Origin

Short Bio

Matthew portrait

Matthew Coe has chased Quality and embraced a centering practice throughout most of his adult life. As both a student and teacher, his pilgrimage has taken him through long distance running, Daoist meditation and qi-gong, and several styles of taiji, gong fu, and Daoist martial arts. In 2005, Matthew began exploring Indic/Hatha yoga, and quickly found it to be an equally valid path to interplay with his ongoing Daoist martial arts practices and teachings. Accenting this, Matthew holds a B.S in Biology with a minor in Biochemistry and English. In his martial arts training he has been formally recognized as a senior practitioner and teacher. He is a certified yoga teacher, a certified and licensed Yoga Tune Up® instructor, trained as specialized teacher for Yoga Behind Bars, a graduate of the Off the Mat, Into the World leadership program, and the creator of the Wind Horse Way vinyasa yoga practice.

Matthew is fortunate to have practiced and trained with many profound and influential teachers and masters. Standing on the shoulders of these giants, his teaching balances a non-dogmatic amalgam of his biology education, martial arts foundation, yoga journey, therapeutic modalities, and life-inspired philosophy.

Photo by mazagranphoto.com




Show Personal Bio

Personal Bio

Since my young days I was always a quiet one, generally an introvert caught up in my own imaginations. I was most attracted to the hero icon, the doer of good, a wandering monk, the noble swordsman, or the centered ascetic. Amazing vistas always stilled me, not just for their beauty, but for their ability to be a gateway to the vastness, a universal connection.

My journey down the mind-body path began in my late teens as I took up long distance running by happenstance. I was never one to listen to music while running, maybe partially because the portable technology was fledgling, but mostly because I felt it was a distraction from my experience. It was not until years later, when my learning was formalized, that I realized running had been a moving meditation for me, my first experience in the power of breath, external and internal energies, and the mind in stillness.

In 1991, my college roommate convinced me to come with him to martial arts. It was a BIG deal for me. After so many years of absorbing stories about heroic icons I was excited about the idea of developing my own "heroic self"... but I was also simply scared about the unknown. By the close of my first class that unknown was something I only wanted more of. Over the next few years, my martial arts path took me through multiple systems (beginning to teach after just two years) until I found resonance with a handful of Chinese styles; the Ma Family system of gongfu (kung fu) or Bayingquan, Taijiquan, Yiquan and Baguazhang. These styles amplified my education and work with Daoism, qigong, Daoist yoga, meditation and philosophy. As time passed I was more drawn to the internal or neijing aspects (qi and our spiritual nature) of my practice and for a period of more than eight years I kept a daily baguazhang circle walking and meditation practice without fail. During this period I completed my collegiate efforts with a B.S. in Biology, minoring in Biochemistry and English.

My time in martial arts saw my teaching strengths grow and in 1998 I co-founded 5 Element Martial Arts in the Pacific Beach community of San Diego, California. The school allowed me to expand my education beyond local teaching circles into various iterations on methods of practice and internal energy cultivation (chi kung or qigong) and delved deeper into multiple styles of Taijiquan, Yiquan, and Baguazhang with several adept masters (notably, Grandmaster Jerry Cook, Dr. Jian Lin, and Master Weidong Zhao). After 7 years I parted paths with the school, and eventually took residence with Master Weidong Zhao for nearly two years, studying the Zhaobao style of taijiquan, xingyiquan, baguazhang, and Taoist yoga. Master Zhao is nothing short of a purist fighter and energetic master, and his teachings echoed with that complexity.

It was during this period that I reflected on my practice and where I was being drawn. In this open-mind space in the summer of 2004, my then-girlfriend-now-wife brought me along to her hatha yoga class and within minutes I saw the essential similarities between yoga asana and martial arts. Somewhere, sometime in the past, great masters of different traditions sat together and swapped secrets. Needless to say, within months I had added a regular yoga practice to my ritual, and was excited to begin to play with weaving hatha yoga atop my neijia martial arts foundation.

My early hatha yoga practice (including approaches from Ashtanga, Iyengar, and Amrit depending how you want to draw your lines) was refined under the instruction of many teachers, but most notably Bonnie Jones and Sara Deakin (both primarily Ashtanga teachers). To name but a few for perspective, I've taken trainings in the approaches of Ashtanga, Iyengar, Tibetan Heart, Power Vinyasa, Sivananda, White Lotus, Tripsichore, Yoga Tune Up®, and Smart Flow® yoga; studying under known luminaries such as Yogiraj Ganga White and Tracey Rich, Bryan Kest, Edward Clarke, Sarahjoy Marsh, and Annie Carpenter; as well as unjustifiably lesser known teachers that I have great respect for: Jano Galindo, Liza Digaetano, Mari Shani and Brandy Davis, Sven Holcomb, Jo Leffingwell, and Liz Doyle.

In 2012 I suffered a crazy motorcycle accident. Crazy because I probably should have died, and crazy because it was my practice and embodied quality that probably saved me. Though my injuries were a physical set-back, the experience has been nothing short of en-lightening. The healing process deepened my understanding of my body's physical and energetic relationships, and gave me a magnified empathy for the suffering of others. This experience caused me to pursue the rehabilitative and self-massage/fascial therapy methods of the Yoga Tune Up® system, and after completing training with Jill Miller, I am now a YTU certified and licensed instructor. All of which has magnified my teaching and diagnostic abilities several fold.

Accenting my therapy and mobility practices, I've studied Thai Yoga Massage with Phoebe Diftler, and meridian-based therapeutics of resistance stretching with Genius of Flexibility's Bob Cooley.

My desire to see uplifting social change and use my ability and knowledge for direct community influence drove me to become a certified teacher for Yoga Behind Bars, where I teach in a specialized circumstance. I'm also a graduate of Off the Mat, Into the World's leadership program, training with Seane Corn, Hala Khouri, and Suzanne Sterling, and I am working to put that experience to personal and public effect.

I currently spend most of my study time with Master Harrison Moretz and Joseph Pau of Seattle's Taoist Studies Institute, and "tea monk" Old Po, Paul Rosenburg of Heaven's Tea studying Cha Dao and the energetics of sacred Chinese teas.

To this day I continue to pursue both Indic/Hatha yoga and Internal/Daoist martial arts knowledge and philosophical insight. I see no difference between the centering goals of eithers' physiological, philosophical, or spiritual practices and am happy now to freely combine them on my Path and in my teaching transmissions and therapeutic offerings.

Proverbial or not, there are many paths to the mountain top.

Inspirational Texts

  • Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
  • Chuang-Tzu
  • I-Ching
  • 365 Tao - Deng Ming-Dao
  • Chronicles of the Tao - Deng Ming-Dao
  • Meditations - Marcus Aruelius, Dover
  • Way of the Peaceful Warrior - Dan Millman
  • The Journeys of Socrates - Dan Millman
  • The Tao of Meditation - Tsung Hwa Jou
  • The Tao of Taiji - Tsung Hwa Jou
  • The Tao of the I Ching - Tsung Hwa Jou
  • Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
  • Story of B - Daniel Quinn
  • Beyond Civilization - Daniel Quinn
  • The Tao of Physics - Fritjof Capra
  • The Bhagavad-Gita
  • The Bardo Thötröl, Tibetan Book of the Dead
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig
  • The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
  • Warrior of the Light - Paulo Coelho
  • Light on Yoga - B.K.S. Iyengar
  • Yoga Sūtras of Patanjali - Edwin F. Bryant
  • Yoga Beyond Belief - Ganga White
  • The Hatha Yoga Pradipika - Yoga Vidya edition
  • The Shiva Samhita - Yoga Vidya edition
  • The Gheranda Samhita - Yoga Vidya edition
  • The Radiance Sutras - Lorin Roche
  • Shambhala, the Sacred Path of the Warrior - Chögyam Trungpa
  • Great Eastern Sun, the Wisdom of Shambhala - Chögyam Trungpa

Online Inspiration

Matthew meditating