." 

Dr. Mayer 's lectures, workshops and training seminars have a wide range of formats to the general public, professional health oriented organizations, retreat settings, universities, psychotherapists wanting to learn how to integrate qigong into their practice and anyone interested in learning self-healing empowering techniques in the arena of bodymind healing. His formats are adapted to different organizations' specific needs:

   •  Bodymind Healing in Psychotherapy: Ancient Pathways to Modern Health. In this workshop therapists will learn how to expand their healing repertoires by being introduced to self-healing methods that can aid patients’ physical and mental health. You’ll become initiated into an integration of Qigong and psychotherapy that Dr. Mayer developed after 30 years of training with some of the most respected TaiChi/Qigong masters. Qigong (of which Tai Chi is the best known system) is a many thousand-year-old method of cultivating the energy of life through synchronizing movement, breath and imagery. Dr Mayer shows how to integrate the essences of these practices into psychotherapy without using a Qigong movement, and without mentioning a word about Qigong. This is more than a workshop on Qigong and psychotherapy. Dr. Mayer will show how a variety of ancient traditions can be part of an integral psychotherapy oriented to heal the mind and body. Theory, case illustrations, and practices will be combined to show how this bodymind healing approach can help alleviate anxiety, hypertension, chronic pain, insomnia, trauma, etc. Click here: For a more complete discription of this workshop, Bodymind Healing in Psychotherapy.

• Transforming Troubled Times through Metaphysical Practices. The current era of the great unravelling of culture is a time to draw on the resources of ancient wisdom traditions to help ourselves and others to navigate through these times. The metaphysical approach draws from the "world behind the world" (of energy, symbols, and beliefs) to help us find a transformed life-stance. In this re-visioning of the term "metaphysical," coming from Dr. Mayer's new book, metaphysics includes: both spiritual and soulful practices, psycho-mythology, somatic approaches to healing (such as Tai Chi Qigong), and a multidimensional approach to the political/ecological sphere. You will learn specific tools from various ancient and modern traditions.Click here..

• Energy Psychology:  Michael's  book, Energy Psychology: Self-healing Practices for Bodymind Health,  (North Atlantic/ Random House,2009) creates an integral comprhensive energy psychology. Moving beyond the most well known energy psychology tapping methods, Michael's approach broadens and deepens energy psychology to include Qigong and other cross-cultural traditions of postural initiation, depth psychotherapy,, symbolic process traditions, and Genlin's Focusing. For an example of one day format click here.

  • Introductory Evening Lectures and 1 Day or Whole Weekend Workshops:  Qigong: Ancient Path to Modern Health. These workshops stem from Michael's two volume The Tao of Bodymind Healing series, Volume I, Secrets to Living Younger Longer: The Self-Healing Path of Qigong Standing Meditation and Tai Chi, Volume II Bodymind Healing Psychotherapy: Ancient Pathways to Modern Health. Included is a slide show on the history of energy healing from ancient to modern times, and experiential exercises introducing participants to methods for cultivating their vital energy (chi) and developing self-healing practices for health problems. Also included, depending upon a group's needs, can be a discussion of research and clinical uses of qigong and bodymind healing methods. Click here: For a more complete outline of the Whole Weekend Workshop.

    • Bodymind Healing Qigong: Michael has done many National and International workshops on his BMHQ method, which synthesizes ten systems of qigong into a single form. In one day, two day, five day formats. You'll learn how each Tai Chi/Qigong movement has four levels of purpose: self healing, spiritual unfoldment, self defense, and changing your life stance. You'll learn why Standing Meditation has been called "the million dollar secret of Qigong, how the animal forms of Qigong can help you reactivate your primordial Self, and why Yi Chuan walking meditation adds something vital to traditions of Walking Meditation. Classes and Workshops can combine teaching of movements and Tai Chi Dance. A unique feature of Michael's approach is your learning how the transformation of your hero’s journey in your  written mythic journey process can be enhanced with a Tai chi/Qigong movement. His Bodymind Healing Qigong DVD and book help participants to continue their practice before Michael's next visit. Michael has done four of these five day workshops for Esalen Institute, and is scheduled and Mt Madonna Center. For an overview of the five day format please click here: Five Day Format .  

  • Certification Programs: Six certification programs in Qigong and Bodymind Healing for: health professionals, coaches, Qigong/Tai Chi teachers, and anyone wanting to learn self-healing methods. (For details: www.bodymindhealing.com/Certification-Programs.html)

   • Workshops/Staff Trainings: These can include focus on self- healing methods for common issues such as anxiety, hypertension, chronic pain, insomnia, trauma, etc. Qigong and Bodymind Healing: An Integrated Psych-physiological Approach to Self-healing.

   • Staff training in Bodymind Healing Psychotherapy: Training and/or case consultation applying BMHP to cases.

   • Keynote Presentations: For large conferences Michael does keynote presentations on the need for self-healing methods for health problems, called, Qigong: Ancient path to Modern Health. Or, give your conference a "chi lift." Michael works with large groups to give an energy lift to enhance the conference experience.

   • Tai Chi Chuan:Four Dimensions of Purpose Michael teaches the traditional long form of the Yang style Tai Chi along with an eight level system of Tai Chi Joining Hands (two person Self-development) practice. Learn how every Tai Chi movement has four purposes: Self-healing, spiritual unfoldment, self-defense, and changing your life-stance through shape-shifting. Michael's Secret's... book provides the anthropological evidence for his theory that Tai Chi is part of a cross-cultural postural initiation tradition that includes these four purposes. This approach combines a "soulful" as well as a spiritual approach to Tai Chi.  Michael has trained for 32 years with Master Fong Ha who learned directly from Grandmasters Yang Shouzhong and Dong Yingjie.

     As part of  Michael's Tai Chi Chuan and Bodymind Healing Qigong training curriculum, he teaches an eight system linking form method of Tai Chi two-person Joining Hands practice, and Yi Chuan two-person Self-development practices.  He teaches these as kinesthetic initiatory methods of  Self-cultivation to develop "the elements" of one's primordial self. (In the Eastern tradition, fire, earth, metal, water, and wood; in the Western tradition: fire, earth, air and water.) For a more complete description of this workshop as it is taught by Michael at Esalen Institute please click here.

   • The Animal Forms of Hua Tau: Michael begins this workshop with the story of his forty night vision quest where, in a state of lucid dreaming,  his medicine animal, a deer, came to him. This workshop combines imaginal storytelling and learning the sacred healing movements of the bear, crane, monkey, tiger, and deer.


What others are saying about his books and accompanying DVD:

Volume I: Secrets to Living Younger Longer