Jeffrey S. Reid

Jeffrey S. Reid, whose Daoist name is Li Mao Zihe, is a sixteenth-generation disciple in the Wudang Sanfeng lineage of Daoism. He grew up in Rhode Island, found the Zhuangzi as a teenager and began Chinese martial arts in Providence. At 23 he left for the Wudang Mountains in China, where Master Yuan Xiugang accepted him as a disciple. He stayed for about seven years, training in kung fu, taiji and inner alchemy alongside chanting, scripture study and Mandarin, and from 2009 he captained the mountain's international traditional class.

After coming down from Wudang in 2014 he spent several years as a travelling teacher in different countries, then settled in Santa Cruz, California, in 2018 and opened Wudang Santa Cruz. The school holds weekly classes in Northern Longfist kung fu, taiji, qigong and the internal arts of baguazhang and xingyiquan, for adults and children, and he leads weapons workshops there and teaches abroad. He pairs discipline with humour and asks students to test the tradition in their own bodies rather than take it on trust. His book Leaving the Mountains (Three Pines Press, 2025) follows his lineage from its medieval roots through the Cultural Revolution to today, part history and part memoir. At Esalen he teaches Daoist sleep practices with the scholar Simon Cox.