Internal Arts Mastery
Understand how Tai Chi actually works.
Learn what makes Tai Chi work. Then make it your own.
Many practitioners spend years learning Tai Chi forms, refining postures, and repeating movements without fully understanding the internal principles that make them effective.
The movements may become beautiful, but the deeper skills can remain elusive.
At Phoenix Mountain, we begin with the principles themselves.
Instead of asking you to reproduce an outward appearance, we guide you to discover what is happening within your own body.
You learn to recognize where force travels, where tension interferes, how internal connection develops, and how awareness transforms your relationship with movement.
What was once mysterious becomes something you can experience.
What you can experience becomes something you can practice.
And through practice, what once required conscious effort can gradually become natural.
This is the purpose of Internal Arts Mastery: to transform knowledge into living skill.
Understand. Cultivate. Apply.
Each of the Five Masteries brings together three essential dimensions of learning.
1. Understand the Principles
Clear, precise lessons explain the mechanics, methods, and deeper meaning of each internal skill.
Discover what the classical teachings are pointing toward, why the methods work, and how to recognize them in your own experience.
2. Cultivate Through Solo Practice
Develop the internal qualities directly within your own body.
Through standing, movement, Qigong, awareness training, and specialized exercises, you learn to cultivate the skills independently—without needing a training partner for every practice session.
3. Refine Through Partner Practice
Explore how your developing capacities function in contact with another person.
Feel how pressure moves, discover where resistance arises, and learn to receive, transform, and express force with increasing sensitivity and freedom.
Partner exercises provide opportunities to test and refine what you have cultivated alone.
Together, these three approaches allow you to understand the art, embody it, and discover how it functions in relationship.
Each Mastery reveals a deeper way of experiencing and working with the same fundamental principles.
"Where could you be once you've mastered the ability to effortlessly redirect powerful forces? Picture yourself staying perfectly relaxed while handling intense pressure, knowing your subtle movements can guide and control far greater forces with ease.”
Expand your awareness through the fascinating network of fascia tissue
Control balance and force through subtle intention rather than muscular strength
Build unshakeable confidence in handling powerful incoming force with relaxed ease
"What would it feel like to move through life free from the weight of tension, your movements flowing like water, your emotions transformed into pure creative energy? Envision yourself experiencing that rare state where power and relaxation become one."
- Transform tension into fluid power
- Convert negative emotions into their positive counterparts
- Replace heaviness with natural lightness Experience movement becoming effortlessly powerful, spontaneous, and free.
"Imagine having such precise control over your body's energy that you can feel it flowing like a river under your command, healing where it needs to heal, strengthening where it needs to strengthen, all through the power of your focused intention."
- Activate and direct the body's natural energy systems
- Master the interplay of Yin and Yang for both healing and martial applications
- Gain the ability to transform conflicting force into compliance within moments
"Where could you be when you've developed such refined sensitivity that you can read and respond to situations before they even manifest physically? Imagine moving through life with that rare combination of relaxed awareness and instant responsiveness that masters possess."
- Perceive and control your opponent's intention (Yi 意) before physical movement
- Develop the ability to "arrive first while moving second"
- Master the art of emptiness and its martial applications
"Picture yourself moving with such profound awareness that you can feel the energy flowing not just within you, but all around you – your practice having evolved from mere physical movement into a deep spiritual journey that connects you to something far greater than yourself."
- Expand your energy awareness beyond physical boundaries
- Master the 8 methods (Ba Jin 八勁) of Yang Tai Chi through universal energy (Ling Qi 靈氣)
- Develop powerful healing abilities and instant effortless force redirection
- Connect with true experience beyond mental conception
Early on in our program, we had taught Neijin Mastery before Yi Mastery, which was the traditional sequence the skills were passed down.
After watching hundreds of students go through the program, observing their success and challenges, answering their questions, one thing had become clear: Yi Mastery should come before Neijin Mastery.
This allows you to refine your awareness and internal skill, at the boundary of your physical body. And doing this creates the perfect stepping stone to working with the awareness of Neijin not only in your own body, but also in your opponent and beyond your body.
So at this time we are recommending Yi Mastery as the 4th step, and Neijin as the 5th step. Inside the course some of the lessons may have moments that refer to the courses in the old order, and this will be corrected with new video lessons in time. And meanwhile, enjoy Yi Mastery, and then Neijin Mastery, as the most effective path to develop your internal mastery.
"Envision yourself flowing through these ancient movements with perfect unity of mind, body, and spirit, each posture expressing both martial power and meditative peace, your practice becoming a living art form."
- Basic flow and universal energy harmony
- Refined physical alignment with energy principles
- Advanced intention work for martial applications
Complete Series (6 courses, $60 each)
- Progressive learning of the complete Old Six Roads form
- Flexible practice options: create 12, 16, 24, or 36 posture forms
- Deep integration of internal principles with physical movement
The Five Masteries are for those who wish to understand Tai Chi beyond its outward appearance.
Whether you are a long-time Tai Chi practitioner seeking the internal skills missing from your training, a martial artist interested in more refined ways of handling force, or a curious beginner drawn to the deeper possibilities of human movement, this curriculum offers a direct path of study.
You do not need to memorize a traditional form before beginning.
You do not need to accept mystical claims on faith.
And you do not need a regular training partner to begin cultivating the internal qualities of the art.
You need curiosity, attention, and a willingness to explore what your own experience can teach you.
"I learned from a Sifu for 10 years and have never had this kind of knowledge."
— Tai Chi student, Fascia Mastery
The greatest breakthroughs often begin when something that was previously obscure becomes suddenly clear.
A new sensation of connection. A push that no longer requires struggling. A movement that becomes unexpectedly light.
What begins as a change in understanding can become a change in the way you move, practice, and meet the world.
Begin with Effortless Walking
No partner is necessary to begin. Each Mastery incorporates solo cultivation to develop the internal qualities within your own body. Partner exercises are important for testing and refining certain interactive skills, and will deepen your understanding when a partner is available.
Yes. Fascia Mastery provides the recommended starting point, introducing fundamental principles through accessible experiences. Previous martial arts or Tai Chi training can be valuable but is not required to begin.
The courses form a deliberate progression. Each builds upon the understanding and capacities developed in earlier Masteries. We recommend beginning with Fascia Mastery and continuing in sequence, although experienced students can explore subjects especially relevant to their practice.
Both traditions inform the training. The curriculum uses the internal principles of Tai Chi to cultivate whole-body coordination, awareness, power, and responsiveness. Solo cultivation and Qigong develop these qualities within yourself, while partner exercises reveal their practical application.
The deeper purpose of Tai Chi is not to become dependent upon more techniques, more strength, or more complicated knowledge.
It is to discover what becomes possible when unnecessary effort, resistance, and limitation begin to fall away.
Strength without hardness.
Sensitivity without fear.
Awareness without struggle.
Action without unnecessary effort.
At Phoenix Mountain, we teach the internal arts not as mysteries to be preserved, but as living knowledge to be understood, practiced, and embodied.
Because the deepest mastery is not the power to impose yourself upon the world.
It is the freedom to move naturally within it.
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