TaoTao-Project is a free research platform that has been developed to ease the study of Chinese Medicine. The project is aimed for students, scholars and researchers of Traditional Chinese medicine, Daoism and Buddhism.
The TaoTao-project has been in development since 2003. After being used by small group of people it became publicly available in early 2009. The project contains tools for machine aided translation from Chinese to English and Finnish. The database contains more than 100.000 pages of Chinese texts mostly focused on Daoism, Buddhism and Chinese medicine.
The aim is to make the classics of Chinese medicine and acupuncture more available to wider audiences. At the end of 2009 the project become free for users. Currently the database is down and the future of the project is uncertain.
Mikael Ikivesi researches traditions of Daoist self-cultivation and relation of the practices to ancient forms of acupuncture and moxibustion. The primary research topic is using nèiguān 內觀 (contemplation) and nèidān 內丹 (‘inner alchemy’) practices for medical practices, mapping channel pathways and naming of acupuncture points. The most famous doctors in the history of Chinese medicine were said to posses the ability to see inside with contemplation and what they did saw was with this inner landscape or nèijǐng 內景.
His research interest lies in techniques and philosophy behind this inner vision and how it was used in training of doctors and patients. These practices are very similar to mindfulness studies of this day. His personal devotion is towards making these classical texts and ideas available to Finnish and English audience.