---
title: "Interview with Chris Radnedge: Internal Power, Meditation and Healing"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/interview-with-chris-radnedge-internal-power-meditation-and-healing/
date: 2024-11-27
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction 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..."
categories:
  - "Internal Martial Arts"
  - "Interviews"
tags:
  - "Internal Martial Arts"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Chris-Radnedge.jpg
word_count: 8578
---

# Interview with Chris Radnedge: Internal Power, Meditation and Healing

## Introduction

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kUXEBwsuE

**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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## Further Information

##### Movement Mastery Through Kung - Free Course

##### Chris's Training Platform

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