It is always great to have the opportunity to ask questions of experienced internal martial arts practitioners who also work with the Hermetic arts. Today we are joined by Jon Younghusband. Through his depth of experience, Jon has a wonderful way of explaining how martial arts and embodied training can have a profound effect on our cultivation, energy work, and Hermetic practice. For anyone who has ever wondered why some of us emphasise bodywork in conjunction with Hermetics, Jon explores this relationship beautifully in this interview.
We hope to hear more from Jon in the future and to dive deeper into some of these subjects. If you would like to learn more about Jon and follow his work, links are included at the end of this post. Finally, if you enjoy this interview, please leave a comment and consider sharing it with those who may find this information useful and inspiring.
I’m Jon Younghusband — an Internal Arts teacher in Sussex, a life coach, and a guide on a path of alignment. With two decades of deep practice spanning internal martial arts, energetic awareness, and life coaching, I’ve developed a unique blend of skills that help people move with clarity, feel with depth, and live with purpose.
Although I began in Traditional Chinese Martial Arts (Xing Yi), I later realised that I had been practising in delusion for many years when I found my internal arts teacher, Sifu Tom Braithwaite of the Dragon Martial Arts Association.
Until that point, I genuinely believed I was training an internal art. I had discipline, commitment, long hours of standing practice behind me and the belief that it would all reveal itself in time — but it was far from what true internal development actually was.
Training with Sifu Tom quickly revealed the real meaning and power of internal martial arts. Through studying Dragon Style Kung Fu, Yang Style Tai Chi, Qigong, and Liu He Ba Fa, I eventually became an instructor within the DMAA, continuing the lineage of these traditional systems.
Over time, I discovered that these arts offered far more than self-defence or movement. They revealed a profound connection between body, energy, emotion, and consciousness. This is where Hermetics entered my path.
That’s when I created the School of Energy Alignment, to expand people’s understanding of this deeper relationship, and to help bridge internal martial arts, Hermetics, energetic cultivation, meditation, and embodied personal development into a coherent path of alignment.
PAA: Can you share how you started out with the Martial Arts and how that journey led you to systems like Dragon Style and qigong methods like Xuan Gong?
My first ever exposure to martial arts was actually through Jiu-Jitsu at school. I took it very seriously for several years and was deeply drawn to the two-person work; the applications, rolling, and embodied problem-solving that happens when you’re really engaged with a training partner.
That early training gave me my first real insight into how martial arts can be a profound vehicle for inner development, not just physical skill. As a teenager, it gave me clarity about who I was, what my capabilities were, and equally what my limitations were at that stage. Of course I didnt realise that at the time, but I could sense the confidence it built in my body and in my mind.
After leaving school I had a couple of years away from martial arts while working overseas and getting myself settled, figuring out what I wanted to do with my adult life. Eventually I moved to the north of England to study in music, and it was there that I encountered traditional Chinese martial arts for the first time.
I began training Xing Yi at a small kung fu school with a gym attached to it. I trained dilligently, a lot of standing postures, a lot of physical conditioning, a lot of repetition. At the time, I genuinely believed I was studying an internal art. I had the belief that through practice, all would be revealed to me. An. unfortunatelyvcommon limitation in the internal arts scene.
Everything shifted when I met Sifu Tom from the Dragon Martial Arts Association. For the first time, I experienced the difference between internal and external martial arts in my own body. That encounter fundamentally changed my definition of what an internal art actually is.
From that point on, my focus moved decisively into Tai Chi, Dragon Style Kung Fu, and internal training. I’ve now been dedicated to that path for almost twenty years, and teaching for over ten. During that period, I also studied Liu He Ba Fa, often called “Water Boxing”, along with the associated Qigong sets, all of which adding more layers to my practice.
Dragon Style itself is a traditional Hakka system developed by Lam Yiu Guai . It emphasises fast, explosive movements, short-range striking power, and quick, agile footwork. The core principles are to ‘stick’ and ‘blend’ with your opponent. As soon as contact is made, you remain in continuous connection, through grabbing, grappling, Qi Na type methods, and even working directly with the fascial web to sieze the whole body.
One of the hallmarks of the system is “Mor Kiu” a sequence of fast twisting grabs and strikes that can be repeated from multiple angles and heights. The strategic idea is to envelop the opponent like a Chinese dragon: Once contact is established, you stay extremely close, wrapped around them, denying them the space needed to generate force from external power.
Dragon Style is also internally sophisticated in ways that aren’t widely recognised. The forms massage the internal organs in very specific patterns, and they are well balanced according to classical Chinese medicine and elemental theory. Traditionally, it’s considered an extremely healthy system, maintaining strong physical vitality deep into old age.
The style doesn’t include slow meditative forms or standalone Qigong sets in its original structure, but internal power (Jin), and consciousness are trained dynamically. Every strike releases Jin. Every movement expands awareness into space. Consciousness is moved rapidly through the body and environment, rather than cultivated slowly as in seated meditation or Tai Chi.
That said, everyone I’ve taught has moved into Qigong, meditation, and Tai Chi alongside Dragon Style. Those slower, contemplative methods profoundly deepen and stabilise the internal side of the art, even if they’re not formally embedded in the original system.
Partner training has always been central to my path. Our two-person drills focus on internal mechanics rather than brute force or free sparring. We work through five core elements of internal martial application:
Chi — touch
Mor — blend, or stick
Fa — diffuse or deflect
La — issue power
Pek — strike
The emphasis is on building a connected bridge at the moment of contact, so defence and attack happen simultaneously. On contact, you blend with the opponent, neutralise their power, create an opening, and issue internal power through that opening. Finally, once they are off balance and the matricies opened, we strike.
That experiential understanding of internal power, rather than conceptual knowledge, is what ultimately led me into deeper Qigong, meditation, and Hermetic training later in life. It all grew organically out of those early realisations about what internal arts truly are.
Influences from Mark Rasmus & Dinesh Kumar
PAA: What drew you to Sifu Mark Rasmus’s Elastic Force Qi Gong, and how did his methods influence your training after so many years of traditional training?
Interestingly, I didn’t train Elastic Force Qi Gong directly with Sifu Mark. I trained with one of his senior students, Sifu Dinesh Kumar. I trained in Hermetics with Sifu Mark though.
I was actually drawn to this system though an intuitive knowing. At the time, I was selling my previous business and consciously stepping into a major life transformation, shifting into energetics as my full-time profession. I kept having this persistent inner knowing that I was going to train with one of Mark’s students. I had no idea who that would be or how it would happen.
The day I accepted an offer on my business, I happened to go onto Mark’s website, not really expecting anything, and there was a small banner at the bottom announcing that Dinesh was running a one-month course in Thailand. It felt immediately right and I booked it straight away.
What made it even stranger is that when I spoke to Pari, who organises the courses, she told me they didn’t know the course had been advertised. Mark had asked Dinesh to run it, but it hadn’t been formally promoted. So they were as surprised that I’d signed up as I was to discover it existed. It had that unmistakable quality of a “fated” convergence.
I ended up training almost one-to-one with Dinesh: six days a week, eight hours a day. It was intense, precise, and transformative.
What really drew me in was the scientific and Hermetic framing of the internal arts. Instead of practising something for decades and hoping results might emerge one day, this was a clear developmental path for energetic and spiritual cultivation. There was a structure, a feedback loop, and an explicit method for refining consciousness, energy, and embodiment together. This was then blended with real world results and pressure testing.
That alone profoundly changed how I understood internal training.
PAA: What have been the biggest things you’ve incorporated from Mark Rasmus’s Hermetic approach into your own teaching?
Mark’s synthesis of Qigong with Franz Bardon’s Hermetic system completely reinvented how I teach.
After spending time in Thailand with Dinesh and Mark, I restructured my entire teaching method and mindset around core Hermetic principles. It’s difficult to articulate how deep the change was, because it didn’t feel like “adding something new.” It felt like remembering how this work should have been framed all along. It was like an awakening of an alignment with the universal principles.
Having said that, I can summarise it as a shift from technique-led teaching to principle-led teaching.
Instead of beginning with physical exercises, we now lead from higher consciousness:
understand the Hermetic principles,
understand consciousnessness,
understand the astral body (ego, belief, emotional),
and working with the physical body.
Every exercise, even traditional tendon and structure development from Dragon Style, is now revisited through a three-body lens:
What is the consciousness doing?
What is the astral energy doing?
What is the physical body doing?
We work both top-down (principles → consciousness → energy → body) and bottom-up (body → energy → consciousness → principles).
That recursive loop creates a completely different depth of internalisation. The exercises stop being mechanical and become initiatory.
Another major influence from Mark is the scientific method of internal training.
All my students now journal. They take ownership of their development. The classes have become less about passively “doing exercises” and more about cultivating a living laboratory of embodied self-experimentation. Students used to turn up to class to practice and I could sense many of them weren’t empowered to practice much outside of class. Now, they come to class to learn, and then practice at home to take ownership of the learning. I’ve seen a huge transformation in all of my students.
Rebounding, Meditation & Embodiment
PAA: Rebounding features on your blog. How does it help practitioners across martial arts, Qigong, meditation, and coaching?
Rebounding is essentially gym work for consciousness, energy, and the physical body simultaneously.
On the physical level, it develops biotensegrity, the elastic, integrated spring-like structure of the body. In martial terms, this makes you spongy, resilient, and elastic. When someone pushes into you, it feels like pushing into a trampoline, their force simply returns to them.
On the energetic level, rebounding fortifies the Astral body. You begin to feel your energy saturating your tissues, floating the bones, and forming a coherent energetic sheath around the body. Which is, of course, controled by the mind.
On the mental level, it develops clarity, focus, and the ability to “throw the mind”, to project consciousness and feel energy move with it.
What’s less obvious, but equally important, is what rebounding does for meditation.
I’d meditated for many years before training Elastic Force, but I hadn’t fully connected internal martial mechanics with seated meditation. Dinesh helped me realise that meditation isn’t physicaly passive, it’s active embodiment.
When you energise the biotensegrity of the body while meditating: the body and matricies open, muscular tension dissolves, the posture stabilises, and sitting becomes effortless.
That one insight tripled the amount of time I could sit comfortably in meditation over night. It removed the physical limitation that usually ends people’s practice long before the mind reaches depth.
It was a complete game-changer.
Co-Active Coaching & Hermetic Self-Transformation
PAA: As a certified Co-Active life coach through the Co-Active Training Institute, how have your own experiences with overcoming self-limiting patterns informed your work with students?
One of the most powerful things I’ve taken from Hermetics, especially when blended with the Co-Active coaching model, is the realisation that we are not fixed identities.
We have the capacity to choose who we want to be, how we want to be, and what we want to do in our reality. That might sound obvious intellectually, but when it’s embodied as a lived truth, it becomes transformational.
The essence of both Hermetics and Co-Active is empowerment through conscious choice. Making decisions not from fear, conditioning, or habit, but from a higher consciousness or higher-self perspective.
That begins with very precise inner inquiry:
What kind of consciousness do I want to live from?
What intellectual or creative activity do I want to pursue?
What beliefs do I need to develop, or release, in order to fulfil my deeper purpose?
And, what can I do to make those changes manifest in the physical world?
When you view consciousness as energy and information, or as the dance between formlessness and form, you can start to deconstruct exactly where you are in your life right now.
You can see clearly which aspects of your identity are inherited, which are conditioned, which are habitual, and which are genuinely chosen and in alignment with a right path.
That perspective alone opens an entirely new horizon of possibility. You stop experiencing yourself as trapped by personality, history, or circumstance. You begin to recognise that change is not only possible it’s a natural part of evolution.
Through my own two decades of internal arts, Hermetic training, and coaching, I’ve repeatedly had to confront self-limiting patterns, unconscious belief cycles, and emotional structures held in the body. And what became clear is that lasting transformation doesn’t happen just at the level of thinking.
It happens across three interlinked dimensions:
Consciousness — narrative, identity, and perspective
Energy (the astral body) — emotion, ego and energetic drivers
We all understand that our thoughts regulate our emotions and our emotions control how we act and the posture we adopt. They are all intrinsically linked, and when all three are addressed together, change becomes coherent rather than fragmented.
In practical coaching terms, this means we don’t just ask, “What’s next?” We ask:
Who are you being?
What energetic patterns sustain you?
What do you want to do?
From there, clients create a conscious roadmap for becoming. They stop seeing themselves as broken or incomplete, and move towards fulfillment. They stop waiting for external permission to change and take empowered ownership of their life. They stop mistaking identity for destiny.
They begin to experience themselves as a creative interface between form and formlessness.
Energy Alignment, Purpose & Guarding Against Delusion
PAA: Over 20 years of blending martial arts, Hermetics, and coaching, what has been one of the most challenging aspects of your own energy alignment journey?
The most challenging aspect of my journey has been learning how to live in balance between hard practice and soft practice, between form and formlessness, between yin and yang.
Learning when to apply structure and when to let everything fall away has been far more difficult than mastering any single technique or system. Especially when what needs to fall away isn’t just habits or methods, but deep beliefs, possessions, identities, relationships, or entire life structures.
That process is hard because it goes directly against the grain of what society conditions us to do. We’re trained to accumulate, to stabilise, to cling, to define ourselves through roles and achievements. The deeper spiritual path often asks for the opposite: subtraction rather than addition.
At a deeper level, it’s always a question of finding the balance point between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. And then letting go of whatever is in resistance to your true path.
Everyone’s true path is unique, but at its core the path is always an evolution of consciousness, a gradual ebbing toward greater coherence, clarity, and ultimately toward pure consciousness itself.
That’s a very difficult thing to navigate, because pure consciousness is subtle. It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. If you can’t feel your way through it, you don’t know whether what you’re practising is moving you closer to alignment or quietly pulling you off-course.
One of my clearest lessons in this came from my early training in internal martial arts.
I genuinely believed I was on the internal path. I practised an internal style. I spent years standing in postures for hours at a time. I was disciplined and committed. But in reality, I was training an internal style in a purely external way. I had a strong self-belief that I was on the right path, and I was wrong.
That experience taught me something essential: one of the great dangers of any spiritual or internal discipline is delusion.
Feeling spiritual isn’t the same as becoming more conscious. Doing internal-looking practices isn’t the same as cultivating internal power. You need a way to reality-test your path.
This is where Mark Rasmus’s method of journaling became invaluable to me.
Journaling makes development real.
When you write something down, you externalise it. When you read it back weeks or months later, you can see whether there’s genuine evolution or just conceptual recycling.
I’ve had practices that felt powerful and enjoyable in the moment. I journaled them. Then I came back weeks later and realised: this is fun, but it’s not actually taking me where I need to go. So I dropped them.
I’ve also rediscovered practices I’d learned and then neglected. When I reread old journals, it was obvious: this was golden; this was foundational; this needs to be reintegrated.
What all of this has taught me is that the spiritual path is not a fixed doctrine or a static system. It’s a continual process of weaving between form and formlessness, staying on the path, and guarding against delusion.
Meditation, Qigong, Hermetics, and internal martial arts continue to evolve my perception of purpose and presence because they constantly bring me back into contact with what is actually aligned, rather than what merely feels good, familiar, or spiritually interesting.
The real work, for me, has been learning how to feel whether a practice is truly on point or subtly pulling me away from my own resonance and life path.
So the path, for me, has been about continually finding that balance point between hard and soft practice, between structure and intuition, between discipline and surrender, and then empowering myself to actually do what I know is of benefit.
Staying on the path isn’t about clinging to a system or an identity. It’s about staying honest with your own experience, testing your practices against reality, and being willing to let go of whatever no longer serves the deeper evolution of your consciousness.
PAA: Very grateful for your time in answering these and sharing your experiences.
The ancient Chinese sages spoke of jing, chi and shen. The Hermeticists of old spoke of vital, astral and mental energies. Both spoke of ways to convert one energy into another. And the Three Transformations were born!
Ever wonder how to do this exactly? Wonder no more. It turns out this is not some mysterious thing that exists only for the greatest of saints. All the details behind how to convert one of the basic natal energies into another, why you would want to perform the Three Transformation and the various issues involved are included in this SixtySkills course.
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Recommended: Use a Free Link Manager (Future-Proof Your Links)
In 2026, Perseus Arcane Academy plans to transition to its own in-house affiliate system. If you hard-code Payhip links into every blog post, video description and social profile now, you will have a lot of manual editing to do later.
A free link manager solves this:
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Good free options and why we recommend them
You can choose any you like – these are examples that work well for most people:
Linktree
Free plan is enough to get started.
Lets you build a simple “link in bio” page with multiple buttons.
Ideal if you want one central page for: Sixty Skills courses, other Perseus courses, your own projects, and social channels.
Lnk.Bio
Also has a strong free tier.
Very simple to set up and edit.
Good if you want a clean, minimal link-in-bio page that you can update quickly as you add more recommendations.
Bitly
Free URL shortener that gives you neat, memorable short links.
Useful if you want a specific short link per course (for example in YouTube descriptions or email).
Helps keep long affiliate URLs tidy and track clicks at a basic level.
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Getting Started Once You’re Approved
Choose the courses you know best Start by promoting courses you have actually taken: the Master Course and any additional Sixty Skills programs you’ve completed. (We will add courses that you are approved for after your registration.)
Plan one or two primary channels
Blog or long-form articles
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Integrate your affiliate links naturally
Add your Payhip or link-manager URLs to:
Course reviews and breakdowns
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Resource pages about Franz Bardon, energy work, breathing, and related topics
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To be effective in this program you should have:
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No Platform Yet? This Can Be the Start of a Whole Site
If you don’t currently have a blog, YouTube channel, TikTok, or other social media focused on your practice, this is an excellent time to start. You’re already training, studying, and thinking about these subjects – turning that into public content is a natural next step.
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How to Promote the Sixty Skills Curriculum
We actively encourage content that is real and experience-based, not hype.
Examples of content that work well:
Blog posts
Detailed course reviews of the Sixty Skills Master Course.
“My first 90 days with Sixty Skills” – what you tried, what worked, what didn’t.
Articles comparing your previous practice to training with Sixty Skills.
YouTube and long-form video
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Deep dives on specific modules (breathwork, concentration, clairvoyance training, and so on).
Q&A style videos where you explain how you approached certain exercises.
TikTok / Shorts / Reels
Short clips describing a single insight or experience from practice.
Simple, direct statements of “one thing I learned this week” from the curriculum.
Very short explanations of how you tackled common problems (distractions, fear, stagnation).
Practice-focused sharing
Share your journey with the curriculum.
Describe challenges you ran into and how the training helped you solve them.
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Quality Over Quantity
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Content Ideas You Can Start With
If you’re already a Sixty Skills student, strong starting points include:
Why you chose the Sixty Skills Master Course over other systems.
The main problems in your practice that Sixty Skills helped you solve.
How your daily routine changed after committing to the curriculum.
What surprised you about the energy work, evocation or breathwork training.
What was hardest for you, and how you worked through it using the exercises.
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A series of shorter TikToks, Reels or Shorts
An email sequence to your list
Add your affiliate links where it makes sense in the flow, with clear disclosure.
This Is Just the Beginning: 2026 and Beyond
The Sixty Skills Affiliate Program is the first step. In 2026, Perseus Arcane Academy will be rolling out our own in-house system designed to offer even greater opportunities for serious students and practitioners.
What this means in practice:
More products and teachers under one roof, so your existing audience can discover a wider range of material.
Deeper collaboration with our affiliates, including structured campaigns, launches and long-term content plans.
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Before You Apply
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This affiliate program is not just about sharing one curriculum – it can be the seed of a focused review site or channel where you discuss and compare high-quality material from multiple teachers, publishers and platforms over time.
The ancient Chinese sages spoke of jing, chi and shen. The Hermeticists of old spoke of vital, astral and mental energies. Both spoke of ways to convert one energy into another. And the Three Transformations were born!
Ever wonder how to do this exactly? Wonder no more. It turns out this is not some mysterious thing that exists only for the greatest of saints. All the details behind how to convert one of the basic natal energies into another, why you would want to perform the Three Transformation and the various issues involved are included in this SixtySkills course.
A very important subject to understand from Bob (SixtySkills), you can see the video on this subject here:
Ritual vs Internal Power Systems
What’s your take on the ritual versus internal Power Systems? All right, um, first of all, they’re not exclusive of each other. Most ritual systems will have some internal power workor, and most internal Power Systems will have an element of ritual with them. Okay, that’s kind of a cop out answer. 60 skills let’s be specific about waron all right take something like the Golden Dawn system well you have the middle pillar exercise that’s an internal power part of that take something like Tibetan Buddhism highly ritual all these different things well they have trulkhor pranama breath retention with body movement even shinon Buddhism does a lot with the Puja or fire ceremony which is going to generate energy by burning things that’s not really an internal power system but that’s not purely ritual either.
Internal Power Systems and Forms
Likewise, a lot of internal Power Systems like say TaiJiQuan, Xingyi Quan, Bagua Zhang, traditional martial arts you’ve got your forms that’s a kind of ritual because it’s something you repeat over and over again. Okay, but the preponderance of your effort in that is holding posture doing Chiang doing certain kinds of breath work certain kinds of vocalizations that’s all internal power work.
Advantages and Risks of Ritual Work
So, okay, ritual versus internal power the advantage with ritual work is it works fast because there’s this egregor this intelligent empowered energetically empowered thought form out there that if you know the right gestures the right words to say the right movements to perform I.E the right right ritual and you have the right empow empowerments in many cases from practitioners of the system you can access that stored battery of energy in the aggregor and because it’s intelligent it will come into you shut off some of those internal safeties you have share its power with you to a limited degree and allow you to do things that if you had to do purely on your own would be much harder to do if not impossible in many cases. Now, the catch with working with an egregor is as we’ve mentioned before not only the fact that it modifies your perception of reality and your thought process to be more in tune with it it impacts your free will there’s no other way to say that. It’s also the issue that because it works by disabling certain safeties in your body it may get your body to produce something or an effect if you will that is potentially damaging you because it’s overriding those again those safeties. Also, ritual magic tends to be slow I’ll get to this advantage of this involving internal power in a second but it’s kind of the wind up in the pitch way of doing magic you have to do all these steps they take a certain amount of time the entity you’re involved with also gets a say in whether or not you want to do something so in many cases while ritual magic can be very powerful it’s often times not something flexible and frequently not something you can do on demand.
Disadvantages of Internal Power Systems
So those are the advantages and disadvantages of ritual magic now when it comes to internal Power Systems the big disadvantage is the time you need to spend cultivating that ability takes a lot of time a lot of practice because you’re having to build something inside of yourself to do something and you’re not getting any help from outside sources. So just the same way you gradually improve your run times in say the kilometer or the mile you’re going to have to go through a lot of pain you’re going to have to get over self-doubt you’re going to have to defeat your internal restrictions on your own and that takes time that’s the primary disadvantage to an internal power system. Other disadvantage toed internal power system is there’s nobody there to tell you what to do it’s a lot like when you’re looking working with letter magic many cases when you’re dealing with combinations of letters you have to figure out what the effects being generated are because there’s no entity telling you what it what it’s going to do you have to figure it on your own.
Advantages of Internal Power Systems
Now advantages one even though running a lot of Fire energy can make you manic or and a lot of water energy depressed for the most part internal power work doesn’t impact your free will a whole lot for the most part it’ll part it’ll make you more animated and that can be a little hard to deal with depending upon your age and personal choices in life the I am a blazing Greek god while standing on top of a rooftop is something people have done from time to time before jumping into the pool blow. But ultimately internal power methods don’t impact your free will a whole lot even if they do impact your decision-making through Mantic behavior and like. Okay, also internal Power Systems are generally something you can do as you need to it’s very easy to do them what we English we call on the fly or spontaneously because you don’t need to go through this elaborate ritual to make the effect happen so that’s the advantage to an internal power system.
Blended Approaches
Keeping in mind that most systems out there are a combination of the two highly ritualized systems like say I don’t know Tibetan Buddhism have trulkhor but on the flip side things like taichi have their long form and that’s very much a rhythmic kind of dance I.E ritual so those are the advantages and disadvantages of ritual versus internal Power Systems keeping in mind there are very few examples of something that is purely one or purely the other.
The Three Transformations – Free Course
The ancient Chinese sages spoke of jing, chi and shen. The Hermeticists of old spoke of vital, astral and mental energies. Both spoke of ways to convert one energy into another. And the Three Transformations were born!
Ever wonder how to do this exactly? Wonder no more. It turns out this is not some mysterious thing that exists only for the greatest of saints. All the details behind how to convert one of the basic natal energies into another, why you would want to perform the Three Transformation and the various issues involved are included in this SixtySkills course.
We have a growing collection of free courses from various teachers. These courses give you a chance to get to know our teachers better while developing a new skill set.
In this interview, we get to learn from a seasoned practitioner, Marisa Newell who’s been on a long, hands-on journey through martial arts, energy work, and practical magic. We cover various disciplines—from the early days of learning Tai Chi in Thailand and working with teachers like Sifu Rod Savvides, to deep dives into inner alchemy and evocation with Sifu Mark Rasmus, Sifu Ludovic Pernot, and Sifu Michael Lamb. I hope you enjoy.
If you would like to learn more about Marisa’s work please visit her website here.
Background
● Please tell us about your background and how you came to be on the path
● Can you discuss any teachers or guides who helped you on the path and what they shared with you? From your website it looks like you have a great deal of experience with many varied teachers.
Kung Fu
● Could you share a little about your martial training? The different teachers and systems?
● Sifu Rod Savvides
Thanks for this opportunity, James – I appreciate the work you’re doing and the support for practitioners.
The start of my journey began by relocating from Australia to Thailand in 2004, and subsequently meeting the Russian psychic Diana Manilova in Chiang Mai. Diana suggested that I learn tai chi – which I knew nothing about at the time (2007) – and also astrology and crystal singing bowls. The following week I saw a flyer at a local cafe for tai chi chuan training with Sifu Rod Savvides at his Body and Mind Healing school … and that’s how I came to be on this path. The astrology and crystal singing bowls never eventuated.
Under Sifu Rod, I trained Wudang Practical Tai Chi Chuan of Sifu Dan Docherty lineage which involved hand and weapons forms and applications, pushing hands, Baduanjin chi kung, zhan zhuang, and nei gong over the span of nine years.
The majority of the training was purely physical with a focus on learning forms and how the forms are used in self-defence applications, along with some listening and sensitivity exercises like reeling silk. The Wudang Practical Tai Chi Chuan short and long hand forms are initially taught in a ‘square’ style – with each physical posture and movement separate from the other – before being taught ‘round’ with the postures flowing into each other in movement. It was a long learning process and certainly taught me about discipline and patience.
While I enjoyed the training, over time I felt a huge lack of internal energy understanding and that the system was missing aspects to support inner development. So, seeking a practice beyond physical movement naturally led me to new teachers.
Having had the opportunity to train with some great teachers and get a taste for different systems, I can attest that the teachers who have had the most impact upon my studies and path, and where I find the most resonance, are Sifu Mark Rasmus and Sifu Ludovic Pernod.
Sifu Mark Rasmus
● Can you share about your first experience with Sifu Mark?
● What made you decide to pursue in depth study with Sifu Mark
My first day of training with Sifu Mark Rasmus was exciting, intimidating and humbling. When I walked through the door he said, “I know you – you’re that warrior woman. You’re scary, throwing your spear around in the park.” He also likened me to Fudo Myoo, which I wasn’t sure how to take at the time.
I honestly didn’t feel much or understand a lot of Sifu Mark’s teachings in the beginning because I was so closed, despite being a sensitive type of person. The energy inside the training hall and the exercises – just at a vital level – touched a lot of my resistances, so my initial experience was quite difficult and chaotic. I knew how to show up and train regardless, so that’s what I did until I finally got things. It was a slow process for me and, thankfully, Sifu Mark was very welcoming and kind. This initial training period primarily revolved around building vital energy and training my physical body through building the ball, power stretches, eight powers, throwing exercises, and tree qigong. Another important area of focus was getting my astral body in equanimity. I would practice at Wat Umong temple every day and build the four elements into my astral body, and strengthen my connection to Akasha and Non-Dual White Light for self-healing. After about a month of this – just this practice alone – there were noticeable energy shifts or changes and this was massively encouraging and empowering. I had never worked with energy previously in such a way to affect real change as I did with Sifu Mark’s teachings.
I took, and still do take, a very practical approach with my own training because I learn best through doing. I’m firmly convinced that we can only affect change through action. Understanding how energy works comes through experiencing it ourselves. A teacher can provide the theory and energy transmission, but you’ve got to be able to feel and reproduce the energy on your own with your own effort in order to take ownership of the teachings and transmissions.
Over the years of training with Sifu Mark my interest in tai chi chuan and martial aspects in general gradually faded (although I still enjoy the rebounding force component of Sifu Mark’s system) and my focus shifted towards spiritual, ascension aspects of qigong and Hermetics.
I’m extremely grateful to Sifu Mark for sharing his knowledge so openly – it’s like standing on the shoulders of a giant – and I aim to live up to his ability, kindness and generosity as a teacher.
I can’t write about Sifu Mark Rasmus without mentioning one of his senior students, Sifu Ludovic Pernot. Sifu Ludovic is a powerhouse healer and teacher. With a military and martial arts background, he emphasises training the quantitative aspects of power and willpower through building proper vital energy foundations, and this is demonstrated by his powerful ability to bring energy into form.
In 1995, at the age of 25, Sifu Ludovic met Taoist healer Sifu Liu in France and followed him to China in order to study with him until 2017. The lineage of Sifu Liu translates as ‘the people from Penguin Mountain’. Sifu Liu is not a master you’ll find on YouTube, but from the footage shared with me of his Taoist singing/chanting, tai chi / qigong forms and administering energy healing he was certainly special and you can sense that influence of energy in Sifu Ludovic’s field. Sifu Liu passed away on 23rd February 2025.
On my first day of training with Sifu Mark, I met Sifu Ludovic and we subsequently trained together in the mornings before class. In classic military style I was expected to be at the park for training exactly on time – no excuses – and I thrived inside of that discipline which fueled my willpower to practice. I remember getting up early, riding on my bicycle in the dark to the park or the temple, very little talking and a lot of quality practice – standing and also seated meditation on uncomfortable benches while being swarmed by mosquitoes, bugs and insects, but with my spirit feeling completely invigorated.
Sifu Ludovic is one of the hardest teachers I’ve ever had, but I’ve also had some of the best experiences and breakthroughs training with him. The countless hours of training together and friendship on the path has had a huge impact on my development and I’m fortunate to have Sifu Ludovic as a teacher.
Hermetics and Kabbalah with Sifu Michael Lamb
Michael is a wonderful character, can you share what it was like working with him? Despite him and Sifu Mark sharing the same teacher in William Cook I imagine both have their own expression.
Sifu Michael Lamb is certainly quite the character! And yes, he and Sifu Mark have their own individual approach, personality and expression of the Hermetic teachings from their teacher, William Cook Edwards.
I met Sifu Michael in 2023 during the lead-up to Sifu Mark’s annual trainings in Chiang Mai. Sifu Michael had scheduled his Kabbalah and the Tree of Life workshop to follow soon afterwards.
Senior students were generously given the opportunity to practice and learn energy meditations with Sifu Micheal in the evenings and that was a lot of fun. One evening Sifu Michael took us on a mental wandering exercise up Doi Suthep mountain (which backs on to the training hall), mentally moving from the training room, up the mountain, feeling the vegetation and coolness, and then slowly settling on the top of the mountain. As we settled there and became one with the mountain, I felt the entire mountain move – serpent and circular-like – and all of a sudden, I felt a power rising up and the head of a giant naga (Asian serpentine dragon) appeared in front of me – blazing and golden – and I was face-to-face with it for some minutes. It was an incredible and unforgettable experience and I see that mountain with different eyes now.
Sifu Michael is a wealth of knowledge and he led us through wonderful meditations with our chakras, the elements and the Kabbalah letters during his workshop. We also worked with constellations, which was new for me, and I had some very memorable and interesting experiences, particularly with the stars Arcturus and Sirius. The training is excellent for developing psychic senses and he runs this course online with his partner, Manuela Elphame, through their M&M Hermetic Mastery programs.
● How do you apply the teachings you received to your own programs? Internal Alchemy & Qigong Level 1
● Please tell us about this program, would this be something similar to the work of Franz Bardons first book?
My training programs are based upon the teachings of Sifu Mark and Sifu Ludovic, with Franz Bardon having obviously influenced their teachings. Training is centered around developing the feeling sense perception of energy – clairsentience – and, through that, students are better able to navigate and understand energy and states of consciousness.
I tend to attract people who are seeking healing and spirituality. My students are a mix of beginners wanting to heal and find more meaning in life and established healers, therapists and teachers who have been practicing in their fields for a long time but feel they’re missing the energetic aspects.
My Inner Temple program is inspired by evocation work with four elemental beings Pyrhum, Parahim, Amasol, and Mentiful, and the Earth sphere being Aschmunadai.
In Foundations of the Inner Temple: Internal Alchemy & Qigong Intensive (Level 1) we focus on the vital, astral and mental energy layers with an emphasis on the four elements to build a framework primarily for inner work, self-healing and raising our consciousness. We incorporate basic mental training to develop the observer mind; astral training to investigate our astral personality and how the elements express in our black and white mirror, and how to alchemise our emotions; and vital training with the use of a chi brush and vital breathing each day to build energy for energy transformation work.
My approach is extremely practical. The majority of the internal alchemy and qigong exercises are done in seated meditation, with corresponding partner work to increase awareness of how energy affects not only themselves but other people. I find that people learn and understand much more through partner work. The basic starting point for partner work is learning how to feel our training partner’s feet through the tension line of their body and to open and float them with vital energy and, from that, increasing the complexity of partner exercises primarily for healing.
● How long does it usually take for students to get accustomed to the elements and develop their clairsentience?
By the end of Level 1 – 40 hours over ten days of training – students will have developed clairsentience with the ability to feel the vibrational scale of energy and feel stronger with the harmony of the four elements in their vital, astral and mental bodies.
Occasionally some students find it difficult to feel energy, but because the training resonates with them and they see other students having experiences they continue training – often working harder than the students who are more sensitive and intuitive.
Towards the end of the Level 1 training I introduce Akasha and Non-Dual White Light. I find that this transmission connects people to a higher state that they haven’t touched before, or may have touched before but haven’t had the mechanism or way to get back to that experience, and it can be a profound experience that inspires them on their path.
By the end of this training students have a lot of information, practices and a clear framework to take home and support their inner work, healing and growth. I also have an online Telegram group to support the students and so that everyone can stay connected.
● Leading on from the elements, what needs to occur for students to move onto the akasha and non dual light?
I simply offer Akasha and Non-Dual White Light teachings for those who want to learn after completing Level 1. Some do and others don’t. By the end of Level 1 students know if they are ready to do that work or need time to integrate what they have already learned before continuing further study.
In Building the Inner Temple: Internal Alchemy & Qigong Intensive (Level 2) – also 40 hours over ten days – the program focuses on Akasha and Non-Dual White Light exercises. We continue to build vital energy each day and also the elements in the three bodies, and learn how to invoke the elements from Akasha.
We go into deeper aspects of self-healing and also healing techniques with our training partners using the elements, Akasha and Non-Dual White Light. We connect to our spiritual guides and I introduce the Buddhist deity Akashagarbha and we learn how to work with Akasagarbha and our spiritual guides inside of our healing work, and on a path of service. Students usually have memorable peak experiences inside of Akasha and Non-Dual White Light, and for long-time practitioners a lot of what that they have previously learned and experienced makes greater sense inside of those frequencies.
In meditation we have our own interaction with the spirit/deity/intelligence and afterwards journal and share our experiences within the group.
Marissa Newell
● How long would students need to work with this material before looking towards Evocation?
For students who have completed Levels 1 and 2, I offer guidance in evocation. Again, students usually know whether they’re ready for learning these techniques or instead need more time to integrate what they’ve learned in the first two levels. My evocation groups tend to be smaller, more intimate.
Expanding the Inner Temple: Practical Magical Evocation Workshop (Level 3) consists of three hours per day of meditation with different spirits/deities/intelligences over nine days. We refine the mechanics of transforming energy, releasing our bodies, raising up into Light, opening a circle, and with invocation each day.
Approaching this work on a path of service, evolution and ascension, we start with invocation of the elemental spirits and Aschmunadai to build a stable and quiet Inner Temple space for practice, and then progressively work with intelligences from the Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Sun planetary spheres.
In meditation we have our own interaction with the spirit/deity/intelligence and afterwards journal and share our experiences within the group. Student experiences will range from deep healing to profound insights, information to evolve their current life interests, and clair-senses awakening and developing. It’s a lot of fun.
This workshop provides a simple and powerful way to connect and work with spirits/deities/intelligences utlising the framework learned from Levels 1 and 2, with a practical energy and feeling perception-based approach.
I’ve evolved the trainings over time, drawing upon feedback from students, trying to better understand what people seek in trainings, and taking into consideration potential availability and the realistic time commitments that students face. I’m sure that what I offer and my development as a teacher will continue to evolve into the future.
Evocation
● This is very personal experience but if you are able can you share about any notable experiences? Whether that be due to the entity in question or as a result of the practice.
● What can you tell us about your work with Evocation? Does it strictly follow the course that Bardon lays out?
● I notice you work with Buddhist and Taoist deities, how did you go about contact these initially? Via Mental Wandering?
Evocation is what I enjoy the most and I follow the method as taught by Sifu Mark Rasmus which utilises Franz Bardon’s The Practice of Magical Evocation as a guide to the intelligences. I use the same method for working with Buddhist and Taoist deities too.
The platform for connecting to spirits/deities/intelligences is through Akasha and Non-Dual White Light. The deity is invoked through the crown and into the mental body, working with our feeling sense gate. We feel the deity enter the mental body and then there is a process of releasing the mind, sense of self, mental body and facial muscles to come into resonance with the deity. Feeling the energetic signature of the deity over your face provides a marker for staying connected or in contact with the deity.
Interacting with the deity inside of Light and our mental body, the energy translates into information and insight on our path. Healing can also take place as Light filters down into our astral and physical bodies. I’ve had a lot of profound experiences in evocation.
My entry point was practicing deity yoga with Buddhist deity Fudo Myoo, breathing to and from a printed image of Fudo Myoo and connecting with it energetically – vital, astral, mental, Akasha, and Non-Dual White Light – sensing the effects upon the three bodies. In vital one immediately feels the power of the vital energy from Fudo Myoo. Moving into the astral one gets a sense for how the heart centre opens through his love and compassion for all beings. In the mental body an understanding of the immovable nature of his mind – to be concentrated and still. After establishing a connection to Fudo Myoo in this way for some time, I then practiced evocation and the energy and experiences began to amplify. Most notably when I first experienced fire rising from the ground into the space/room and through the three bodies as a type of purification and how Fudo Myoo regulates energy for healing.
Sifu Ludovic introduced me to the Taoist deity, Ancestor Pengzu, from his time with Sifu Liu in China. Ancestor Pengzu is the father of qigong who emits a light of longevity, and there is a specific five organs practice (Yang Sheng) which has an incredible effect on the physical body – particularly, for women, regulating the menstrual cycle. Over one particular period of time, I was working with Ancestor Pengzu each day, inviting the deity into the space and doing the five organs practice. Amidst different energy experiences, I began having clairvoyant experiences. Ancestor Pengzu appeared along with other Taoist deities, most notably a female deity named Xi Wang Mu, also known as the Queen Mother of the West. Over that month I was given information on different herbs to eat and drink that were all associated with longevity and health. I experienced past lives as a Taoist monk, was shown specific qigong forms for longevity, and also encountered dragons. I always feel very good when I work with the energy of Ancestor Pengzu, particularly at a vital-physical level and I return to the five organs practice time and time again.
Working from Franz Bardon’s book, the Sun sphere intelligences have had the greatest impact upon me and I would say that most students who train with Sifu Mark sense the connection and alignment to the Sun sphere through his teachings. I feel that the personal and spiritual evolution inside of my own practice and development as a teacher is supported by the beings of Sun.
The ancient Chinese sages spoke of jing, chi and shen. The Hermeticists of old spoke of vital, astral and mental energies. Both spoke of ways to convert one energy into another. And the Three Transformations were born!
Ever wonder how to do this exactly? Wonder no more. It turns out this is not some mysterious thing that exists only for the greatest of saints. All the details behind how to convert one of the basic natal energies into another, why you would want to perform the Three Transformation and the various issues involved are included in this SixtySkills course.
Today we will discuss rebounding fajin and empty force.
Classically speaking, these techniques were used to throw an opponent across the room. While this is a very flashy display of internal power, it masks the more important reasons why a practitioner would want to engage in this. Primarily, the practice of these techniques greatly enhances the throughput of subtle energy through the body of a practitioner and is one of the most effective ways to make a practitioner’s ability to work with energy extremely strong.
Additionally, at the empty force level, these techniques teach a practitioner how to engage their mental body with the mental body of another person. This is valuable for any number of reasons involving meditation and esoteric practice. However, it is not terribly useful for martial arts purposes.
The simple fact of the matter is that when you see empty force demonstrations on television where people go flying from across the street without anybody touching one another, it is, for the most part, a conditioned reflex and has no real application in martial arts.
Requirements
The requirements for practicing rebounding fajin and empty force at a basic level include partners. At a minimum, you’ll require one additional person to practice with, and this exercise works best if you have multiple people to practice with.
Additionally, if you want to practice these exercises at the level of the vital, you will need to be able to pore breathe vital energy. If you wish to practice it at the astral or empty force level, you will additionally need to be able to perform astral breathing and the generation of mental energy.
What is Rebounding?
What is rebounding fajin and empty force? Quite simply put, these are applications of subtle energy going from most gross to most subtle that are frequently used to move an opponent. However, this is really a misnomer.
The simple fact of the matter is this technology is not terribly useful in a martial arts context, and there are a variety of reasons for this. Not the least of which is that when someone is actively fighting with another opponent, their subtle bodies tend to lock together very tightly. The result is that using esoteric energy to move them around is not terribly efficient.
That said, the use of these techniques is very efficient at strengthening the fascia, ligaments, and tendons in the body, enhancing the movement of subtle energy through the body, and strengthening your ability to work with the mental field of another person. All of these things are extremely valuable for any number of activities involving meditation, yoga, and the subtle arts.
As a practical matter, this technique is one that all of the strongest practitioners I have personally known included in their repertoire. One of my teachers also says that this is the fastest way to develop subtle energy in the body. We will be addressing the use of vital, astral, and mental energy in the context of training this exercise.
However, as is usually the case within 60 Skills, what we are really demonstrating is a series of principles, and the fact of the matter is that these techniques can be applied to any number of energies, be they the Kabbalistic letters, the elements, or the energies of the planets, just to name a few.
To sum up, rebounding is the art of moving another person utilizing subtle energy. The purpose behind this is to strengthen your ability to do this in general and allow you to engage your mental field with the mental field of another person.
Vital Theory
What is the vital aspect of rebounding fajin and empty force?
The vital aspect of this exercise utilizes pore breathing, and pore breathing is one of the core techniques that will be utilized throughout this course. In this, a practitioner walks up to another practitioner, develops a line of tension with that person, places their body mass onto that person, and the fascia, ligaments, and tendons in the body rebound the other practitioner away from them.
This performs a dynamic loading of the fascia, ligaments, and tendons in the body. The result is that over a period of time, this greatly strengthens the movement of vital energy through the body. As has been mentioned many times in this coursework, the stronger your vital energy is, the stronger your astral, mental, akashic, and non-dual light tend to be as well.
So, the simple fact of the matter is this is a very potent exercise for training the soft tissue in the body. Now, this is also the only one of the three techniques taught today that utilizes momentum. So, it’s important to keep in mind that this will be the most physically draining of the three as well.
To the degree any of these can be used in a martial arts context, this would be the technique. It tends to build a kind of reactive power within the body that allows a person to spring-load force off of them utilizing their own soft tissue. Basically, you’re converting latent potential energy within the body into kinetic energy.
Astral Theory
We will now discuss the astral aspect of rebounding fajin and empty force.
The astral aspect of this exercise is normally conducted using touch. One participant will place their arms or hands on another participant. In this case, there will not be much in the way of active issuing, and there will be very little to no transfer of momentum.
What will happen is the practitioner touching the other practitioner will want to generate a line of force in that other practitioner. Usually, the elbows are used initially, although any part of the body can do this. You touch on the elbows, press their force down until you generate a line of force from their arms down to their feet, and then release.
This creates a kind of float which loosens their mental bodies. You then begin to astral breathe. After you’ve established this energy in yourself, you then begin to astral breathe into and out of the body of the person you are working with. At a certain point in doing this, the other person will lose their balance or become dizzy and begin to fall over.
Empty Force Theory
We will now discuss the mental aspect or empty force aspect of rebounding fajin and empty force.
Empty force is not useful for martial arts purposes at all. When this is used against other people, it is most often a conditioned reaction on the part of the recipient. This is the reason why you can go online and find lots of videos of empty force or tai chi masters being completely destroyed by MMA artists.
However, empty force techniques are a very good way of teaching a practitioner how to have their mental body interact with the mental body of another person. In fact, it’s probably the best way to do this.
Practice Design
We will now discuss practice design in terms of rebounding fajin and empty force.
First of all, you need to get together a group of people to practice with. At a minimum, one other person, but obviously more than one is valuable. Particularly when practiced at the vital level, these exercises can be quite exhausting.
As a general rule, you want to practice this for at least an hour a day. Two hours a day, broken up into a morning and evening session, are ideal. Some practitioners practice as much as five to five and a half hours a day, though this becomes a full-time profession.
Be generous and careful with your practice partners, particularly when working at the vital level. It’s very easy to rack up injuries to your spine and joints. The shoulder, knees, and ankles are particularly vulnerable. In general, you want to practice for a minimum of one hour.
The ancient Chinese sages spoke of jing, chi and shen. The Hermeticists of old spoke of vital, astral and mental energies. Both spoke of ways to convert one energy into another. And the Three Transformations were born!
Ever wonder how to do this exactly? Wonder no more. It turns out this is not some mysterious thing that exists only for the greatest of saints. All the details behind how to convert one of the basic natal energies into another, why you would want to perform the Three Transformation and the various issues involved are included in this SixtySkills course.
We have a growing collection of free courses available on Perseus Arcane Academy. I am hoping to continue to extend these offerings in 2025.
One thing I have noticed, and this is common in many fields is that because the price of admission is free many people do not even practice what is taught in these courses! I have to say people charge for far less.
Two examples I will give here as to the value, the first ‘The Three Transformations’ this course provided to us by SixtySkills. This method is the most concise version of this practice you will find, I spent a lot of money back in 2012 getting to Thailand and learning directly from Sifu Mark Rasmus. I treasure this time, and one of the many skills he taught that week was the Three Transformations and the many ways you can use it and the many ways understanding this helps you understand other practices like those contained in Franz Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics far, far better.
So, these courses, we provide free of charge, have far reaching value, but many just watch the introduction and assume as they understand it in theory that that is enough.
The same for our physical training provided by Chris Radnedge and Craig Mallet, these guys have put in decades of time to learn from the best. What you are getting is the condensed results of that work. I have lived in Asia for 20 years and I am still a bit jealous of the teachers these guys have had and the material they have managed to embody. I say all this to say we provide these courses in the hope they will be practiced NOT collected.
It is like having all the best books on how to be strong without doing any of the work. But the guy down the road who had no books, no equipment just got on and DID IT. This is the key in all of this, without the doing, the knowledge of energies, spirits, other worlds and dimensions is pretty meaningless in my opinion.
The Three Transformations: How to Convert Your Energies
The ancient Chinese sages spoke of jing, chi and shen. The Hermeticists of old spoke of vital, astral and mental energies. Both spoke of ways to convert one energy into another. And the Three Transformations were born!
Ever wonder how to do this exactly? Wonder no more. It turns out this is not some mysterious thing that exists only for the greatest of saints. All the details behind how to convert one of the basic natal energies into another, why you would want to perform the Three Transformation and the various issues involved are included in this SixtySkills course.
This course details how to go from more gross, or physical, energies to more subtle energies and back again. It also discusses how to use these energies and what the various transformations do for you. Issue of passive, versus active, development and where to place the various energies are also brought up.
While many consider these things to be a part of a long dead past, the reality is that none of this stuff ever left humanity. It has been here all along. That is not to say it is easy to do or something to be taken lightly.
So, join SixtySkills today and learn how to engage in the fine art of the Three Transformations.
Who this course is for:
Anyone who want to learn the three transformations
Often so much time is spent searching for the way, the work is not done. This course solves that issue by providing a firm foundation from which to build. Though this is an introduction that does not mean that it lacks depth.
You might have heard of secret orders and mysterious groups with strange rituals, sordid psychic powers, aspiring mages and intellectuals with secret codes that only the initiate can begin to understand. They walk about with superhuman powers extracted from ancient tantric and hermetic texts, build fragrances that can make you fly, know words that can shatter the world when uttered, and govern all natural things under and above the sun.
Some books spit out. You find them and read them. You learn the formulas and spells and incantations and meditations powerful enough to change the course of the world and bring back a dead pharaoh. You try it, not sure of what you are doing, but nothing ever happens.
The premise of this course is that magic is the science of causing change according to awareness, and it trains silence, quietness and stillness as means to access and cultivate different states of consciousness and a gateway to connect with objects of perception where to operate changes.
All cultural aspects, be they Hermetic, Egyptian, Buddhist, Tantric, or religious kinds of yoga, are ignored so we can focus directly on their purpose with integrity and effortlessness. You will find no lexicon you cannot master, no locks you cannot open, no paths barren by the elites. At the end of the thirteen sessions, magic will hold no mystery to you. It is at this time, that you can start practicing those books, that appeared to lead to nothing, with success.
Experience the transformative power of Kung Fu with a sample from Chris’s acclaimed “25 Lessons of Kung Fu” course. These lessons provide a glimpse into what I would call genuine Kung Fu, offering insights into the fundamental principles and techniques that have been refined over centuries. Through detailed instructions and demonstrations, fundamental skills and start to improve the quality and awareness of your movement. Discover how to harness the full potential of your body, mind, and spirit as you embark on a journey to unlock your inner strength, vitality, and courage. This sample serves as an invitation to explore the depths of Kung Fu, empowering you to decide if you wish to delve further into this profound practice.
Perseus decided to invite Chris to share his work on our platform as being based in Asia with a background in various traditional martial arts we recognised the quality of his material. After speaking to Chris and discovering his martial history we were very keen to share his work here as he has both the depth of traditional training and the experience of working in the modern world as a medical practitioner. He knows how to make this material work and be understood for the western mind.
Welcome to this free course, generously donated by Craig Mallett, focused on the practice of “soaking the mind into the body.” In a recent interview with Perseus Arcane Academy, Craig shared insights into this approach, which explores the connection between mind and body in a practical, grounded way. This course is designed to give those curious about his work an introduction to his ideas and techniques. Whether you’re exploring new ways to connect with yourself or simply interested in learning more, this is a great place to start.
About Craig, in his own words…
I started exploring self-cultivation methods in 2003. I have always had a burning curiosity to discover and explore myself and the world around me, starting with the immediate reality of my body. I had many periods where I did the ‘deep dive’ into arts that would help satiate this curiosity, including almost a decade training traditional internal arts with my first internal martial arts teacher, and another decade with a second Daoist teacher (see below for more details). Having a lot of experience with many different modern modalities, mixed with the more traditional studies I have undertaken, brings me a unique vantage point.
I specialize in teaching internal and external physical practices, helping people to explore and restore their relationship to their body and internal landscape, and how that landscape relates to the external world. I aim to teach methods that are sustainable and can be used by anyone from any culture, tradition or lineage, with the idea that these qualities can be explored as a layer over whatever activities each person enjoys pursuing. I have done my best to make my teachings of this complex topic as simple and clear as possible so they are accessible to everyone.
I hold classes on the Sunshine Coast (Australia) and teach workshops around Australia and internationally. I teach online through a variety of avenues, including an online or in person student program, as well as online courses for people who want to get a taste for a more specific part of the training.
I am also trained in both traditional and modern healing methods, which, along with my significant history of working with the physical form, has given me a potent skill set for dealing with physical, emotional and mental troubles. I am in the progress of adding to my skills by studying Traditional Chinese and Daoist Medicine, along with Bazi, Feng Shui and more.
Clint Sabom – The First Three Steps of Initiation into Hermetics
With Initiation Into Hermetics, Franz Bardon has created a masterpiece of magickal ascension, giving all the necessary instructions and theory to rise to adepthood. The book itself has an energy all to its own. However, getting through the steps of Initiation Into Hermetics can prove to be difficult, arduous work for many. It’s tempting to slack off on the exercises when life seems to get in the way. It’s common to stay on one or two steps for years on end or indefinitely. Most people that start the work never seem to get through the first three steps.
This class is designed to walk you through each step, and share with you my own experience of going through the first three steps. Yes, there are shortcuts, hacks, and additional tips for achieving magickal equilibrium. I share what has worked for me. The class is simple to get through, but it gives you a core foundation to work with in your magickal ascension.
I will remain available to all students via email to answer any questions you may have. Come take this journey with me!
Before we begin let me remind all students again that this is a doing course, it is purposely spread over 2-week periods as most people do not lack actual ability but lack the discipline to actually complete something, to repeatedly do something over a period of time. So this is the challenge for you, can you complete this regardless of your mind saying there is no need to? If you can complete this course, then you can go onto other courses here or elsewhere and know that you have what it takes to complete them and be successful. To follow through on a decision with actions.
You see many collect information, equating knowing it with being able to do it. So sadly, even after decades of this approach they still have very little to show for it other than a mindset that says, ‘I know it’. Yes, but can they do any of it?
Build the Foundation
In this course you will develop all the foundation skills required for magic, meditation and energy work. You will touch each skill and get to know it. You will spend 2 weeks on every lesson. So, there is no rush, the course is 10 Lessons long and after lesson 1, all other lessons are released to you in 2-week increments.
This book covers aspects of The Key to True Quabbalah, by Franz Bardon, and expands them. It is divided into four parts that serve the magician, the theurgist and the learning quabbalist.
Today, we’re going to explore the merits of body-based training, particularly within the meditative, yogic, and magical communities. Surprisingly, this topic doesn’t get the attention it deserves. This is odd because many of the best practitioners—regardless of their specific system—are often described as physical dynamos. There’s a reason for that, and it’s something we’ve discussed extensively in the Sixty Skills curriculum.
While we’ve often highlighted the value of body training, we haven’t thoroughly explored how it powers the entire process and fits into esoteric practices overall, in this post we begin the process.
1. Body-Based Training Powers the Process
When discussing concepts like vital energy, astral energy, mental energy, akasha energy, and non-dual light, it’s easy to overlook a crucial point: your physical body serves as the primary mechanism to power these processes.
If your training is grounded in the physical realm, you have access to a significant amount of energy that can be harnessed to fuel your practice. In contrast, a purely mental practice—such as focused concentration or releasing exercises—draws from a far more limited energy source. Mental energy alone is restricted, and while it can be slightly increased with effort, it doesn’t compare to the vast potential energy available through physical engagement.
There’s a curious phenomenon where physical energy can be converted into subtle energy, amplifying your internal power. Interestingly, the reverse isn’t as straightforward; manifesting physical outcomes requires enormous amounts of subtle energy. However, that’s a discussion for another time.
2. It Works Fast
The physical body provides raw energy that can be quickly converted into other forms of energy. As a result, progress in meditation, magic, or spiritual enlightenment happens much faster when grounded in the physical world.
In traditional teachings, it’s often mentioned that beings intentionally incarnate in the physical realm because progression happens more swiftly here than in subtle dimensions. Why is that? Simply put, without a physical body, there’s no breath—and without breath, there’s no generation of astral or vital energies. These energies are essential for creating mental, akashic, or non-dual energies.
In the absence of a physical form, entities rely solely on focus to generate energy, which is a slow and laborious process. Even beings in subtle planes acknowledge that not having a physical body slows their progression, despite the fact that time operates differently in those realms.
3. Engaging the Astral Realm Through the Body
Breath and astral energy are closely connected. Many meditative systems engage reality only at the mental level, which, while effective, takes an extraordinary amount of time. However, by working with the astral through physical practices, you can quickly generate and convert astral energy into mental energy.
The astral realm is considered a semi-physical layer of reality, a more refined version of the physical plane we usually take for granted. Engaging this level provides more resources to convert into mental energy, accelerating your path toward enlightenment.
Additionally, this process works both ways: astral energy can empower the physical body. This two-way relationship explains why body-centric training is so effective for developing both physical strength and spiritual growth.
There’s a raw truth to physical training that helps cut through illusions, making the meditative process more effective.
4. Body-Centric Training Grounds You
One often-overlooked benefit of body-based practices is grounding. Truly enlightened individuals are often described as being profoundly present—more so than most people walking around in daily life.
If you approach meditation solely through mental exercises like astral wandering or mental projection, you may become ungrounded. While this isn’t inherently negative, it often leads to slower progress and an increased likelihood of delusion.
Working with the body on a meditative or yogic level eliminates much of this delusion by connecting you firmly to the present moment. As Henry Rollins once said, “Two hundred pounds weighs two hundred pounds.” There’s a raw truth to physical training that helps cut through illusions, making the meditative process more effective.
5. The Greatest Practitioners Were Physically Engaged
Throughout history, many revered spiritual figures—Pythagoras, Christ, Buddha, Laozi, and Milarepa—were highly physical individuals. This fact is often overlooked, but it’s essential to recognize.
The practical reason for this is simple: the body generates energy. More energy means greater potential for spiritual growth and magical practice. If you ignore this physical component, you’re likely missing a key element of why the most enlightened individuals were so deeply connected to the physical world.
The Living World: Why You’re Here
You incarnate in this physical realm for a reason. This world isn’t designed for passive existence; it’s a place for action and growth. While life’s challenges can sometimes feel like a prison, treating it as such is counterproductive.
Your experiences, decisions, and physical engagement in the world contribute to your development—especially in terms of leadership and responsibility. Being physically grounded supports this growth and allows you to make meaningful progress.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the benefits of engaging in body-based training as part of your magical, meditative, or esoteric practice. If you found this discussion helpful, consider liking the video and subscribing for more content.
You can also learn more about the Sixty Skills curriculumhere, and if you would like to get involved you a free course below to get you started or if you would like another course we can offer you a coupon code – just send us an email with what you are interested in.
The Three Transformations – Free Course
The ancient Chinese sages spoke of jing, chi and shen. The Hermeticists of old spoke of vital, astral and mental energies. Both spoke of ways to convert one energy into another. And the Three Transformations were born!
Ever wonder how to do this exactly? Wonder no more. It turns out this is not some mysterious thing that exists only for the greatest of saints. All the details behind how to convert one of the basic natal energies into another, why you would want to perform the Three Transformation and the various issues involved are included in this SixtySkills course.
Welcome to another episode of Perseus Conversations. Today we talk with Chris Radnedge, he shares his experience in regard to internal martial arts, healing, sacred geometry and much, much more. Please let us know if you enjoyed the conversation. If so, please consider sharing it with others.
Below we have the video recording which you can watch or a transcript of the conversation.
Interview
PAA: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Perseus Conversations. Today, we have a nice, interesting chat lined up. This is actually with someone who has a free course on Perseus. I love their style of training, the way they train—I’m a bit jealous of some of their teachers as well; they’ve had a great history. This person is Chris Radnage—I think I’m saying the surname correctly—and he’s going to be telling us about his training, his history, and all about his approach to internal training and healing. Okay, so we’ll bring Chris in now and commence with the interview. Hello, Chris.
Hi, James. It’s wonderful to be on here. Thank you so much for inviting me.
PAA: Well, thank you for joining us. This is going to be really interesting. So, I guess the first thing we want to start off with would be your martial arts history and your journey so far. I know you showed me a little bit of the history, but it sounds really cool. So, I mean, how did you first get started?
Yeah, first of all, it was in 1986 or ’87 when the movie American Ninja was released into the world. I must have watched that about 500 times. My mom would talk about shows in the ’60s with samurai and ninja—the ninja could jump 16 feet backward but couldn’t jump forward due to the way they filmed it. I was just fascinated by the stories she would tell about that movie and the shoguns and stuff like that. So, as a kid, it was all fantasy-based stuff that captivated me.
The only martial art we had in Cowra, where I grew up—a small little town about two hours from Canberra, where I live now—was Taekwondo. I was very lucky that it was that art. Taekwondo, especially the system that I learned in, was very good for teaching kicking. It did that very well, taught basics very well, right from the start. The teacher, Mr. Shane Wilson, had a big focus on foundation—just basics, basics. We’d run the whole dojo with basics: lower section block, upper section block, lunge punch, side kick—all that sort of stuff. We’d do that a lot.
PAA: Back in those days, Taekwondo was quite hardcore, wasn’t it? It was quite serious.
Yeah, yeah. So I did that for about seven years. Just recently, maybe about two years ago, I started playing with some of the patterns again. In Taekwondo, they call them forms, but in that form of Taekwondo, it’s called patterns. We started playing with some of those again, and it felt amazing, especially putting the internal mechanics into it. I just like how simple it is—it’s just this one and this one, and this one. Great for building fitness. I was having dreams like when I was 14 years old, when I started doing a lot of it. It was interesting; that youthful sort of feeling started to come back.
But yeah, within about two or three years, this guy came through—Jason Parks was his name. He had studied Kung Fu for about eight years and about 27 different martial arts at that time. When he walked, it was like he carried ancient history with him. Just really captivated me, really ignited my interest.
PAA: Yeah, so he really ignited…
Yeah, so he went through to get his black belt in the Taekwondo system, and he started teaching, sharing various things from different systems and that sort of stuff. It really awakened a lot of things in me; he was very influential. It was through him that I started hearing about Xing Yi boxing, about Buddhism, about psychic abilities, and consciousness expansion—you know, someone who genuinely had some of those abilities as well.
PAA: So he really showed it as well?
Yeah, he could actually show you some of that stuff. One time, I turned up early to class when he was teaching some of the Shaolin boxing and talking about auras. I was very interested in that sort of work. I had sort of a spiritual awakening when I was 15 and was just fascinated by all this stuff. He said, go stand over by the wall there—just an opaque wall—and he started looking at the aura. He said, I can see this, and I see this here, and you keep thinking the same thing. I was like, how do you know that? Because I was thinking, I can’t believe this is happening. He said, I see the same thought form come out of your head each time—the same shape. I thought, oh, that’s cool.
PAA: Wow, that’s very cool to have at that age.
Yeah, so he’s retired from teaching now, but he developed quite an impactful school and taught for a long time. He’s a healer now—apparently quite a good healer—so that’s what he does now. He always had that sort of healing ability about him.
PAA: Very cool. And was he the one who introduced you to the Mizong?
Yeah, yeah. His teacher was Sifu Shi Xiao. So Shi Xiao and a guy called John McDonald—they’re both Australian guys—they were the third and fourth non-Chinese to be accepted into the Shaolin Temple. This was in 1980. They talked about their story—you know, they had glass in their rice and that sort of stuff to try to make them go away. Then they realized what was happening, changed their ways, and got accepted into the temple.
So they learned Shaolin boxing there. Shi Xiao had training in some different systems before, especially the Mizong. Then there was another guy, Da Rong, who was a Tibetan White Crane master. So that school—the Shi Miao Xiao—was basically those two guys, Shi Xiao and Da Rong. They would teach concurrent or separate syllabuses: they’d teach Shaolin boxing, the Mizong, and the Tibetan White Crane.
The Mizong was a system that Shi Xiao had built. He was a martial theorist—one of the deepest practitioners I’ve met in terms of how deep he could go into something. He would build systems; it was all based on verbal formulas to help understand and open the mind, deeply connected to really physical formulas too. Systems that were almost extinct, he would rebuild them so they could be functional again. That was one of his gifts beyond a lot of other things too.
They taught a separate syllabus. During the time I was in the school, I had some training in the Tibetan White Crane—known for its powerful techniques and fajin too. I mainly trained in the Mizong, which was very interesting—a very functional system. They were quite against systems that trained a lot of forms where the practitioner had no understanding of what the movements were about. They were like, we can put function into anything you’ve learned; we can explain why that’s actually there. It was great learning how they did that.
For example, they’d pick a movement in the form and say, let’s play with it. Someone throws a left straight arm—can this movement work against it? Do you change the footwork? How can you make it work? Someone throws a cross—can you make that work? A hook punch, uppercut, overhand, kick, turning kick. If someone grabs you—wrist grab, arm grab—how does it work? Does it work against this? This technique is designed for this. Okay, so you can work it out that way. It was a system of thought designed to open the mind. I felt very fortunate to experience that early on in my training.
PAA: How old were you when you were doing that?
I first touched it when I was 16, and then I went back to it quite a bit later—in my 30s, I went back and did quite a lot more training in it.
PAA: That’s a great opportunity, isn’t it? Goodness.
Yeah, yeah.
PAA: Wow. So after the White Crane, there was a transition, right? There was a transition to the Tai Chi?
Yeah, yeah. After about a year of quite a bit of training in the system, I just felt, as an intuitive thing, that there was something more for me, or it just wasn’t clicking with me—just a personal thing. I started getting more into Tai Chi.
So Jason Parks showed me some Tai Chi moves. He showed me Press one day; he had my arms on his arm and said, you ready? You’re going to go back. I had no idea what that meant, and he just moved, and I went flying back. I thought, oh, that’s interesting. My first experience of Tai Chi was that.
The Mizong guys and the Tibetan White Crane master really respected Tai Chi practitioners. I remember Da Rong saying he saw a clip of a Chen-style master who started his form, did the opening, sunk his thighs parallel to the floor, and for 22 minutes, he stayed down, thighs parallel to the floor. I never heard about that; I didn’t know how significant it was, but I could tell by the way he talked about it that that’s something quite rare—a big gong fu cultivation skill.
So when I met my teacher, my main teacher later on, that was the big focus: to train thighs parallel to the floor. Both he and his teacher could do that for one hour—thighs parallel to the floor—doing the form. He would say, I don’t stop because breathing is out of regulation; I don’t stop because my muscles are sore; I stop because the kidneys have had enough. I thought, okay, I never heard that before, but I understand what he’s talking about now.
PAA: As in depletion of the kidneys?
Yeah, yeah.
PAA: Would that be because of depletion of the kidneys?
Yeah, yeah. So the kidneys have just had enough. When you train the kidneys, if you push things too hard, you can start to burn the kidney energy. In training, you aim to build the kidney energy and at least stop it depleting as fast. There are things you can do that make the kidney energy deplete. The kidney energy in Chinese medicine is the fundamental energy—that’s the foundation of all energy systems in your body.
When you do leg training and pretty much lower dantian work in internal training, you’re training kidney energy. You’re aiming to build that so it’s really full, and then when it’s full, it metaphorically starts to steam; then the steam rises and starts to cultivate the shen, change consciousness, and that kind of thing.
You can do things that can burn the kidney energy. They talk about it like water—it’s like you’re boiling the water until the water’s all boiled and you’re just boiling an empty pot. That’s bad. I’ve had that experience in my life; that’s why I know about it so well.
So until you’ve had enough is like a point where you feel like, I feel really good. I can feel the kidney—the actual organ. I can feel the organ, and it’s like the organ telling me that’s enough for today. I stop when it feels good, rather than, I’ll do a bit more because I want to get better; I’ll do a bit more, and then you feel like, oh, the energy’s starting to wane now. So you stop when it’s at its maximum, when it’s at its peak.
PAA: And was that training from Master Feng’s lineage?
No, that was from my teacher, Fei Wang.
PAA: Oh, right. Okay.
But Grandmaster Feng would—you know, that kind of idea within the lineage.
PAA: Okay, so that Tai Chi lineage was prior to your learning with Master Feng?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I didn’t learn with Master Feng directly. I learned with two students who learned from him directly: Sifu Brett Wagland and Sifu Fontane Ip. I taught for them in their academy for about 20 years—the Tai Chi Academy here in Canberra. They have a direct connection with Grandmaster Feng and trained with him, his daughters, and Chen Zhonghua, who pretty much has taken over things now that Grandmaster Feng passed away in 2012. I was about three months away from meeting Grandmaster Feng too, and then he passed away three months before. But I might not have been able to have access to him at that time anyway.
PAA: I remember reading stories about him on a website, China From Inside, years ago. Some great interviews there with him.
Yeah, that was wonderful.
PAA: I remember one story—catching this big sort of engine thing in midair with the fajin. Because he had the Xing Yi plus he had the Tai Chi from Chen Fake, right? So serious internal training.
Yeah, yeah. When I first heard that story, I took it at face value. He started teaching at the factory where he worked, where that happened. He started teaching all the workers Tai Chi—they’d do that before the workday. That was after that experience.
Then I thought about it, like, hang on, why would a 500-kilo engine—I could have that weight wrong—why, when that’s falling off a conveyor belt, would you try to even attempt to catch it? Then he said in one of the interviews, I didn’t think; my body was just there before I realized. He said, my whole spine got hot. That’s a lot of energy—a lot of internal energy there. He said he caught it, it swung, and then he was able to drop it down. So he sort of braced the fall of it. It just shows the kind of internal cultivation he had. I think it’s really something else.
PAA: Wow. So that was later—that was like a separate part of training. So, 20 years with his teachers—that’s a long time. Then you also had an apprenticeship under—if I’m going to say this name right—Chang Wang?
Yes, yeah, yeah. So with the Shi Miao Xiao, I had a feeling like I needed—the word that kept coming into my head was that I needed more foundation training. I look at it now—the foundation training was in that system, but it’s quite different from what the internal training is that I learned through Fei Wang. In my mind, it was just like intuition: you need more foundation training. There’s something missing here that you’re not getting. It’s just the direction I had to go.
So I started training with the Tai Chi Academy with Sifu Brett and Fontane. When I got in there, I was like, oh, this is interesting. It’s different. I felt the energy quite strongly from the very beginning, especially with the Tai Chi walking. I could feel the energy strongly. I practiced for a few weeks, and then I had this recurring shoulder problem in my rhomboid. I said to one of the teachers there, do you know anyone who does acupuncture? I just want someone to stick a needle in there. That’s what I thought of needles at the time.
They said, oh, we all see this guy Fei Wang. He’s like an advisor to the academy here. He’s a Chinese medical practitioner; he’s a martial arts expert. From what I’ve learned now, people will travel the world to try to find a kung fu master who’s a master of the martial arts. But if you find someone who’s a master of medicine in addition, that’s a big thing. But if you find someone who’s also a master of meditation as well, have all three—that’s significant. That’s what he is. Fei has no interest in being famous, but if he wanted to be famous, he could be quite famous, I think, just with what I saw he could do and his level of understanding, his intellect, and that sort of stuff. But more than that, just the abilities he has.
He’s a Chinese doctor. So I went there, and within the first session, I could tell he was feeling into me. He was saying things—it’s like he knows who I am inside. That’s interesting. He said, you’ve got a really strong body. You look like you’re really tough and strong on the outside, but inside you’re very soft. I said, yeah, too soft. Anyone who has the ability to feel into me always feels this real softness inside. I used to be quite embarrassed about it, but now I know it’s a big strength in my healing work—it’s a huge thing. It helps people feel safe when they work with me, especially with difficult traumas and stuff like that, especially women working with a male and someone who looks very male too. They say, I feel safe with you. That’s that softness inside. I’m glad that’s there.
He was picking up this softness, and I said, you know, I train Shaolin boxing and that sort of stuff. He goes, if you want to learn from me, you’re welcome to come to my class, but it’s really hard. We do lots of leg training. I just thought it was going to be lots and lots of, you know, half an hour of horse stance training and that sort of stuff, and I thought, I don’t know if I want to do that. So I got a bit scared and didn’t go to his class for a couple of weeks or maybe a month or something. Then one day, I just thought, I’ll go; I’ll see what it is. I realized it was actually quite a special invite—he didn’t invite everyone.
It was totally different. The leg training was from Xing Yi Liu He, had a lot of Pi Gua. His way of training was he would pull from different systems that he trained in and say, oh, this system’s really good for legs; this one’s good for waist; this one’s good for arm power, punch power; this one’s good for this, and he’d just pull different exercises from different systems to build the body. He said, this is all foundation training for internal kung fu. The idea is, once the body is changed into the foundation, it’s able to change into what they call the dragon body.
It takes someone training their butt off for about two years to reach that level. Depends on your age as well, but two to five years can change a body into the dragon body. It took me a lot longer than that—a lot longer—and I trained my ass off.
PAA: How would we define the dragon body?
Yeah, the dragon body—it’s mainly postural, but there’s body change and body connections. The dragon body is that the body understands the kwa, how to sit in the kwa—the inguinal crease—and not just, you know, tuck the pelvis and that sort of stuff, but how to really move and mobilize from the kwa so that you connect through the knees into the feet. There’s a connection of pelvis into feet.
The spine is able to round; you’re able to hollow the chest without making things tense. You can relax and align a straight spine. When you rotate—the dragon represents twisting force, the spiral force—that’s why they call it the dragon. So the body can produce power and can twist without losing that central axis.
You can keep the body—in Western sports science, it’s called zone stacking. Basically, your head, your thorax, your chest, your abdomen, and your pelvis—they can stack on each other. The spine’s meant to have three curves. I hear people saying, you look at the spine straight. What they’re actually talking about is zone stack. There’s a central channel through the body that’s straight. You don’t want the spine to lose its curves; it’ll straighten to some degree in the curves, but the curves are there to really spring-load the body. If you ruin some of those curves, you’re asking for early-onset osteoarthritis in your lower back or your neck or neural compression issues in the neck and stuff like that. It’s actually about forming a central axis through the body.
In Zen Buddhism, in the Mizong, they called it the spiritual column, or they call it the Tai Chi pole—different terms in different systems. Physically, you can zone stack your body so it allows acupuncture points—the bai hui point, the hui yin point—to electrically connect.
The first time I felt that, I had a guy who was very strong energetically, and we were doing some posture work for the zhan zhuang, the standing practice. He said, you know, my head’s often a little bit tilted to the side—just dominant right eye and that sort of stuff. He goes, oh, just turn your head this way, tilt your head here, and then bang—I just felt the whole electromagnetic system just align. It’s like, oh, that’s what it means to align these points together. That’s interesting; that’s different.
So there’s postural alignment—shoulder blade position, arm position, rounding through the limbs, through the torso, gentle stretch through the neck—and the ability to keep these postures no matter what you’re doing and what you’re focusing on. The body’s fully trained; it’s adapted to moving that way without thinking about it. It needs to be completely subconscious.
To train that means that the soft tissue needs to be relaxed, released—you need to be free. You need to relax from the top of the body all the way through to the feet. The body’s got to be trained; tendons spring-loaded, trained through Pi Gua exercises, lots of solo training, lots of zhan zhuang, lots of san ti practice.
PAA: I love it, I love it. It sounds perfect. Sounds like there’s elements there of what I used to do in Southern Mantis, but in the Southern Mantis, we would often go too much. So the hunch over, but boy, the hollow, the rounds—but you’d have people kind of like this, forcing it, rather than having a natural relaxation of the chest, to round the back.
Yeah, exactly. I look at the Southern Mantis systems, the Bak Mei systems, and I can see why they move like that. The Tai Chi’s got that idea, but it’s not quite as accentuated as that.
The body—in Daoism, they always aim to do things naturally. There’s a natural change. Part of the dragon body means that the body has returned back to a natural state—the state as it was as a child. When you look at a child’s body—like I’ve got a nearly 11-month-old boy—just watching how he moves, his spine’s always straight. When he sits down, he bends from the hips. Natural breathing into the belly. He’s got that clean, pure energy, that exuberance for life. That’s what we’re aiming for with the internal training—to take the body back to a natural state again, as close as possible.
A big part of Daoist cultivation training is to reverse the aging process to a degree, but especially the energy that you have as you get older, you see.
PAA: So that basically took you sort of two-ish to five years—approximation—to get to that. But you actually had a 17-year apprenticeship, right? So what comes after gaining that body?
Yeah, keep fortifying it. The idea is to keep making it stronger and stronger. We did a lot of push hands training—a lot of really heavy push hands training as well—and it just keeps building the springs in the body stronger and stronger. Longer time in zhan zhuang.
That first part—getting the foundation in the body, the dragon body developing—once that’s developed, then the idea is you specialize into something, whether it’s an art that you really have a big interest in or something based on your body type or your personality.
In the class, it was cool to watch the group that went through. We did a lot of foundation training—probably about 10 years, I think—10 years before any specialization really started. Then there were groups of people who started specializing in Wudang Xing Yi—the Five Element Xing Yi. A group of people started specializing in the Xing Yi Liu He—the Army Xing Yi. Some people specialized more into Tai Chi, and some specialized in Bagua. My teacher—one of his main things was Bagua, and also the Tie Yi Daoist Nei Gong, which is a form of Daoist Qigong; there’s a martial art attached to that too. The Bagua was one of his real specialties.
Some people specialized into that. Why that specialty was there was, you know, my teacher said, Tai Chi is really built for people who are quite tall and have long length. Tai Chi is a form of long boxing, so it’s really built for them. Bagua—my teacher’s quite short, so I think about 5’5″ or even 5’4″, very slightly built but so strong—just amazing. He said, Bagua’s good for you; better run your feet to move around things. The Xing Yi is really good for people who have a naturally strong body and have a personality where you just want to be really direct—you just want to go there; you want to finish it. Whereas a Bagua person is like, I want to wait and get around something here. The Tai Chi is also not that direct; it’s like, I want to absorb and then give back, that kind of thing. So it depends on your personality—how you work with arguments, work with conflicts—that sort of stuff. It was interesting to watch that specialization.
PAA: Wow. And you sort of touched upon most of that, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Xing Yi—the Wudang Xing Yi—is probably my practice. I did that for years. Then I started with the Army Xing Yi—the Xing Yi Liu He. I did a lot of that. I was already teaching Tai Chi, so the Tai Chi was already something I was doing. The Bagua—I learned bits and pieces of Bagua, not from my teacher but from another teacher who came from China. Then I learned some of the Tie Yi Daoist Nei Gong—just a couple of the movements, but not enough to really say I really understand that system or not.
But I remember some things my teacher said. He said, you know, a big thing in meditation systems and internal systems is to get the energy to the top of the head. That’s a big achievement. Then he goes, what do you do from there? He said, this is where the Tie Yi Daoist Nei Gong—this is where that one starts—is you already get the energy up to the top of the head. He said, Tai Chi is based off circles and spirals; this one’s based off spherical—360-degree movement everywhere. When you look at it, it’s like, yeah, it’s there—just 360-degree circles everywhere. It’s working with spheres.
PAA: What a wonderful apprenticeship.
Yeah, it was great, yeah. I talk to a few of my friends who were part of the apprenticeship, and we all say, if I knew what I know now, I probably could have gotten further in a lesser time frame—could have gotten further. But, you know, I trained my butt off; I did my best. As you train more and more, you start to understand things like, I could have done this better. I didn’t understand that part just then. My own lack of understanding was in my way and created an injury here that took me out for years, and that sort of stuff. But yeah, I went at it as hard as I could.
PAA: So, moving on again. We are 45 minutes in now, and I’m aware of your time—you’re a busy man.
I have plenty of time. I appreciate your time as well.
PAA: No worries, no worries. So, let’s look at—for people who are interested in your work—now, this is the first time I’m doing this on here, so let’s see if I can do this correctly and present. First of all, Chris has some material that’s available for people to look at, and I’m sure people will be interested in your methods from what you’ve heard today. Now, you should be seeing that now.
Yes, I can see that.
PAA: Wonderful, wonderful. So, this is the free course we have on Perseus, which is basically just—this is you running through various methods. Do you want to describe the content of this?
Yeah, for sure. Within the free courses there, I’ve got some—there are two courses. The first one is 25 Lessons of Kung Fu course. So that’s 25 lessons of internal training. It’s based off the Dragon and Tiger Kick-Punch. When I first learned that, I realized that there’s so much content; it’s a very complete system in just a form that takes six seconds to do, and then you repeat side to side. There’s a lot of content: all the open and close of the abdomen, the chest, rounding of the body, use of the ‘kwa,’ push with the legs, mind, fitness development, relaxation—all sorts of stuff is inside that six-second repeating pattern. So it’s got a lot of teaching.
The 25 lessons are essentially building up to that. It’s got extra stuff there too—some Qigong, some of the torus breathing is from the sacred geometry, how we connect to each other, how we gain energy is through the torus—so how to work with that too. So that’s some free content from that course.
PAA: That’s a free course, is it? Oh, that’s brilliant. That’s wonderful.
Yes, that’s a free course.
PAA: It’s so good, this. I mean, because again, I live in Taiwan, everyone, and you’d think I have this stuff on my doorstep—which I do to a degree—but there is a difference in depth because, you know, the internal training, what you see on the outside is not necessarily the same as what’s happening on the inside. And very few people can explain it like you. Let me have a look at the other one here.So, we also have your other page. Let me present that so people can have a little look at that, which is this one, I believe. There we go. So, this is the one you were just talking about, right?)
Oh yes, yes. Sorry, I might have explained the wrong one, wrong order.
PAA: It’s okay. So, there we go.
Yeah, so this is the Mastering Tai Chi Fundamentals course.
PAA: So, I mean, you really don’t find this stuff. You might, you know—obviously there’s rare exceptions—but really, you don’t find this kind of depth very often, to be able to train it with the depth that’s there and with someone who can explain to you why you’re doing it too and can get you to go from A to B. Like here in Asia, it’s just like, ‘Just do it,’ you know? And people are there decades and they still don’t really understand why they’re doing it.
Yeah, within that 25 Lessons course that you’re showing now, part of when I was advertising the course, I said, ‘Eastern embodiment taught through the lens of the Western mind.’ My body can demonstrate—there was a big part of the 17-year apprenticeship—my teacher said, ‘I want you to be able to demonstrate what I teach you here. I don’t want you to just know it conceptually because you don’t really know it if that’s the case. So I want you to demonstrate what I’m teaching you here.’ That’s the focus of the apprenticeship.
So, my body can understand the Eastern concepts, and then the Western mind—I can explain it in Western language. I have a lot of training in sports science, in biology, in rehab—I can explain it through that lens as well. Movement is actually a very complex—even just to explain how someone walks is a complex thing. So, you know, I can explain it that way as well.
The first course you showed—and I probably didn’t explain very well—was the Mastering Tai Chi Fundamentals. So that’s a short form based off Yang-style Tai Chi. It’s a Qigong-based form too, designed to move energy, build energy, plus also teach key fundamentals of Tai Chi. So that’s also—its elements on there—that’s free.
And I’ll add to this—I didn’t tell you this, James—but I just set up a playlist, and I’ll send through for the people on the Persus site. So, I just finished another course, which is part of that Mastering Tai Chi Fundamentals course: 30 Days of Tai Chi Walking and Prehab. So I’ll send through the first seven days of that, so it’s all free content, plus some extra things—how to activate difficult-to-feel glutes and hamstrings. There’s a lot of biomechanical knowledge.
What I found teaching Tai Chi for 20 years, especially when I taught Yang-style Tai Chi for the three years, was that people can run into knee injuries, especially with Yang-style Tai Chi. In any form of kung fu, knee injuries can show up too; it depends how the person’s body’s wired, how long their femur is—that makes a big difference versus their torso length. So, you know, people are predisposed to potentially getting certain injuries or whatever.
So, what I found was that Yang-style Tai Chi—it works for a lot of people, and it’s fantastic, but for some people, it breaks their knees. And it’s like, ‘Okay, well, I’ve got rehab knowledge; I’ve got rehabilitation knowledge—try not to make that happen.’ And this is the problems that people come in with: the body’s just not conditioned enough to even start Tai Chi yet. Even though Tai Chi is considered quite a low-impact exercise, it needs to make sure the tibia can rotate internally. Most people’s tibia, especially the right tibia, is externally rotated more—that’s based off, you know, respiratory patterns, how the diaphragm is linking in or not on the left side, making the pelvis rotate to the right.
PAA: I love that you’re mentioning all these things, because that’s something I think—like before I even start training with someone, sometimes I’ll just get them to stand straight, and I’ll see how their feet are either like this or their feet are like this or their feet are like this, and their knees are going the other way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(PAA: Not aligned properly yet.)
Yeah, and that’s society. It might have been old society too, maybe too.
PAA: Absolutely. So, this course of yours basically addresses that from the beginning and rebuilds from the beginning?
Yes. So, start from feet upwards—a big focus on getting the feet mobile yet strong, activating all the toes, getting the ankle fully open and the tibia internal rotation, activating posterior chains—so glutes, hamstrings—getting the quads strong, getting the knee joint strong, changing the expansion.
So, most people breathe—if they’re in an extension-based pattern, which most people are—I find at least 80–90% of people—they present first of all with an extension-based pattern. It’s a stress pattern; it can be a sudden growth when you’re growing—people have growth spurts—the body, that can put people into an extension-based pattern. And then the breathing is mainly coming from the sides here, so it’s a bucket-handle breathing, it’s called, and there’s not so much breathing going front and back, and especially almost no expansion going through the back. So, it pushes the center of mass forward, the feet open up, they externally rotate, the pelvis anteriorly rotates forward.
So these are the people who can become very quad dominant. They’re usually not that good at feeling into their body at the start because the body’s so tense, very tight neck, and from no injury—it’s because the body uses the neck to breathe because it can’t adequately pressurize the abdomen. So there’s a lot of preparation needed first.
But the thing is, Dao Yin Qigong is very good for working with that too—it’s really good. But I’ve got specific exercises to open up the rib cage so it moves better, so the diaphragm can move better all the way down to the feet.
PAA: Gosh, absolute gold. This is because often as well, you know, I’ve trained with some amazing people out here, but yeah, often it’s just, ‘Okay, stand, do this, stand.’ But yeah, how are you standing? You know, what did you start off with? So an hour of standing for one person is going to make them a superhero; an hour of standing for someone else is going to put them in a wheelchair.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I’ve trained with really good teachers and very, very intellectual teachers—they can explain things really well. But then there’s still elements of, ‘I don’t really know what’s going on there; I’ll just get the person to do it more and more and more.’ And I’ve seen people be broken by that, and I was broken by that too. So that’s, you know—and I’m not putting any blame or projection there; I own that—that’s part of my soul work. It’s like, I’m glad that happened now.
I had a bicep tendinopathy for seven years from doing ‘pao quan’ incorrectly and not being able to connect properly to the ‘kwa’ and to the back foot, and then the shoulder not really connected in—seven years. But it made me—now I’m a shoulder specialist; I’m really good at treating shoulders, especially difficult-to-treat shoulders that no one can sort of do anything with. So that’s—it’s helped me tremendously, but it’s allowed me to intellectually understand what’s going on, be able to explain that back to someone: what’s going on, we need to tweak this for this reason, no, no, make the chest a little bit more depressed now, that’s starting to tighten it up now.
And then if those cues aren’t working, what do we do? We go into some land-based rehab stuff—let’s get you laying on your side over a foam roller and just nasal breathing so the diaphragm tensioning can change. Let’s retest—is that pain still there? Is the impingement still there? No, it’s changed. We’re on the right track now; we’ve got to do some ‘zhan zhuang’ and Tai Chi now. So that’s what I’ve learned, and I’m very, very glad I’ve learned it that way now.
My goal is to create a healthier world—that’s my mission, to create a healthier world. Took me ages to work out what it was, but that’s what it is. So working through the physical body is a really good way of doing that.
Chris Radnedge
PAA: Wow, very precious training. So, I mean, I think everyone can see—this is—I mean, you’re getting the best of both worlds here, really. It’s really gold. Anyone who’s doing internal training, I hopefully would see this stuff. This is really, really useful.I’ll give you the final word. Is there anything else you’d like people to know about? Any other projects you’re doing? Any websites you’re doing? I’ll put all the information below as well, but if there’s anything else you’d like to share before we go.
Yeah, please, please do. So I’ve got five YouTube channels. The main one to connect to is my professional Kung Fu and Tai Chi channel. So we’ll put a link through to there. It’s got playlists for pretty much everything I’ve talked about on public access. Probably about 90% of what I teach is in private access, because I want people to buy into it. I want you to really engage; I don’t want you to just flippantly do this once and think you’ve got it, because you haven’t. And I want—and the content requires, if you really want to get it, requires you to engage with it, then ask me questions, engage with it more, ask me questions.
So when I see people engaging with things, not asking questions, I go, ‘I don’t know if they’re really getting it; I don’t know if they’re actually doing it consistently, because I thought there’d be more questions than this.’ So as soon as people purchase my programs, it’s like you’ve got a lot of access to me. And I know where you’re coming from and where you’re up to in the training.
But having said that, some people, you know, it’s just not their time to purchase the course or don’t have the finances yet, that sort of thing. There’s heaps of free content on that YouTube channel—like heaps of stuff. And there’s gold stuff there too, like all the ‘kwa’ exercises—that’s gold, just getting that. But then in my private content, there’s how do you progress that, how do you take it a lot further.
So there’s a lot of free content there. There’s a lot of rehab content that people can use on that site, on that channel too. And then I’ll send a link also to my rehab channel—so for my Restore Muscle Therapy business channel. So it’s about 712 exercises now—physio-based rehab things pulled from many different sources. So that’s all there in playlists for, you know, sub-acute lower back issues, disc herniation, shoulder impingement, how to heal your own neck—all sorts of issues are already there. So that’s all free, all free access too.
My goal is to create a healthier world—that’s my mission, to create a healthier world. Took me ages to work out what it was, but that’s what it is. So working through the physical body is a really good way of doing that.
And I’ll send also a link to my podcast—the Healing Life Podcast. So talk about, you know, what it’s like as a healer working with sacred geometry. I teach some of the techniques in sacred geometry. You’re working with clairvoyance and that sort of stuff—that’s something I work with, and I’ve gained a lot of that through the sacred geometry, although it was something I was born with too.
PAA: Oh, really? Wow.
Yeah, so there’s that sort of stuff, and working with intuition, working with deep essence work—so, you know, deep pain in people, what it means, how to get the triumph inside of it, and how to work with empathy, spiritual empathy, how to work with sympathy, holding space—that sort of stuff.
And beyond that, I have about 12 courses coming out over the next five years. So, already two main courses released: so 25 Lessons of Kung Fu, which has got three interwoven courses into it now. So the 25 Lessons of Kung Fu, and then 100 Days of Kung Fu Transformation. So it’s basically 20 to 30 minutes, six days a week. Day seven is rest or Qigong or Qigong self-massage. So I’ve got a whole thing on how to do that within the course.
And what that is, is it’s the 25 lessons taught and expanded over 100 days. So a lot of good feedback about that, and people like being guided that way. There’s a lot more layers inside there than the initial 25 lessons. And I’ve got also extra Nei Gong exercises, especially to do with elbow training—people want to learn a lot of elbow training with me—so some of the elbow Nei Gong is in there as well.
Then connected to that, also interwoven into that, is the 45 Days of Zhan Zhuang. So that’s the standing power and healing postures. You know, some of those postures were in China when the founder of Emei—when people would go, they had some illness that, you know, no one could treat; it’s, you know, nothing can be done—Western or Eastern methods. They would go say, ‘Go see this guy,’ and he’d teach them the five postures of Wu Tai Shan. So within that is like, you’re teaching on that. So it’s the healing part of Nei Gong you train. So that’s just one part of it.
So I teach 13 postures in that course—all the way from Wu Ji, which is just double-leg standing, different arm positions, all the way up to uneven-weighted, moving-weighted Zhan Zhuang, to San Ti, to single-leg Xie Xing, single-leg Zhan Zhuang, to reverse San Ti into Pao Quan. So I teach all of that openly, completely openly, including rare—including force testing in San Ti—like, how do you make sure San Ti is actually that you’re getting it, not just thinking of it, but how do you—when someone’s pushing on you, where’s the force meant to go, and that sort of stuff. So that’s all in there. So it’s part of the 25 Lessons. So you enroll in the 25 Lessons course, you get access to essentially three courses, which are all interwoven.
I thought about releasing them as separate courses, but they wouldn’t make sense because they’re so interwoven. So it’s all part of the one thing.
And then the second course I’ve released is the Mastering Tai Chi Fundamentals, which I talked about. So it’s the Tai Chi Fundamentals, and then within that course is a second course, which is the 30 Days of Tai Chi Walking with the prehab stuff. So that’s all in there as a part of the package.
Then what’s coming out next is a Xing Yi course. So start off with San Ti and probably Beng Quan—Crushing Fist.
PAA: Beng Quan, probably next.
Yeah, Crushing Fist, probably next.
Tai Chi Elbows—it’s all my elbow training inside there. I come from Chen-style Tai Chi mainly, but also from the Yang training too. So I teach that.
Then I’ve got a course called Warrior Legs. So it’s Leg Gong Fu—people want to learn Leg Gong Fu from me too. That was a big part of what my teacher taught. And when you look at what was the main things my teacher Fei Wang was teaching—foundation gong fu was the main thing, but legs—he said always the secret to gong fu training is legs. So he could demonstrate that—you know, he’s 64 now, still demonstrate thighs parallel to the floor, can do the Tai Chi walking for one hour. And he said, ‘My teacher at 96 could do this for one hour.’ And it’s like, ‘That’s—you won’t find that on YouTube.’ I’ve watched that much YouTube; I haven’t seen anyone do that on YouTube.
PAA: No, that’s out of this world. I can’t do that, by the way. I can’t do that one hour; my kidneys aren’t strong enough. But it can be done.
Yeah.
So, a lot more stuff as well coming up, but that’s the main stuff.
PAA: I’m so glad to hear, because you’ve got so much—that’s brilliant. I’m very happy to hear. So, yeah, I highly recommend you. Having trained with lots and lots and lots of people, I can—you know, I know enough to know quality when I see it, and yeah, this is really good stuff.
Well, thank you so much. Thank you for that feedback.
PAA: It’s true, it’s true. You know, it’s when the material is high, but it’s when you get the full package of someone, because you need someone that you can trust, because this takes longer than becoming a doctor, some of this stuff. So you’re putting time and effort from your life into something, and to be able to do it with someone who’s also got your best interests.
I teach as openly as I know. There’s some parts I don’t teach though, because I’ve been injured by those methods, and so I wouldn’t teach them—that’s just the morality thing; it’s like, that’s not integral to me. So I’d say, go learn that part from someone else. But I can teach why that was an issue; I know why that happened. Avoid this part if you do that sort of training.
And some of it’s like, that kind of training can’t be taught online. Well, it can be taught online, but it needs direct, you know, Zoom call sort of thing to check it exactly, because if you go off by, you know, one centimeter, you’re off by a mile in the future. And, you know, internal training’s got three different speeds I’ve learned. So there’s the slow way—the slow way, Tai Chi way, is the slow way. They say the slow way is the fast way, and I understand what they’re talking about there. It’s solid; every step’s solid.
San Ti is the slow way—the hard—I don’t know about slow way. San Ti is kind of like a fast track, but it’s a hard way. It’s like you’re stepping up the mountain; every step you’re stepping up the mountain rather than going around the mountain. It’s like every step going up, so it’s hard. So it’s kind of a fast way, but it’s bloody hard.
So there’s a medium speed way, and then there’s a fast way—like a superhighway to develop internal power. The Yang Jwing-Ming system is a super fast way. If you get that wrong though, especially the breath cutting, it can kill you. And, you know, when Master Yang used to have warnings on his DVDs—you know, ‘Don’t copy this stuff; it can kill you’—I think people maybe didn’t understand what he meant, but he’s—it’s for real what he’s saying. You know, in the Daoist methods, there would have been people dying from that sort of training when they were working it out. It’s basically abnormal internal pressures inside the body causing aneurysms, strokes, heart attacks, yeah, messing with the nervous system—that’s what it is.
So you need to learn how to release the pressure, make sure you’re not holding your breath, that there’s a valve where internal pressure that’s too strong is not going to affect the intracranial pressure, the pressure in the cerebrospinal fluid, the blood pressure—that’s why it can be dangerous. So I had to stop; otherwise I would be dead with how I misunderstood training and just my unique physiology.
So I don’t teach because of that, but everything I teach is all safe. I should probably add that—everything I teach is safe.
PAA: Very cool. Thank you so much. Probably we’ve got material for another conversation at some point. Maybe when your other material comes out, we can have another chat or something—that would be great. But yeah, highly recommend you. Send me over those links, and I’ll get all those put into the info. I’m going to close off now, but stay on the line and we’ll have a quick chat after, okay?
Wonderful. I appreciate what you’re doing so much with the Persus Academy, James. It’s just amazing. And to hear someone’s voice, you get a sense of who they are, but to see your face—I just see this gentle man and this, you know, really vibrant energy and someone who’s really trying to make a difference in the world. So you’re doing that. So I really thank you for this platform and this opportunity, and I love what you’re doing.
PAA: Oh, thanks. I appreciate it. It’s like you say, it’s nice to hear it as well. It’s the first time we’ve had a proper chat in person as well.
Okay, I will close that off now. So, bye-bye. Thank you for listening, everyone.
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