Daoist Alchemy & The Nine Stages | Gateway Acupuncture San Diego

What Daoist Alchemy Is

What Daoist Alchemy is.

Daoist Alchemy is the transformational process of becoming a realized human being: the creator of your own reality. No longer a victim of life's randomness. A soul-level remembering that everything happens for you, not to you.

The ancient Daoists believed we are born perfect, like pure gold. You can bury it, freeze it, heat it, and when you wipe it clean, it shines all the same. It remains as beautiful as it's always been.

Most people today think we're more like silver, or worse, lead. We rust, corrode, and expect to fall apart at a predictable expiration date. Not because it's inevitable, but because we believe it is.

Alchemy is the process of remembering you were born perfect. The medicine that helps you release the mental grime that's dulling your gold.

The Big Dipper over Cowles Mountain, San Diego, the stars that guide Daoist internal alchemy — The Big Dipper, the stars this work steers by, over Cowles Mountain.

Is alchemy for you?

Ask yourself: Is there more to life than this?

If you feel in your bones that the answer is yes, you may be already looking for Alchemy.

Perhaps your life feels like Groundhog Day: the same patterns repeating, wanting things to change but unable to create a different outcome. You have something to offer the world, but you can't get enough momentum to take off.

If you want more meaning, more vitality, and to discover your full potential, Daoist Alchemy could be a path to explore.

What makes this work different.

You may have conscious awareness of your limiting beliefs. But if those patterns still persist, it's because they don't just live in your mind. They're encoded in your body and spirit; a sort of cellular program. Alchemy treatments address what therapy, somatic treatments, and acupuncture alone cannot reach.

The Treatments

Many offerings. One lineage.

The 9 Stages, the 13 Ghost Points, and the 9 Heart Pains, drawn from one lineage and passed from my teachers to you. Not sure which is yours? Begin with what you feel, and let the work meet you there.

You're steady enough to want more than coping. Something in you is ready to change, to become who you were always meant to be.

Where most people begin

The 9 Stages of Alchemy

The complete map of cultivation, taken one stage at a time. The early stages release what weighs you down: your fears, the armor around the heart, the burdens carried from family and from before. The later stages open toward genuine self-realization.

What alchemy asks of you.

Alchemy goes deeper and further than acupuncture, and the changes can be intense, even uncomfortable. It asks for a sincere heart: a true desire to change, the willingness to give up the comfort of your discomfort, and the courage to meet your fears and the deep material beneath them. You do not need to be spiritually advanced. What it asks is honesty, and the willingness to keep asking better questions. If you are not ready for that yet, the Ghost Points or Heart Pains can build the capacity for it.

Daoist alchemy is a journey we each take alone, together.

What to expect.

For all that alchemy asks of you, it offers, at a minimum, the gift of perspective in return, something my patients and I have learned never to take for granted.

When engaged in alchemy, shifts can be immediate or unfold over months. You might feel lighter, clearer, more yourself. Old patterns might simply stop showing up. Ghost Points work can take six to twelve months to fully integrate. The 9 Stages unfold over years, not months. There is no rushing spiritual evolution.

The Treatment That Changed Everything

About five years after getting licensed, I was burning out on a cookbook version of this medicine: treating a couple of patients a month, coaching fitness on the side, and avoiding my own path as a healer. The magic that drew me to acupuncture had boiled away.

Then I found Leta Herman's work on the 13 Ghost Points and reached out, not to study, but because I felt stuck. The treatment she gave me changed everything. I felt like myself again, alive, no longer getting in my own way. I enrolled in her three-year apprenticeship and, not long after, signed a lease and opened Gateway.

Diego Garcia, L.Ac., in his own words

Read the full story and the treatment in depth →

My commitment to this medicine.

I offer and live these treatments. I continue my own journey through the 9 Stages. I continue studying with Ann Cecil-Sterman in classical acupuncture and take ongoing classes from Jeffrey Yuen. I continue working with Leta Herman. I maintain a dedicated qigong practice as a Xi Sui Gong (Bone Marrow Washing) student under Master Kao of the Little Nine Heaven school of internal Kung Fu.

I study Chinese metaphysics and Daoist philosophy as the foundation of how I move through the world.

You're working with someone who was transformed by this medicine, holds a deep reverence for and is dedicated fully to the practice.

Daoist Alchemy

The Nine Stages begin with a conversation.

Alchemy is deeper, more personal, and not for everyone. It begins with a brief call to decide, together, whether this is the right work for you. And if it is not, I will help you find what is.

Consultation

15 minutes · phone or video

A complimentary 15-minute call to talk about where you are, what the Nine Stages are, and whether this work is right for you.

Complimentary

Alchemy Initiation

Up to 90 minutes · in person or virtual

Your entry into the Nine Stages. Up to ninety minutes: your full picture, your constitution, and your first alchemy treatment.

$270

Alchemy Session

Up to 75 minutes · in person or virtual

Up to seventy-five minutes of dedicated stages of alchemy work, for active clients.

$225

Many patients choose to work in a container, a set of prepaid sessions committed to together, at a rate that honors the depth of the work. Ask about it anytime; we'll find the right fit in conversation.