The Modern Taoist

Kit Mann
  • 4.9 (7)
  • Spirituality
  • Updated Weekly

The Modern Taoist Podcast explores how Taoist wisdom lives in today’s world. Hosted by Kit Mann of Dao Ananda, each weekly episode brings Taoism out of the abstract and into daily practice — one step, one breath at a time. From Qigong and meditation to the challenges of modern life, this podcast offers a grounded look at modern Taoism in America. It’s not about passive philosophy — it’s about clarity, balance, and the small practices that shape a meaningful life. 🎙 New episodes every Tuesday morning. 👉 Learn more: https://www.daoananda.org/the-modern-taoist

  1. 3d ago

    Don't Be An Employee Of Your Own Mind

    Stop Being an Employee of Your Own Mind Most people wake up on a Saturday morning and before the coffee is made, before anything has actually happened, the mind has already produced an agenda. Something from last week that needs relitigating. A future conversation that has already gone badly. An assessment of the coming week that is, on balance, not encouraging. They didn't choose any of it. The mind issued the directive and they started working through it, because that's what they always do, because the thought arrived with the implicit instruction to attend to it — and the instruction was obeyed. This is what it means to be an employee of your own mind. The mind produces a thought and most people treat it as a fact requiring a response, rather than as the output of a pattern-recognition machine with a well-documented bias toward the most alarming available interpretation of any given situation. This weekend check-in is about the gap between having a thought and the thought being true — and what becomes available when you start noticing the difference. Follow The Modern Taoist so you don't miss the full Tuesday episodes. And if you know someone who is working full time for a mind that isn't paying them fairly, send this one their way.

    Don't Be An Employee Of Your Own Mind

  2. 6d ago

    The Big Questions

    Carrying Yourself Whole Chapter 10 of the Tao Te Ching is unusual. Instead of stating, Lao Tzu asks. Can you carry your body and soul together without separation? Can you love people without possessing them? Can you lead without controlling? Can you see what is actually there rather than the version you decided on before you looked? These are not rhetorical questions. They are a mirror held up to the specific ways most people are living at a slight distance from their own lives — present in body, somewhere else in mind; giving genuinely but tracking the return; caring about people while quietly managing them toward outcomes they never agreed to. This episode takes each of those questions out of the abstract and into the ordinary moments of a modern life. The dinner table where the body is present and the mind is elsewhere. The relationship where the love is real and the ledger is also real. The governance that wears the clothes of care and is still governance. Also: a listener question from Someone in Stockholm who travels constantly and wants to know whether Taoism actually helps with patience — or whether that's just something people say.

    The Big Questions

  3. Jul 24

    Weekend Check-In - Less is the Practice

    Chapter 48 — Why Less Is the Practice Most people who come to Taoism hit Chapter 48 and stop cold. Nothing is done and nothing is left undone. It reads like a riddle, or like the book is telling you to give up and opt out. Most people decide it must mean something they're not spiritually advanced enough to grasp yet, and move on. They're not missing spiritual advancement. They're missing a translation issue. Chapter 48 is not about doing less. It's about removing what has attached itself to the doing that was never part of the doing in the first place. The parenting that got buried under the managing of the household. The friendship that accumulated so much maintenance it stopped resembling a friendship. The thing you started for one reason that somewhere along the way became about something else entirely. This weekend check-in is a short, practical look at the most misunderstood chapter in the Tao Te Ching — what it actually says, why it matters, and what it looks like in a real life being lived. Follow The Modern Taoist so you don't miss the full Tuesday episodes. And if you know someone who has been confused by this chapter, send it their way.

    Weekend Check-In - Less is the Practice

  4. Jul 21

    Motivation is NOT required

    You Don't Need to Feel Motivated Motivation is not a magical condition that arrives and makes action possible. It is what action produces. And the person waiting for it to show up before they begin has the causality completely backwards. You brush your teeth without waiting to feel inspired. You make dinner without consulting your enthusiasm levels first. But when it comes to the things that actually matter — the work, the conversation, the change that would shift something real — suddenly the feeling has to arrive first. And it doesn't. And the days pass. And the thing doesn't get done. This episode is about that inversion. About why motivation follows action rather than precedes it, what the Taoist tradition understood about the relationship between doing and feeling, and why waiting for Monday to start something you could start today is not preparation — it's just waiting with a better story attached to it. Also: a listener question from Tana in Austin about whether luck exists — which turns out to be exactly the right question for a tradition that has been thinking about the difference between what happens and what we decide it means for a very long time.

    Motivation is NOT required

  5. Jul 17

    Weekend Check- In - 3 Taoist Things

    Three Things a Taoist Does Every Day Most conversations about Taoism stay at the level of ideas. The water metaphor. The wisdom of not forcing. The value of stillness. People find these things resonant and then walk back into their lives and do exactly what they were doing before — because nobody explained what any of it actually looks like on a Tuesday morning. This weekend check-in is about the Tuesday morning. Three things a person living close to this tradition actually returns to throughout an ordinary day. Not a morning routine. Not a system to build and optimise. Just three orientations that change the quality of whatever the day is doing — available in the gaps the day already produces, without requiring anything the day isn't already offering. Follow The Modern Taoist so you don't miss the full Tuesday episodes. And if you know someone who has been reading about Taoism and wondering what to actually do with it, send this one their way. Three Things a Taoist Does Every Day Most conversations about Taoism stay at the level of ideas. The water metaphor. The wisdom of not forcing. The value of stillness. People find these things resonant and then walk back into their lives and do exactly what they were doing before — because nobody explained what any of it actually looks like on a Tuesday morning. This weekend check-in is about the Tuesday morning. Three things a person living close to this tradition actually returns to throughout an ordinary day. Not a morning routine. Not a system to build and optimise. Just three orientations that change the quality of whatever the day is doing — available in the gaps the day already produces, without requiring anything the day isn't already offering. Follow The Modern Taoist so you don't miss the full Tuesday episodes. And if you know someone who has been reading about Taoism and wondering what to actually do with it, send this one their way.

    Weekend Check- In - 3 Taoist Things

  6. Jul 14

    Its is NEVER the situation that is the problem

    It Is Never the Situation Something goes wrong. And the immediate experience, almost every time, is that the situation is the problem — that the way forward runs through the circumstances changing, and until they do, you're stuck. Taoism has always disagreed with that reading. Not because circumstances don't matter, but because the situation is not where your life is actually happening. Your life is happening in your response to it. And the response — unlike the situation — is something you can actually work with. This episode is about the difference between reaction and response. Why the automatic, feeling-driven reaction is almost always the one that makes things worse. What creates the gap between the two. Why understanding this does nothing on its own, and what actually builds the capacity to use it when the situation is serious enough to matter. Also: a listener question from James in Edinburgh, who has been studying Taoism for two years, understands it completely, and finds it completely inaccessible the moment anything actually goes wrong. It's the question most serious students of this tradition eventually arrive at, and it deserves a real answer.

    Its is NEVER the situation that is the problem

  7. Jul 10

    Weekend Check-In - Speaking In Absolutes

    Speaking in Absolutes Is a Form of Giving Up I will never. This always happens. I'm just not the kind of person who. These sentences feel like honesty. Like finally facing the hard truth instead of pretending. They arrive with the authority of real experience behind them, and that authority makes them almost impossible to argue with from the inside. But they are almost never accurate. And the damage they do isn't in the moment they're spoken — it's in everything that happens after. In the way they quietly close doors that haven't actually been tested yet, and produce, over time, exactly the outcomes they claimed were inevitable. This weekend check-in is about what's really happening when we reach for the absolute. Why it feels like realism and functions like surrender. And what the small, honest shift looks like that leaves the future available without requiring you to pretend everything is fine. Follow The Modern Taoist so you don't miss the full Tuesday episodes. And if you know someone whose absolutes are running their life, send this one their way.

    Weekend Check-In - Speaking In Absolutes

  8. Jul 7

    You Don't Have To Win Everyday

    Life Is Not Asking You to Win Today Most people end hard days feeling like they failed them. Not because anything went wrong, exactly — but because the standard they applied to the day had nothing to do with what the day actually was. A day that deserved to be called endurance got filed under disappointing. A day that needed genuine rest got spent in guilty half-productivity that produced neither rest nor anything else. This episode is about the grading system most of us carry without ever choosing it — where it came from, why knowing it's unreasonable doesn't make it stop, and what actually changes when you start meeting each day on its own terms rather than forcing it through a metric it was never going to pass. Some days are for building. Some are for recovering. Some are simply for enduring. Learning to tell the difference — and to give each one the right standard rather than the same wrong one — turns out to be one of the more useful things a person can develop. Also: a listener question from Daniel in Melbourne about the I Ching — whether it's connected to Taoism, whether it's worth exploring, or whether it's just fortune-telling dressed up in ancient packaging.

    You Don't Have To Win Everyday
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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The Modern Taoist Podcast explores how Taoist wisdom lives in today’s world. Hosted by Kit Mann of Dao Ananda, each weekly episode brings Taoism out of the abstract and into daily practice — one step, one breath at a time. From Qigong and meditation to the challenges of modern life, this podcast offers a grounded look at modern Taoism in America. It’s not about passive philosophy — it’s about clarity, balance, and the small practices that shape a meaningful life. 🎙 New episodes every Tuesday morning. 👉 Learn more: https://www.daoananda.org/the-modern-taoist

Information

  • Creator
    Kit Mann
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    72
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Kit Mann
  • Show Website
    The Modern Taoist

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