The teacher of the Moving Tiger Method teachers is Bruce Frantzis, founder of Energy Arts, Inc. and one of America's foremost experts in Chinese energy arts for health, healing, meditation, and martial arts.

Frantzis is a Lineage Master in Taoist health and meditation systems. He has over forty years of experience in chi gung (qigong), chi gung healing, meditation, and martial arts. Fluent in Chinese and Japanese, he lived full-time and intensively studied energy arts in Asia for 16 years.

Frantzis shares his knowledge of the Water Method of Taoist Meditation in two books, Relaxing into Your Being and The Great Stillness. He is also the author of the newly revised and expanded books, The Power of Internal Martial Arts and Chi and Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body. His most recent books are The Chi Revolution and Tai Chi: Health for Life (originally published as The Big Book of Tai Chi by Thorsons/HarperCollins UK). All of his books are published by North Atlantic Books.

Frantzis also has written a book on Dragon & Tiger Chi Gung, with the help of our director, Bill Ryan. It is entitled Dragon and Tiger Medical Chi Gung: Instruction Manual. It is sold only through Energy Arts. Click here for more information.

In 1981 Frantzis was accepted as one of only two disciples of the late Liu Hung Chieh. Liu was a tai chi, ba gua, and chi gung grandmaster and a Taoist sage. In his 30's he studied in the Tien Tai School of Buddhism and was formally declared enlightened. He then spent ten years with Taoists in the mountains of Western China. In 1949 Liu moved to Beijing, where he became the head of a Taoist sect and lived the rest of his life.

For several years between 1981 and 1986, he taught Frantzis chi gung, tai chi, hsing-i, ba gua and meditation on a daily basis. Liu passed away in 1986.

In 1986 Liu formally passed his Taoist lineage to Frantzis and empowered him to teach Lao Tse’s Water method of Taoist Meditation, a practice which had been virtually unavailable to Westerners.

During the time that Frantzis studied with Liu, he also studied Dragon and Tiger Chi Gung (Qigong) with Zhang Jai Hua, a doctor of Chinese medicine. (Dragon and Tiger is the exercise system that we teach in the Moving Tiger Method. See Recent History.)

Frantzis studied Dragon and Tiger privately with Zhang for two years. She deemed him fully qualified to teach the entire system as she had learned it from her uncle. Her uncle learned it at the Shaolin Temple in China's Henan Province. (see Origins)

Twenty years of prior training provided a foundation to prepare Frantzis for Liu’s and Zhang's teachings.

He earned black belts in judo, karate, jujitsu, and aikido by the age of eighteen. Then to pursue advanced training, he moved to Japan in 1967, where he trained for two years with Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido. He then went to China and studied martial arts, healing arts, and Taoism for 11 years.* Frantzis also spent two years in India studying advanced yoga and Tantric practices.

Frantzis also studied acupuncture and worked as a chi gung therapist and tui na bodyworker in Chinese hospitals. In 1981 he was the first Westerner to be certified in Beijing by the People’s Republic of China to teach the government's complete system of tai chi chuan.

After the death of Liu Hung Chieh in 1986, Frantzis journeyed back to the United States. Since then he has taught workshops and instructor trainings in North America and Europe. Frantzis has lectured at the Oxford University Union and served as an advisor to Harvard University’s Qi Research Group.

* B. K. Frantzis’ major teachers before Lineage Master Liu were: Kenichi Sawai and Han Hsing Yuan (I Chuan); Wang Shu Jin and Hung I Hsiang (hsing-i and ba gua); Yang Cheng Fu’s eldest son Yang Shao Jung, T. T. Liang, Lin Du Ying and Feng Zhi Qiang (Yang and Chen style tai chi).

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