Sharon Smith has been practicing Qigong, Tai Chi, and other Taoist spiritual and healing arts for 45 years, and teaching them for 40. Her influential teachers include Masters Mantak Chia (she was in his original class of Western students in 1981), Li Junfeng, Ming Chan, and T.K. Shih. Other important teachers include Juan Li, Gilles Marin, Don Ahn, and Carol Anthony, as well as many other Tao masters. In 2011, she attended the Wudang Martial Arts Internal Kung Fu Academy in China.

Sharon teaches seminars internationally, and regularly at the New York Open Center. Other teaching venues have included The Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Master Mantak Chia’s Tao Garden in Thailand, Omega Institute, La Guardia Community College, Queens College, New York University, Adult Education Division of the New York City Board of Education, and the New York State Department of Parks & Recreation.

Sharon was creatrix and director of The Immortal Sisters Conference held in 2017, a historic gathering of women committed to “Returning to the Tao,” honoring Yin in an overly Yang world. She was also a seminar leader at China’s Women in Daoism conference in 2011, and presented her work with senior citizens at the 2009 International Tai Chi Symposium in Nashville, Tennessee. She has received numerous foundation grants for her work with senior citizens and in community mental health programs. Sharon was a spokesperson for Qigong on the nationally syndicated PBS television show, Asian America, and was the Chinese astrology columnist for the Asian Food and Lifestyle Journal from 2005-2007.

Sharon is a visual artist whose photographs are in the collections of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University... Hofstra University Library, Special Collections Department... Houston Museum of Fine Arts... The Polaroid Corporation... Polaroid Europa... and Polaroid Far East, as well as many private collections in the U.S. and Europe. Her 2015 film, Saturn Saved Me, featured her experiences with Indian astrologers.

Sifu Matthew Cohen is the founder and creator of Sacred Energy Arts — a unique, integrated system of health and self-development drawing from the teachings of Qigong, martial arts, and yoga. Matthew developed this method after recognizing that Qigong, yoga, and the internal martial arts stand alone as great health systems. Together, the practices create a powerful and transformative experience. Matthew has been fully immersed in the study and application of martial, yogic, and healing arts for over 40 years, and has taught in more than 15 countries.