The easiest way to start out is by setting up your monthly membership. (If you don’t want to purchase a monthly membership, see the notes below. If you prefer to pay by check, see the "paying by check" FAQs below.)

Click on “Memberships” at the top of the main page, and choose the monthly membership level that best fits your practice. When you’re ready, click “Buy Now.”

This takes you to a purchase flow, where you’re invited to create a login using your email address and a password. Keep this password handy, because you’ll need it to get back into the site to register and call into classes.

Once you’ve logged in, you can pay for your membership with a credit card. We hope to allow you to pay with a direct debit from your checking account in the future, but for the moment, the system does not support this.

Once you’ve purchased your monthly membership, you will have some number of credits available to you each month to use to “pay” for classes. As long as you’re logged into the website, you can now click “Register” next to any (regular weekly) class you wish to attend and pay for it using one of your membership’s monthly credits. See FAQ below for details.

Note that special series deep-dive classes, workshops, special events, and retreats cannot be paid for with monthly membership credits.

If you don’t want to set up a monthly membership, you can either purchase a class package (where you get a discount on the drop-in class fee by purchasing 5, 10, or 20 classes at once), or you can pay the drop-in rate for each class you take.

To purchase a package, click the “Memberships” link at the top of the homepage and scroll down to Packages. From there, you can purchase the package you want. From there, the process is the same as for purchasing a membership (see the previous FAQ for details).

To pay the drop-in rate for classes, just click on “Register” for the class on the Schedule that you’d like to attend and follow the purchase flow to pay the drop-in rate.

First, make sure you’re logged in to your account, which you created when purchasing your membership or package.

You can see the next few days of the schedule on the main page, or you can click or “Curriculum” -> “Schedule” to get at the whole schedule by date.

Register for a class you want by clicking “Register”.

If you have an active membership, pay with the credits on your membership, or use credits from a purchased package.  If you do not have enough credits left this month, you will have the option to pay a la carte for the class, purchase a package with discounted class credits, or upgrade your membership.

If you expect to take this same class (or another class of the same type) multiple times this month, you can “Add another registration” to register for additional instances of this class.  Sadly, the system won’t let you sign up for other types of classes in this way, but it’s an easy way to register for a given class for each week during the month.

Once you’ve registered, you’ll be taken to a confirmation page that shows the classes you’ve registered for (and their Zoom links, if relevant).  You’ll also get a confirmation email with that same information, and you’ll be able to access those Zoom links from your User Dashboard (see additional FAQs for more detail.)

If you are already logged in, you will see your name when you click on the person icon in the top right of the page.

If not, that icon will say “LOGIN” next to it. Click “LOGIN” and follow the prompts, using the email address and password you set up when you purchased your membership or package.

Now you can register for classes (see the previous FAQ for details).

To create an account without making a purchase, click the “LOGIN” link in the upper right of the webpage. Then enter your email, name, and create a password. Keep this password in a safe place, as you will need to be logged in to register for classes.

To see what classes you’re signed up for on your desktop or laptop, go to your profile (person icon in the upper right of the website) and click “My Registrations.”  This takes you to your “User Dashboard.” There you can see all classes you’re registered for. 

If you’re not seeing your registrations:

1. Click on the “Registrations” page in the left-hand menu, and

2. Check the date range to make sure it is broad enough to include the class(es) you’re looking for.

This is a great place to access the Zoom link(s) to your classes.  Simply click on “View registration” for the class you want to attend, and the Zoom link is right there.

You can also access the Zoom link(s) in your confirmation email(s) and through the OfferingTree mobile app.

In the OfferingTree mobile app, log in with the email address and password you used to set up your account, and you will see the classes you’ve registered for.

You can register for new classes by clicking on the Taoist Studies Institute (scroll down below your registrations)...

then go to “schedule” at the bottom

and click “Register” for the classes you want

Once you’ve registered for a class, the Zoom link is available on: (1) the registration confirmation page, (2) the email from your registration, (3) from you User Dashboard (Your profile -> My Registrations -> View registration), and (4) in the OfferingTree mobile app.

Yes. Download the OfferingTree mobile app from Google Play or Apple’s App Store. Then log in with the email address and password you used to create an account on our website.

We recommend purchasing your membership or class package from our website first, as the OfferingTree app can be a little flaky if you don’t already have your account set up.

Unfortunately, the system is not clever enough at this time for the main schedule to show the class(es) for which you’ve registered. To see your registrations in one place, visit the User Dashboard.

But don’t worry, if you attempt to register for a class for which you’ve already registered, the system will give you the message below.  It will NOT charge you a second time.

Yes. Once we transition fully to the new system (February 1, 2025), each class will have a unique Zoom link.  The easiest way to manage this is from your User Dashboard.  At the start of each class, just click “View Registration” for the class you want, and then click the Zoom link there.

For monthly memberships: credit card. This allows your card to be charged monthly (you’ll get a notice a couple of days before it’s charged, in case you want to change anything) so you don’t have to worry about keeping track of payments or running out of class credits.

For everything else, feel free to pay by check or credit card.  (See below for details on paying by check.)

In the future, we hope to offer direct deposit from bank accounts, which charges TSI a smaller fee, but OfferingTree controls the back-end, so it will happen on their timeframe.

Yes.  Though paying by credit card is preferred for monthly memberships.

Monthly Memberships – paying by credit card allows your monthly membership to auto-renew, saving time for you and administrative overhead for TSI.  If you prefer to pay by check, please keep track of the timing and ensure you pay on the same day every month.

To pay by check or cash:

Make checks out to “TSI” and note: your name, the email address associated with your online account, and what the payment is for (e.g., “Gold Membership, 18 classes/mo”).  Then place the check in the silver box at TSI or mail to:

225 North 70th Street, Seattle, WA 98103

Next, send an email to info@taoiststudiesinstitute.org with the above information about your payment. Allow a week or so for the payment to be posted on your account and your credits or class Zoom link(s) to become available. If you don’t send an email, it may take longer for the payment to be input in your account.

Cancellations for ongoing weekly classes are self-service if paid through a membership or package. Just go to your dashboard, click "View registration" for the class you want to cancel (at least 1 hour in advance), and scroll down to the bottom to click "Cancel Registration."

For classes paid with the drop-in fee, special series classes, events, and retreats, contact us through the web form or email info@taoiststudiesinstitute.org

Refunds for cancellations will be made as account credit.

Policies:

Ongoing Weekly Classes: you may cancel your class registration up to one hour before class begins. If you're not sure you'll be able to attend, you can always register at the last minute (or even after class begins if you're running late).

Intensive Series Classes: you may cancel your series reservation up to one hour before the series begins to have your payment returned as an account credit. No refund is permitted once the series has begun.

Retreats: for cancellations...

• More than 30 days in advance: 90% refund as class credit.

• Between 30 days and 1 week: 50% refund as class credit.

• Less than 1 week before the retreat: no refund.

Yes. The payment processor (Stripe) charges us a fee of about 4% on every transaction.

For the time being, we have included a “convenience fee” in the monthly memberships to cover this cost. TSI has not raised membership prices in many years, and we expect to remove this fee in a couple of months once membership rates change.  We greatly appreciate students being willing to pay this fee to allow for monthly memberships to be paid by credit card, as the membership auto-renewal removes considerable administrative overhead.

We’re hoping to get direct deposit from bank accounts working, as the fee is less. But OfferingTree controls the back-end, so it will happen on their timeframe.

Monthly memberships each come with a certain number of credits per month.  This is a little different from how memberships used to work under the old honors system, where you paid for “X classes per week” instead of “X credits per month.”

If you have, say, a Copper Membership with 4 credits per month and you take Chansi Gong every Tuesday evening, it’s possible that you will have 5 Tuesdays in the month and therefore want to use 5 credits not 4. In the new system, you will need to pay for that 5th class, which you can do either by paying the drop-in class rate, by upgrading to a higher-tier membership, or by purchasing a multi-class package (which gives you a discount over the drop-in rate).

Please note that the monthly membership rate per class is dramatically lower than the drop-in rate, as these prices have not been increased in many years.  It is for this reason that we do not offer 5 classes/month for the Copper Membership rate, but instead request that you pay for the additional class on those occasions where there are 5 classes per month.  This is similar for the other membership tiers, though some do include a “bonus credit” or two to help with those months with extra class days.

If class is cancelled and you paid for it using a class credit, that credit will be returned to your account for use on another class.  Drop-in class purchases will have the payment amount credited to the account.

No.  Monthly class credits must be used within the purchase month.  This allows us to continue offering a large discount on the per-class price.

If you expect to attend fewer classes in a given month, you can adjust your membership level ahead of time.  Or, if you prefer, you can purchase a discounted class package, for which the credits can be used at any time within one year of purchase.

Please excuse our growing pains as we work out kinks in the new system.

 We are creating a new website to facilitate and expand offerings to our community.

The aim is to have a more functional educational site to help nourish all on the path of cultivation.

 Upcoming features will include:

 On-demand classes: we’re still getting this set up, but the new system will allow us to present on-demand classes right from the same website

 Newsletter: Regular news and educational content on Taoist Studies Institute and Xuan Xiu Gong Sanctuary

 New features already implemented:

 Flex package: the flex package allows more flexibility of attendance across months for those with a more irregular schedule.

 More functionality.  The new system will make it easier for staff and instructors to communicate with students, set up new classes, create perks and bonus offers.

This is a 100% volunteer effort by Corry, so please remember to be patient and kind.

Yes. We understand that this adds some process to attending classes, and we wish it weren’t necessary. But this ensures that every student pays for every class they take.

When you register for a class, you can easily add registrations for that same (type of) class for the rest of the month (simply click “Add another registration” as shown below), making it relatively easy to sign up for your whole month of classes in one go.