Cosimo Mendis
Founder & Senior Instructor
The Chi Gung Centre president, Cosimo Mendis teaches Water Method Chi Gung and Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan. He also maintains a professional interest in various types of Meditation, Hsing-I, Ba Gua Zhang and Tui Na.
He started practicing external martial arts 30 years ago, first with Judo, then later with Shotokan Karate. His education includes Western Medicine and Psychology, and he has extensive professional experience as a racecar driver and as a photographer.
Cosimo first approached the Internal Arts in the early 1990s for their stress management and health benefits. Grasping intuitively their highest potentialities, he was rapidly drawn into what became 8 years of intensive study and training with Bruce Kumar Frantzis. For more advanced training he continues to study - mostly privately - with Bernard Langan, in Albany, California.
In 1997 Cosimo, son to an Italian mother in the USA, started traveling periodically to teach Water Method Chi Gung in Italy. Thus he began spreading this ancient method - well known among Taoists but still unknown in Italy - to this part of the world. At the end of 1999 he settled down in Italy, where he co-founded the Centre.
Bernard Langan
Guest Instructor
Bernard is the director of the Internal Arts Association and Co-founder of In Motion Center. He has studied martial arts intensively for over 17 years and he is now an internationally respected instructor and practitioner of Ba Gua Zhang, Hsing-I Chuan, Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan, South East Fighting Arts, Taoist Nei Gung, and Chi Gung. He has done extensive cross research in martial, meditative, healing, and movement systems and can clearly articulate this knowledge and impart these skills to his students.
Bernard related cross training includes also: Taoist Meditation, I-Chuan, Pencak-Silat, Eight Drunken Immortals Kung Fu, Aikido, Uechi-Ryu Karate (black belt), Wing Chun, Southern Praying Mantis, Tibetan Lung Ha, Western and Tai Boxing, Kuntao, Dumog, Moro-Moro, Sikaran, Modern Dance, Gurdjieff Movements, Chinese Bodywork (Tui Na), 5 Element Diagnostic Theory, Orthopedic Craniosacral Integrative Therapy, Miofascial Release Therapy, Visceral Manipulation, Shamanism, Chinese Tea Ceremony.
He is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, with a degree in Philosophy. His primary Chinese Internal Arts teacher is B.K. Frantzis. Other instructors include: Luo De Xui (of Taipei, Taiwan), P. Hadji Yasser Tanadjalan (of the Moro Yakan Tribe in Basilan, Mindanao, Philippines), Cai Sai Fang and Fong Ha. He has been a private student of Sonny Umpad in Visayan Eskrima since 1997.
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Andrew Lynch
Senior Instructor
Andrew has studied and taught a variety of martial arts for 22 years, beginning with Tae Kwon Do, Isshin-ryu karate (2nd degree black belt) and Jiu-jitsu. In 1992, he began to study internal arts such as Tai Chi Chuan (Chen and Combined-style), Ba Gua Zhang and various types of chi gung.
In 1995, he was drawn to the system of Taoist Internal Arts as taught by Bruce Kumar Frantzis and Bernard Langan in California, with Ba Gua Zhang as his main interest. Inspired also by the teaching of Luo De Xiu of Taipei, he studied intensively and was soon encouraged to teach these arts.
He maintains an active professional interest in various types of bodywork including Breema, Tui Na, Zen Shiatsu, acupuncture and cranial-sacral therapy, as well as South Asian Martial Arts (Sonny Umpad), San Shou of Yang-style (old) Tai Chi Chuan, Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity and Pilates.
His main inspiration now lies with self-exploration, artistic expression and ever-expanding ‘possibilities’ in movement, health, energy and humanity. One of these possibilities is the creative introduction of ‘chi gung’ into public health education. Andrew is currently studying Italian public health reform in order to complete his PhD at the University of California – Berkeley and to help realize this possibility. His scholarly studies also include degrees in Political Science (MA 1994, UC-Berkeley, “The Psychology of Nationalism”), International Relations (BA 1990, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, “International Peace and Security,” including Russian and German languages) and Cognitive Science (BS 1990, Brown University, “Artificial Intelligence”).
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