What’s in a name?

Waypoint Sanctuary

Qi Gong practice in Waypoint Sanctuary

I chose Waypoint Sanctuary as the name for my clinic/school/temple for a conglomerate of reasons.

“Way” refers to the Dao, the way things are, the way things aren’t- all of it. Dao also means path, or road… the path we live and walk in life (and beyond). “Point” refers to a place, a space, like an acupuncture point, but also a guiding finger, pointing us along our way. A “Waypoint” is a place of transition along our path, a stopping point, a crossing point, a turning point. “Sanctuary” is a place we go to step out of our ordinary experience of life to in some way gain fresh perspective, and experience life’s possibilities for inner and outer peace, relative quietude, safety, healing, and more…

So Waypoint Sanctuary is a place where I try to help point people on their way to healing, wellness, self-development, martial mastery, and potentially even self-transcendence/illumination/enlightenment... whatever it is they’re looking for. Providing a place of relative neutrality to allow individuals time and space to discover their way for themselves, with a gentle guiding hand pointing to possibilities and methods to get there.

Prior to this, my business/website was Mystic Dao. I created that website in 2013 soon after I began teaching Tai Chi and qigong publicly in parks in Asheville, NC. At that time, I essentially needed a website to post schedules and basic class info, and at that time, as I was approaching graduation from acupuncture/Chinese Medicine college, I was also planning ahead for a business name that was simultaneously pertinent and ambiguous enough to include my future clinical services, as well as teaching services… enter “Mystic Dao”. From my graduation in 2014, I've spent a fair amount of time relocating,  and never got settled enough to have my own location to teach or practice out of. Over those years I taught in parks, my house and yard, online private lessons, yoga studios, pilates studios, and other rented locations. I practiced Acupuncture from my house, made house calls, rented treatment rooms, worked at other people's private and community clinics, did online consultations, and taught/practiced as a clinical internship supervisor at my alma mater, Daoist Traditions College of Chinese Medical Arts. During those years, Mystic Dao was a good name and fit for me and how I offered what I did. It was a meaningful name to me, essentially meaning- the Way or Path of a Mystic… which in my tradition of the Jade Purity Lineage of Daoism, essentially means the way or path of the individual developing their own way through experience.

Now, in 2025, I (finally) have rented my own location, of all places, in North Kingstown, RI, just down the road from where I attended high school, and across the bridge from where I grew up, to teach and practice clinically. I decided I wanted a name that implied it’s a place- a physical location. Hence, sanctuary - a physical place of sanctuary for the processes of healing, self-cultivation, and spiritual development. Waypoint Sanctuary is like one part clinic, one part school, and one part temple, and the word sanctuary was what for me best summarized those aspects together.