Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Cass.
Hi Dr. Cass, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Dr. Cass Naumann, DACM, LAc is a Doctor of Chinese and Integrative Medicine, contemplative medicine scholar, and the creator of Contemplative Medicine™.
A 23rd generation Daoist priestess of the Longmen Dragon Gate lineage. A wisdom keeper of traditions East and West. A doctoral faculty member, international retreat leader, and author. A recording artist, pianist, vocalist, and vibrational sound healer whose music has appeared in film and television. A ketamine-assisted therapy facilitator, death doula, and ceremonialist of tea and incense trained in Kyoto, Japan.
Her private clientele includes leaders in business, public life, sport, and the arts — held with the discretion their trust requires.
Already whole. Already luminous. Already free.
This is what she helps others remember.
A life shaped by sound, movement & devotion
Dr. Cass was born and raised in Austin, Texas, taking to the arts of sound and movement from the age of 4 when her Nana gifted her a piano. After skipping 2nd to 4th grade and demonstrating unusual aptitude in academia and music, Cassie’s father bought her a baby grand piano — turning his office into a music studio and the garage into a dance studio to further her passions.
She studied music and dance formally, composing and choreographing through university — majoring in music and minoring in theatre and dance at The University of Texas at Austin. Her compositions, voice, and likeness appeared in film, television, and commercial work — culminating in invitations to both the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes, where she appeared on screen in two films. In 2008 she released an eponymously titled record.
The Inner Turning
Cass’s preference for being behind the scenes — creating rather than performing — was encouraged by her soul-friend George Reiff, a beloved music producer and bassist whose credits spanned the Dixie Chicks, Joe Walsh, and Jakob Dylan. He opened her world to Qigong, Chinese medicine, Buddhism, Daoism, and music as a spiritual practice. Sitting in on world-class recording sessions deepened her capacity to attune to the subtle realms of vibration — a gift that would become central to her clinical work.
It was in George’s studio that she first met Ian Moore — a musician and philosopher whose bass player was George himself. That friendship seeded what would become a decade of co-founding and co-facilitating the Ian Moore Songwriting Workshops — annual contemplative creative retreats where music, nature, and inner life converge.
Her affinity for the healing arts of sound and movement led inevitably toward energy medicine, vibrational healing, and herbal plant medicine. During these years Cass lived many lives within one lifetime — mother, yoga teacher, jazz singer, Army wife through two deployments with an infant, and finally death doula to her dearest friend George, who passed of lung cancer in 2017.
She had the great honor of walking him home during the years she was completing her Doctorate in Chinese medicine — a degree she dedicated in his honor.
During these years, something shifted that could only be called an awakening..
The Lineage Path
Throughout this transition, Cass traveled to Kyoto, Japan for doctoral clinical rotations — studying Japanese acupuncture techniques, tea and incense ceremony, and finding herself meditating for hours each day in a Rinzai Zen Buddhist temple, seeking answers to the eternal questions.
She spent many years devoted to the Zen tradition. Then the Daoist gate opened.
Through Parting Clouds — a QuanZhen Longmen, Complete Reality Dragon Gate lineage — she received ordination as a 23rd generation Daoist priestess. Her Daoist name is 金宗興 Jin Zong Xing. She carries the Zhu You transmission — a rare healing modality within the tradition working through incantation, talisman, and the imbuement of love-light.
Her contemplative formation continues through active study in Tibetan, Dzogchen, and Mahamudra, interfaith ministry, and psychedelic integration work across traditions. She is an initiated Lakota pipe carrier, a death doula trained through the Love Serve Remember Foundation under Ram Dass’s lineage, and a Rinzai Zen Buddhist nun at the Ithaca Zen Center — where she directs the zendo and offers acupuncture within the contemplative community.
Wherever she journeys, she can be found working with the elements, the land, and the living field of nature — priestess, medicine woman, and keeper of the threshold.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been a smooth road, although in many ways I am grateful for that.
My path has been shaped by both devotion and uncertainty. I spent decades immersed in the study of healing—music, Chinese medicine, integrative medicine, qigong, contemplative practices, trauma healing, and consciousness studies—following a calling that often made more sense to my heart than it did on paper.
Like many practitioners, I have navigated the realities of building a practice, raising a family, teaching, and continuing my own growth at the same time. There have been seasons of profound abundance and seasons that required trust. There have been moments when doors closed unexpectedly, including watching institutions and communities I loved change or disappear. Each transition asked me to return to the deeper question: Why am I doing this work?
Some of my greatest challenges have ultimately become my greatest teachers. They taught me to value presence over performance, wisdom over certainty, and relationship over achievement. They deepened my compassion for the people who sit across from me seeking healing, because I know firsthand that transformation is rarely linear.
Today, I see medicine as much more than treating symptoms. It is the art of helping people remember their wholeness. The winding road taught me that healing and awakening are not destinations; they are lifelong practices. Every challenge has refined my capacity to serve, and for that I am deeply grateful.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
There’s a thread running through everything I’ve done — a decade performing and teaching music, two decades teaching yoga,qigong, mediation and sound healing and now a decade as a doctoral-level physician of Chinese and integrative medicine. That thread is the moment a person arrives back in themselves. I’ve spent my whole life learning how to create the conditions for that to happen — first with music, then with movement, and now with medicine.
My practice is Doctor Cass: Original Spirit Healing Arts — a concierge private practice I’ve spent a decade mastering. I work at the place most medicine never quite reaches: where the body, the nervous system, and the deeper spiritual life converge. My clients are visionaries, executives, artists, athletes, and public figures — people who have built extraordinary lives and need medicine that can meet them at that level. The work is the whole person: nervous system, hormonal health, longevity, immunity, grief, major transition, and the profound and existential questions most medicine doesn’t have time for.
The tools I bring include acupuncture, herbal medicine, cosmetic acupuncture, medical qigong, sound and vibrational healing, trauma and somatic work, ketamine-assisted therapy facilitation, psychedelic integration, ritual design, ceremonial practice in tea & incense, conscious dying support, and medical intuitive field work. They don’t all appear in every session — but the full range is what allows me to meet a person exactly where they are.
I teach at the doctoral level, volunteer clinical time with athletes, and lead healing retreats internationally – over the years across Iceland, Japan, Ireland, St. Barth’s, and throughout the Caribbean. I’m a GLO-IMPACT Scholar working alongside Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to bring acupuncture into oncology care worldwide.
The practice is established. What’s opening now is the next chapter — faculty roles, clinical residencies, and bringing this work to larger platforms and communities. My first book, Rituals for Remembrance, is forthcoming.
I was born and raised right here in Austin. I keep coming home. And I keep going out into the world with what this city helped shape in me.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
The most direct way to work with me is through my concierge private practice — one-on-one clinical care grounded in doctoral-level medicine, decades of lineage-based training, and a growing body of science that is finally catching up to what ancient traditions have always known. Everything begins at doctorcass.com.
For those drawn to community and ceremony, my gatherings at Casa Cass bring the work into an intimate, seasonal format — acupuncture, sound, tea, qigong, and stillness together. Details through the website.
For luxury wellness properties and retreat programs ready for clinical depth with genuine contemplative substance — residencies are where I’m expanding next. Reach out directly.
And collaboration — I’m actively seeking other healers, artists, and entrepreneurs who want to create things together. Products, experiences, offerings that couldn’t exist without an unusual convergence of gifts. If you’re building something at that level and sense a fit, I want to hear from you.
The book is coming. There is more on the way.
Pricing:
- Initial- $250 90 minutes
- Follow ups $200 60 minutes
- Packages 5 for $950; 10 for $1850
- Daoist Healing Arts Group Immersives $1000 for 3.5 hours 10 people
Contact Info:
- Website: https://DoctorCass.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/doctor.cass
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/originalspirithealingarts
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassnaumann/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/doctor-cass-austin
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/cassie-naumann
- Other: https://linktr.ee/doctor.cass
