Vital Breath of the Dao provides an alternative look at Qigong practice and is thus interesting from that standpoint but if the theme of the book was to elucidate Shamanic Qigong then this book is lacking. I found the organization to be poor, with unrelated folk stories, poorly documented attempts at historical scholarship, and comments about modern life often thrown out to the reader without making any connection to a theme. The explanations of information contained within the Chinese character descriptions of Qigong concepts and Tiger Qigong movements are the bright spots of book. It would have been interesting to find out more of what distinguishes this form of Qigong from the thousands of others currently being practiced or more of the lineage and the author's own teachers whom he gives only passing acknowledgement. The descriptions of the Tiger Qigong movements were spotty, with some being clear and others confusing even after several reads. Don't expect to be able to learn this particular Qigong style from this book.

My BS guard was up from the first glance at the cover, for what true master calls himself "Master", and his remarks on enlightenment were fairly cliched. The author does assert that Ramana Maharishi could not have been enlightened because he died of cancer which we assume means that the Buddha could not have been enlightened because he died of food poisoning. Go elsewhere for any pointers on enlightenment.