Inner Radiance Institute

About Michele

Hi, I’m Michele—herbalist, Master of Medical Qi Gong, Daoist priest, and the founder of Inner Radiance Institute.

I’m also a mother, an inner alchemist, and a multidimensional being learning to live each day from a place of alignment, kindness, and deep presence.

I opened my practice in 2004 and have been immersed in the study and clinical practice of Chinese herbal and energetic medicine for over two decades.

For ten of those years, I co-led 4 Branches Chinese Medicine Center with my husband and beloved partner in all things, Andrés—until his sudden passing in 2022. His influence continues to live through every part of this work. Alongside him, my deepest teacher is my son, Gabriel, who reminds me every day why it matters to live with gentleness, clarity, and trust.

My path has always been guided by a love for the practical elegance of Chinese medicine and the mystery of Daoist cosmology. As I deepened my study, my role expanded beyond herbalist to practitioner of Chinese energetic medicine, qi gong, inner alchemy, and eventually, Daoist mysticism.

In 2021, after years of study and quiet integration, I was ordained as a Daoist priest—82nd generation of the Highest Purity sect, 66th generation of the Celestial Masters, and a disciple of the Dragon Heart Temple. This was a sacred passage for me, and one Andrés and I undertook together.

It is not a religion or a dogma for me, but rather another layer in the foundation of spiritual practices and Daoist wisdom that guides me in the quiet, still moments when the world falls away. Its value lie in how it helped me deepen relationship with my inner home.

Unfolding within myself—through grief, motherhood, Daoist cultivation, and deep listening—has always been both a necessity and a sacred call. It has been my way of understanding how to meet pain without turning away, and how to allow it to become something luminous, integrated, and alive.

Inner Radiance Institute grew out of that process. It is what I longed for on my own path: A sacred container that honors each person’s body wisdom and inner guidance, and acknowledges us as unique, multidimensional, magical beings—capable of holding contradiction, complexity, and transformation.

My approach is grounded in the living lineage of Chinese energetic medicine and Daoist inner cultivation, as transmitted through some of my most formative teachers—Wendy Lang, Laura Johnson McCreary, and Michael Winn. Each of them carried forward the threads of the system with clarity, discernment, and deep devotion—refining and expressing it in ways that made the heart of the tradition accessible without diluting its depth.

I honor the transmission they carried—not only as a set of teachings, but as a living current of wisdom that has shaped how I practice, how I teach, and how I walk in the world. What I offer through Inner Radiance is not a replication of their work, but a continuation—one that has been digested through my own experience and expressed through the rhythm of my own life.

This work exists to provide what I needed and now know how to offer:

🌀 A grounded container that sees you as whole, not broken.

🪶 Tools rooted in a living tradition that reflect the innate intelligence of your body and spirit.

🌿 A remembrance that you already carry everything you need—and support to meet it with love.

I want to honor another great teacher: the courageous and tender-hearted individuals who have shared their stories with me—whether in my treatment room, in writing, or in passing moments of truth. Their willingness to speak from the heart has been a mirror and a light—feeding my courage, softening my judgments, and reminding me what becomes possible when we are seen. In their stories, I found the space to listen for my own voice. In their honesty, I found the permission to walk forward in mine.

Core Values That Anchor My Work

At the heart of everything I teach is this truth: you are not something that needs to be fixed. You are whole—even when tender, uncertain, or in pain. This doesn’t mean we don’t have patterns to look at or accountability to step into. But the work begins from the knowing that our essential nature is part of Divine intelligence—sovereign, infinite, and already wise.
There is something vast and ancient that moves through us, through the Earth, and through all that lives. We don’t always see it clearly, but in stillness—or heartbreak—it reveals itself. Loss has opened this thread to me again and again. Grief can rupture what was and, paradoxically, offer a glimpse of something sacred and real beneath it. This thread is not a bypass—it is the invitation to pattern our lives in alignment with what matters most.

Love is not a soft escape—it’s the field that holds everything: hurt, resistance, joy, confusion, courage. The Divine meets us through gentleness, through kindness, through the radical act of staying with all that is tender and human. My work is about cultivating a spacious field of love where every part of you can be met.

Real transformation doesn’t come from bypassing or fixing. It happens when opposites are held in the same space—when pain and beauty, fear and love, meet. Alchemy is a process of inner fire and integration. It’s messy, powerful, and sacred. Like obsidian formed from molten heat meeting water, we are shaped by our intersections. This work honors the middle—where you’re not quite who you were and not yet who you’re becoming.

Before you can transform, you have to see. Daoist practice—and all true inner work—begins with turning toward the unseen. Shadow work, energy work, soul retrieval, inner alchemy—these are tools for finding what’s been lost, for illuminating the forgotten or exiled parts of yourself. The unseen isn’t mystical fluff—it’s the energy that shapes everything. And when we make space for it, the whole system can begin to realign