About Katherine ᐧ
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Katherine Dessert is a Chi Nei Tsang practitioner and associate instructor, trained and certified in the Universal Healing Tao (UHT) system under Grandmaster Mantak Chia, one of the foremost living teachers of Taoist healing arts and the primary figure responsible for bringing these practices to the West.
She lives nestled under a canopy of cedar and pine trees, not far from the Yuba River in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California. This beautiful wilderness is the ground her practice grows from.
Chi Nei Tsang is a form of abdominal massage rooted in Taoist medicine, and Taoism is, at its heart, a tradition of nature. The Tao moves through rivers and root systems, through the turning of seasons and the rhythm of breath. The body, in this way, is not separate from the natural world, it is the natural world. The belly holds water and fire, wood and metal and earth. Tending the belly is not so different from tending the land.
Katherine has spent her life finding her way toward this deep knowing, through many paths and many callings, each one circling the same territory: the wisdom of the body, the intelligence of the natural world, and what becomes possible when the two are honored together.
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∙ Chi Nei Tsang Level 1 — UHT Certified
∙ Associate Instructor — UHT Certified
∙ Chi Nei Tsang Levels 2 through 4 — Certifications in progress
∙ Healing Love — Trained with Grandmaster Mantak Chia
∙ Full Instructor — Certification in progress
ᐧ ᐧ ᐧ Why This Work?
Katherine has always had a reverence for the belly as a cauldron, a watershed, a place where emotion, memory, creativity, and life force gather, pool, and sometimes stagnate. Tender. Vulnerable. Alive with an intelligence that, when met, opens us to more of ourselves.
When she encountered Taoism and discovered that Chi Nei Tsang holds the belly in exactly this way, as a sacred center, as a reflection of nature itself, deserving of slow and devoted attention, she felt a lifelong intuition confirmed by an entire tradition.
And underneath Taoism, older still, she sensed something even more ancient. Human hands have always found their way to the belly. People have always known, in some wordless way, that this is where things are held — and that gentle, unhurried touch can help them move.
