Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate: Six Key Tibetan Practices for Enlightenment
Autor Johndennis Goverten Limba Engleză Paperback – 23 oct 2025
A potent practice for healing, spiritual realization, and manifesting life’s purpose
• Explores the Tibetan Buddhist Spiral Dragon practices and how they can accelerate spiritual development as well as clarify one’s life purpose
• Explains energy exercises, mantras, and mudras to help resolve acute and chronic physical ailments and optimize emotional health
• Shows how Spiral Dragon practices can transform how one absorbs and channels vital energy through the body, meridians, and consciousness
Emerging as a tersar treasure teaching, these newly revealed practices are attuned to resolve great spiritual challenges confronting us now. The author, a third-generation Spiral Dragon yogi, shares insights from the Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist lineage following Senton Dorje’s and Master Quan’s way to awaken and enhance the flow of vital energy in your life.
Spiral Dragon practice is a liberating system that heals and strengthens our bodies and auric energies as well as our ability to cultivate mindful self-awareness. The easy practice exercises engage the Spiral Dragon dynamic, transforming how we absorb and channel vital energy through the body, meridians, and consciousness. Instructions and illustrated exercises show readers how to move and integrate energy to restore health and balance. Simple and easy to perform, these exercises are accessible to all of us. The author also offers mudras, mantras, and higher-level cultivation practices aimed at achieving Bodhi mind. Spiral Dragon practice allows our destiny to become clear and our life’s work more apparent, empowering us to embrace our individual purpose with full passion and confidence to benefit all.
More than just a primer on energy work, this book is designed to help readers accelerate spiritual transformation, awaken wisdom, realize your life’s purpose, and put it into action.
Preț: 77.74 lei
Preț vechi: 110.00 lei
-29% Recomandat Nou
Puncte Express: 117
Preț estimativ în valută:
13.77€ • 16.08$ • 11.96£
13.77€ • 16.08$ • 11.96£
Carte disponibilă
Livrare economică 06-18 februarie
Livrare express 20-24 ianuarie pentru 133.12 lei
Preluare comenzi: 021 569.72.76
Specificații
ISBN-13: 9798888501573
Pagini: 176
Ilustrații: 51 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Destiny Books
Pagini: 176
Ilustrații: 51 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.3 kg
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Destiny Books
Notă biografică
Johndennis Govert holds three dharma lineages as Zen Master, Kriya Yoga Swami, and Nyingma Lama in Tibetan Buddhism. He practices the mystic arts of feng shui dao, Zen gardens, and shodo calligraphy. Author of Feng Shui: Art and Harmony of Place and The Chintamani Crystal Matrix, he has been a teacher of dharma, feng shui, and Chinese and Western astrology for more than 40 years.
Extras
1
Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate Origins
The Treasure Revealed
by Khandro Senton Dorje
The value of dharma is that it works to awaken us completely to the spontaneous presence and flow of wisdom in our lives. It is not a monolithic message pointing everyone in the exact same direction. Since we each begin with a unique blend of karmas and experiences, it is the apparent blend of harmonies, dysfunctions, and potentials that create the life basis we each engage. This is what Buddha referred to as “84,000 dharmas.” This is a large, sacred number symbolic of a very wide variety of human types, each with a particular path to enlightenment. Of the 84,000 dharma paths, only a few are optimally suited for each type of practitioner. After making a commitment to enlightenment, the next step is to find the circumstances and path that resonate most closely with your awakening core.
Within Buddhist teaching there are a great many teachings and methods that practitioners over several millennia have verified as leading to the fruit of enlightenment. Many of the teachings arise from the original instructions of the historical Buddha passed down and adapted to each generation by the realized gurus of the era. Many of these gurus wrote commentaries or simply instructed and coached their disciples. Another type of teaching known as terma or treasure teaching also arose in tantric Tibetan Buddhism. These treasure teachings are dependent on a guru with the karma to find sacred objects buried in the Earth, physically hidden texts, or teachings embedded in the guru’s own mind stream. After discovery, the terton, or treasure revealer, decoded the new teachings from symbols to words, practices, and spontaneous wisdom, and then practiced the revealed dharma personally. Usually after many years of practice, the guru would know when and to whom to pass the precious teaching. Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate is a terma within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the Nyingma or ancient order of translations. The treasure revealer was Khandro Senton Dorje who encountered this teaching and practiced it during a thirteen-year solitary retreat in a cave in the area of Kumbum monastery in the Amdo region of Tibet.
The biography of Senton Dorje is minimal in personal detail, almost what one would expect from a highly realized yogini. Her disciples did not know her birth date nor much personal information beyond what they could observe directly for themselves. She reported that her dharma life formally began at eighteen years when she became a Buddhist. Though she was Chinese, she immediately undertook a pilgrimage to Tibet to learn and practice tantric Buddhism, eventually becoming a master in the Nyingma tradition. She entered Kumbun monastery as a nun, then at some point retired to a cave many miles away in the vicinity of Kumbun. It was during her thirteen-year cave retreat that she discovered and practiced Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate, attaining the fruition of profound enlightenment in that place. What I know of Senton Dorje I learned from my guru, Master Guan-liang Quan, who is my sole source of her biography. I will jump to his biography for a moment which includes how he met Senton Dorje, learned Spiral Dragon, and perfected it.
Master Quan was born in Shanghai on November 18, 1931, on the day of Medicine Buddha in the year of the Iron Sheep. His father was a teacher and practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), including acupuncture and herbology, qi gong, and the martial arts. Master Quan learned and assiduously practiced these disciplines from early childhood. He also studied Daoist self-cultivation and yoga practices from childhood. At the time of his birth, Shanghai was a bustling international port city where the cultures of the world intermingled freely. Master Quan attended an international school operated by German missionaries where he began learning the German language in which he would later become fluent. The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937 in which Japan invaded much of China, controlling and continually occupying major cities including Shanghai until the end of World War II. After the wars, Master Quan studied chemistry professionally and became a translator of many German chemical texts and studies into Chinese.
At some time in mid-1970s, Master Quan lived with his mother as his father had died. In that era, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) initially suppressed all religious practices, so Master Quan secretly practiced Daoism but only could openly practice qi gong as a healing modality which was an officially recognized component of the PRC’s health care system that combined modern Western medicine and TCM. By then, Master Quan was a well-regarded and well-known qi gong master who regularly participated in state sponsored conferences professionally investigating and discussing the role of qi gong in recovering and maintaining health. The regional and national conferences Master Quan attended afforded him the opportunity to openly explore the more subtle aspects of healing with masters from Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, scientific, and modern schools of qi gong practice. In secret, these masters were able to confer and collaborate with one another about topics of inner transformation which the PRC considered religious and subject to censorship and callous suppression. These national treasure level masters were able to share the yogic skills they had developed and were experimenting across all fields of human endeavor.
When home in Shanghai, Master Quan’s personal routine was to practice for most of the night. Since Shanghai homes were heated largely by burning charcoal, carbon monoxide poisoning was a common health hazard leading to possible death from charcoal smoke. His interest in staying up most of the night was to ensure that his mother could sleep comfortably and not be exposed to the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. One night during practice with his eyes closed, he sensed a presence in the room. When he opened his eyes, he saw a woman standing in front of him, physically present in the room. He knew he had locked all the doors before practicing and had heard no one enter. This woman was Khandro Senton Dorje.
Senton Dorje immediately began to show Master Quan a number of postures and movements and silently bade him to follow along. At some point after the lesson, she disappeared from sight. She did not show up again for a month, but did reappear and taught him more. This instruction went on periodically for months with nothing spoken. One night she looked intensely at Master Quan and said: “You are my only disciple!” The lessons, with the sudden appearance and disappearance of Senton Dorje, continued but with the addition of sparse conversations. She revealed that this practice system, though resembling qi gong, was Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate, which had been revealed to her years earlier in retreat in the caves around Kumbun monastery. In addition to Spiral Dragon, Senton Dorje instructed Master Quan in the practices of Nyingma and other traditions of Tibetan Buddhism which took place over subsequent years at various places in China. What follows is the little that Master Quan learned of her over the years until her death in the late 1980s.
Khandro Senton Dorje remembered her past lives and disclosed to Master Quan that she was a reincarnation of Machig Labdron, an eleventh-century, famous and realized Tibetan Buddhist female master. The dharma system she revealed and practiced in that lifetime is known as Chod or cutting through the ego. All of tantric Buddhism arose in India and was transmitted to Tibet starting in the eighth century. Machig’s Chod practice, however, is the only tantric Buddhist teaching system that originated in Tibet and was transmitted back to India and other Asian Buddhist communities. Like Machig, Senton Dorje practiced as she wandered across Tibet and China. During times when the PRC aggressively restricted the practice of all religions, especially Buddhism, Senton Dorje came under surveillance and attack. At one point, the Red Guard surrounded a house in which they knew she was staying with the intent of capturing or killing her. When they broke into the house, Senton Dorje unexpectedly was not there. Through her awareness and yogic accomplishments, she was able to roam freely, to teach and care for disciples, students, and those who needed her help throughout her life despite the political climate.
In September of 1998, I accompanied Master Quan and several other disciples to search out greater knowledge of Senton Dorje. Our pilgrimage took us to Kumbun monastery near Xining, China, formerly Amdo, Tibet, but currently administered by the PRC as Qinghai province. Senton Dorje’s practice at Kumbun was one of the few biographical details of her life that had enough specificity to check. Along the way to and from Chengdu to Lanzhou and Xining, as well as later in Lhasa, we met Tibetan Buddhist masters of the Gelugpa, Kagyu, and Nyingma sects. For the moment, I will defer this topic, but address it later in this chapter.
Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate Origins
The Treasure Revealed
by Khandro Senton Dorje
The value of dharma is that it works to awaken us completely to the spontaneous presence and flow of wisdom in our lives. It is not a monolithic message pointing everyone in the exact same direction. Since we each begin with a unique blend of karmas and experiences, it is the apparent blend of harmonies, dysfunctions, and potentials that create the life basis we each engage. This is what Buddha referred to as “84,000 dharmas.” This is a large, sacred number symbolic of a very wide variety of human types, each with a particular path to enlightenment. Of the 84,000 dharma paths, only a few are optimally suited for each type of practitioner. After making a commitment to enlightenment, the next step is to find the circumstances and path that resonate most closely with your awakening core.
Within Buddhist teaching there are a great many teachings and methods that practitioners over several millennia have verified as leading to the fruit of enlightenment. Many of the teachings arise from the original instructions of the historical Buddha passed down and adapted to each generation by the realized gurus of the era. Many of these gurus wrote commentaries or simply instructed and coached their disciples. Another type of teaching known as terma or treasure teaching also arose in tantric Tibetan Buddhism. These treasure teachings are dependent on a guru with the karma to find sacred objects buried in the Earth, physically hidden texts, or teachings embedded in the guru’s own mind stream. After discovery, the terton, or treasure revealer, decoded the new teachings from symbols to words, practices, and spontaneous wisdom, and then practiced the revealed dharma personally. Usually after many years of practice, the guru would know when and to whom to pass the precious teaching. Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate is a terma within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the Nyingma or ancient order of translations. The treasure revealer was Khandro Senton Dorje who encountered this teaching and practiced it during a thirteen-year solitary retreat in a cave in the area of Kumbum monastery in the Amdo region of Tibet.
The biography of Senton Dorje is minimal in personal detail, almost what one would expect from a highly realized yogini. Her disciples did not know her birth date nor much personal information beyond what they could observe directly for themselves. She reported that her dharma life formally began at eighteen years when she became a Buddhist. Though she was Chinese, she immediately undertook a pilgrimage to Tibet to learn and practice tantric Buddhism, eventually becoming a master in the Nyingma tradition. She entered Kumbun monastery as a nun, then at some point retired to a cave many miles away in the vicinity of Kumbun. It was during her thirteen-year cave retreat that she discovered and practiced Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate, attaining the fruition of profound enlightenment in that place. What I know of Senton Dorje I learned from my guru, Master Guan-liang Quan, who is my sole source of her biography. I will jump to his biography for a moment which includes how he met Senton Dorje, learned Spiral Dragon, and perfected it.
Master Quan was born in Shanghai on November 18, 1931, on the day of Medicine Buddha in the year of the Iron Sheep. His father was a teacher and practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), including acupuncture and herbology, qi gong, and the martial arts. Master Quan learned and assiduously practiced these disciplines from early childhood. He also studied Daoist self-cultivation and yoga practices from childhood. At the time of his birth, Shanghai was a bustling international port city where the cultures of the world intermingled freely. Master Quan attended an international school operated by German missionaries where he began learning the German language in which he would later become fluent. The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937 in which Japan invaded much of China, controlling and continually occupying major cities including Shanghai until the end of World War II. After the wars, Master Quan studied chemistry professionally and became a translator of many German chemical texts and studies into Chinese.
At some time in mid-1970s, Master Quan lived with his mother as his father had died. In that era, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) initially suppressed all religious practices, so Master Quan secretly practiced Daoism but only could openly practice qi gong as a healing modality which was an officially recognized component of the PRC’s health care system that combined modern Western medicine and TCM. By then, Master Quan was a well-regarded and well-known qi gong master who regularly participated in state sponsored conferences professionally investigating and discussing the role of qi gong in recovering and maintaining health. The regional and national conferences Master Quan attended afforded him the opportunity to openly explore the more subtle aspects of healing with masters from Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, scientific, and modern schools of qi gong practice. In secret, these masters were able to confer and collaborate with one another about topics of inner transformation which the PRC considered religious and subject to censorship and callous suppression. These national treasure level masters were able to share the yogic skills they had developed and were experimenting across all fields of human endeavor.
When home in Shanghai, Master Quan’s personal routine was to practice for most of the night. Since Shanghai homes were heated largely by burning charcoal, carbon monoxide poisoning was a common health hazard leading to possible death from charcoal smoke. His interest in staying up most of the night was to ensure that his mother could sleep comfortably and not be exposed to the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. One night during practice with his eyes closed, he sensed a presence in the room. When he opened his eyes, he saw a woman standing in front of him, physically present in the room. He knew he had locked all the doors before practicing and had heard no one enter. This woman was Khandro Senton Dorje.
Senton Dorje immediately began to show Master Quan a number of postures and movements and silently bade him to follow along. At some point after the lesson, she disappeared from sight. She did not show up again for a month, but did reappear and taught him more. This instruction went on periodically for months with nothing spoken. One night she looked intensely at Master Quan and said: “You are my only disciple!” The lessons, with the sudden appearance and disappearance of Senton Dorje, continued but with the addition of sparse conversations. She revealed that this practice system, though resembling qi gong, was Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate, which had been revealed to her years earlier in retreat in the caves around Kumbun monastery. In addition to Spiral Dragon, Senton Dorje instructed Master Quan in the practices of Nyingma and other traditions of Tibetan Buddhism which took place over subsequent years at various places in China. What follows is the little that Master Quan learned of her over the years until her death in the late 1980s.
Khandro Senton Dorje remembered her past lives and disclosed to Master Quan that she was a reincarnation of Machig Labdron, an eleventh-century, famous and realized Tibetan Buddhist female master. The dharma system she revealed and practiced in that lifetime is known as Chod or cutting through the ego. All of tantric Buddhism arose in India and was transmitted to Tibet starting in the eighth century. Machig’s Chod practice, however, is the only tantric Buddhist teaching system that originated in Tibet and was transmitted back to India and other Asian Buddhist communities. Like Machig, Senton Dorje practiced as she wandered across Tibet and China. During times when the PRC aggressively restricted the practice of all religions, especially Buddhism, Senton Dorje came under surveillance and attack. At one point, the Red Guard surrounded a house in which they knew she was staying with the intent of capturing or killing her. When they broke into the house, Senton Dorje unexpectedly was not there. Through her awareness and yogic accomplishments, she was able to roam freely, to teach and care for disciples, students, and those who needed her help throughout her life despite the political climate.
In September of 1998, I accompanied Master Quan and several other disciples to search out greater knowledge of Senton Dorje. Our pilgrimage took us to Kumbun monastery near Xining, China, formerly Amdo, Tibet, but currently administered by the PRC as Qinghai province. Senton Dorje’s practice at Kumbun was one of the few biographical details of her life that had enough specificity to check. Along the way to and from Chengdu to Lanzhou and Xining, as well as later in Lhasa, we met Tibetan Buddhist masters of the Gelugpa, Kagyu, and Nyingma sects. For the moment, I will defer this topic, but address it later in this chapter.
Cuprins
Acknowledgments
Introduction to Spiral Dragon
1 Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate Origins
The Treasure Revealed
by Khandro Senton Dorje
2 Spiral Dragon Dynamics
Three Phases of Joyful Self-Actualizing
3 Beginning Spiral Dragon
Relying upon Relaxation and Intuition
4 Moving and Integrating Energy
Hands, Breath, and Thought
5 Restoring Your Health and Energy
Recalling, Recharging, and
Rebalancing Qi Energy
6 Creative Play and Progress
Rhythms of Spiral Dragon
7 Refining Your Destiny
Signs in the Hands
8 Mudra, Mantra, and Inner Transformation
Interconnections of Body, Breath, and Mind
9 Infinite Light Path of Bodhi Mind
Exploring the Limits of Intention
Epilogue
Dharma Unfolding Destiny
Appendix 1
Spiral Dragon Mantra Wisdom
Appendix 2
Spiral Dragon Exercise Sequences
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction to Spiral Dragon
1 Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate Origins
The Treasure Revealed
by Khandro Senton Dorje
2 Spiral Dragon Dynamics
Three Phases of Joyful Self-Actualizing
3 Beginning Spiral Dragon
Relying upon Relaxation and Intuition
4 Moving and Integrating Energy
Hands, Breath, and Thought
5 Restoring Your Health and Energy
Recalling, Recharging, and
Rebalancing Qi Energy
6 Creative Play and Progress
Rhythms of Spiral Dragon
7 Refining Your Destiny
Signs in the Hands
8 Mudra, Mantra, and Inner Transformation
Interconnections of Body, Breath, and Mind
9 Infinite Light Path of Bodhi Mind
Exploring the Limits of Intention
Epilogue
Dharma Unfolding Destiny
Appendix 1
Spiral Dragon Mantra Wisdom
Appendix 2
Spiral Dragon Exercise Sequences
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
“Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate is a vibrant, transformative guide that ignites your spiritual potential with dynamic Tibetan practices. Unleash your inner wisdom and soar to enlightenment with this electrifying treasure teaching!”
“To gain the wisdom contained in Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate, one would traditionally have had to journey to a remote cave in Tibet for teachings—teachings which you now hold here in print.”
“The Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate is what is known as a terma or treasure teaching, which was received from Senton Dorje, a great master and a nun of the Nyingma tradition of Tibet, who was a reincarnation of the fierce yogini Machig Labdrön. Over the course of several years, Senton Dorje then gave this treasure of teachings and practices in mind-to-mind transmission to Master Quan, a Chinese master of many spiritual disciplines. These teachings were then brought to the USA, where Lama Johndennis Govert, an accomplished practitioner and fervent disciple of Master Quan, has passed on these pristine teachings to us today. How fortunate! This teaching and practice is aimed at achieving the highest level of spiritual awakening—supreme awareness in the primordial state of Ultimate Reality. A great treasure indeed.”
“This splendid book literally blew me away! It shows you how to accelerate your path to enlightenment by uniting your body and mind through powerful exercises explained with perfect clarity.”
“Stagnation of movement and thought causes suffering. It’s vital to adopt healthy practices and methods such as those described in this book, which can free the flow of energy within us, loosen our tight grip on concepts, and engender awareness of the mindground. The practices in Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate offer simple and effective ways to accomplish this.”
“To gain the wisdom contained in Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate, one would traditionally have had to journey to a remote cave in Tibet for teachings—teachings which you now hold here in print.”
“The Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate is what is known as a terma or treasure teaching, which was received from Senton Dorje, a great master and a nun of the Nyingma tradition of Tibet, who was a reincarnation of the fierce yogini Machig Labdrön. Over the course of several years, Senton Dorje then gave this treasure of teachings and practices in mind-to-mind transmission to Master Quan, a Chinese master of many spiritual disciplines. These teachings were then brought to the USA, where Lama Johndennis Govert, an accomplished practitioner and fervent disciple of Master Quan, has passed on these pristine teachings to us today. How fortunate! This teaching and practice is aimed at achieving the highest level of spiritual awakening—supreme awareness in the primordial state of Ultimate Reality. A great treasure indeed.”
“This splendid book literally blew me away! It shows you how to accelerate your path to enlightenment by uniting your body and mind through powerful exercises explained with perfect clarity.”
“Stagnation of movement and thought causes suffering. It’s vital to adopt healthy practices and methods such as those described in this book, which can free the flow of energy within us, loosen our tight grip on concepts, and engender awareness of the mindground. The practices in Spiral Dragon Dharma Gate offer simple and effective ways to accomplish this.”
Descriere
A potent practice for healing, spiritual realization, and manifesting life’s purpose