Sovereign Soul Academy
Valletta
Fight for your Soul
This flagship program is designed as a single, integrated journey rather than a menu of separate classes. Everyone trains together in the same “field” – beginners and experienced practitioners alike – with each person working at their own depth. The aim is simple and demanding: to build a body that is relaxed yet strong, a mind that is clear under pressure, and an energy system that can carry more of who you really are; moving into depth to forge the Sovereign Soul.
Over the weeks and months, you’ll move through a living mix of:
Tai Chi Chuan
Bagua Zhang,
Hsing-I Chuan
Qigong
Medical Qigong,
Breath-work
Nei Gong
Meditation
and much more.
Some sessions will emphasize structure and alignment (how to stand, root, spiral, step); others will focus more on internal power (how to connect breath, fascia and intent); others go deeper into restoration and healing (nervous system regulation, releasing old tension patterns, rebuilding resilience from the inside). However, through forms, drills and partner work which are all part of a truly holisitc system, we naturally integrate it all every time, so even with specific changing focus, we synthesize all aspects. We will thus be a little more ready every time after practice, to step back into the everyday life ever more capable.
Here below a short description of the different main methods trained in the Flagship program:
Teacher & Founder
Malte Blegvad in the young days
Description of the methods:
Tai Chi Chuan
Bagua Chang
Tai Chi Chuan is the backbone of our training, since it is the master system of internal arts: a slow (at first, later fast), meditative martial art that teaches how to organize and structure the body around a calm, stable and potent center, with incredible grounding and a lightening striking force that relies primarily on Qi/energy and Shen/soul. The Tai Chi Chuan slow-form becomes a moving laboratory for dynamic balance in all its visible and invisible variations; you hardly move, like mist, which reawakens your memory from somewhere older than your mind, evaporating useless body-, energy- and soul-habits into thin air, to reveal your true eternal self. On the surface it is just slow motion, but through bones, sinews, fascia, inner organs, breath and attention, something precise and quiet is being carved, a hidden architecture: a new way for the cosmic laws to hold you and a new way for you to answer it. To practice Tai Chi Chuan is to enter directly through the gate of energy streams and consciousness fields, it´s shadow boxing in the dimensions underlying the physical realm; prime mover of all phenomenon, including the physical fighting aspects, is the soul itself.
Bagua Chang is the internal art of continuous change, spiraling energy cultivation, brilliant and excentric fighting techniques, various cool animal shape-shifting and the refinement of spirit much like a snake shreds its skin in inward refuge, while simultaneously hissing, spitting and striking its vital potions outwards, all the way to the far periphery. Practiced through circular walking and coiling forms, it trains you to move through space with constant awareness of all eight directions, while being an observant witness in the center itself. Bagua Chang opens the spine and all joints, stretching sinews and fascia through radical twisting, turning and threading actions to create the “dragon-body”. The eloquent and unique stepping patterns teach how to surprisingly and invincibly enter, evade, and reposition yourself around an opponent(s)—or around a situation—without ever losing your own center. To practice Bagua Chang is to coil like smoke through the forest, around trunks, tracking then disappearing 360 degrees along with the push-pull winds, suddenly reappearing as the shape-shifting form solidifies like a one-frame movie moment that thematically creates equally the beginning, mid and the end.
Hsing-I Chuan
Hsing-I Chuan is the spear pointed internal martial arts: unapologetically direct, brutally uncompromising, and deceptively simple. Built on five elemental forces, it trains you to align intent, structure and movement into one clear, forward-driving vector. Instead of many decorative techniques, Hsing-I Chuan focuses on refining a few core patterns until the body moves like a single integrated piece, from heel to fist, without hesitation. The training conditions a kind of dense, internal power and a very particular mental quality: calm, but with the ability to commit fully in an instant. Hsing-I Chuan draws a straight line in the sand, washes clean, then repeats, in blunt minimalist design, only disguising it´s pantheon of wild creative energy and perfectly timed divine will. To practice Hsing-I Chuan is like when the master artist has only a few colors to paint the sky early-morning-Verona-blue and the heart late-night-Venetian-red, gives up in disgust, leaves the canvas blank, then later returns divinely content and drunk on imperial-Tyrian-purple-rage,
Qi Gong
Qi Gong is where we tune and regulate the basic currents of the body. Through standing postures, simple movements and coordinated breathing, we work with the meridian pathways and organ networks that underpin both health and martial capacity. Rather than stretching muscles in isolation, Qi Gong lengthens and connects the whole fascial web, so energy and blood can circulate more freely. Many of the exercises look gentle from the outside, but ask for low stances and a very precise internal alignment—stacked bones, relaxed musculature, awake but unforced breathing. The effect is a gradual clearing-out of stagnation and a rebuilding of the body’s baseline vitality, which then supports the more demanding aspects of the training. Qi Gong is the art of tending currents you cannot see but can definitely feel. The movements are often modest, almost humble, yet they seem to reach into forgotten corners of the body where breath and blood have not visited in years. It touches the mysterious because it works in whispers: a tingling here, a warmth there, a sudden lightness in places that were heavy. Organs that were names in a book become living presences under your hands.
Medical Qi Gong
Medical Qi Gong narrows the focus: we use specific postures, breath patterns and awareness methods to address concrete imbalances in the body and nervous system. Where general Qi Gong regulates the whole field, Medical Qi Gong might, for example, target the lungs and chest for grief and breath issues, or the lower back and kidneys for exhaustion and fear. The work can be subtle but powerful: combining movement, sound, visualization and touch in ways that influence how the organs function, how the immune system responds, and how the body processes long-held emotional charge. In the context of the academy, Medical Qi Gong is the “repair and rebuild” layer that allows students to first regain health, then train deeply without burning out. Medical Qi Gong steps closer to the hidden workshop of the body. It is like learning the private language between your organs, your emotions and your breath, and then gently changing the conversation. Postures, sounds and subtle focus re-tune places that have been overworked, ignored, or frozen by old stories. Eventually extraordinary vitality follows and thus the inner physician has turned poison into vital energy, a jet fuel necessary to go towards higher and deeper states and stages.
Breath-Work
Breath-work is the bridge between the visible body and the invisible energy and states of mind. In this academy we adhere to the Taoist view that breath-work should rarely be practiced in isolation from actual physical internal arts movements, since the physical involvement regulates and roots any change. Therefore, most often breath will simply improve from correct internal movements and not be taught directly. We do, however, use a range of conscious methods—always keeping it natural and unforced—to influence how the diaphragm moves, how the ribs expand, and how pressure is distributed through the torso. This directly affects heart rate, vagal tone and the way the nervous system shifts between stress and recovery. In martial terms, breath-work allows you to maintain power and coordination when things speed up, instead of holding your breath and tightening. In inner terms, it teaches you how to return to yourself under fire: one conscious exhale at a time. Breath-work is the doorway you have walked through since birth without perhaps ever really looking at it, but you nevertheless intuitively know much of its workings. Remind yourself how truly amazing it is how quickly the inner weather changes, when you change the breath with care: storms quiet, the ground comes back under your feet, and new space opens between you and your reactions. It is the most intimate and direct way to touch your own life-force, and thus this has to be done with care and long-term perspective.
Nei Gong
Meditation
Nei Gong is the inner engine of the whole Taoist system, which most often is being taught and learned through the physical methods, much like the breath. It can hardly be called an exercise, rather the esoteric subtle principles underlying all the previous described methods, which can be opened to, utilized and mastered. It works by reorganizing the way your structure carries weight, conducts force, circulates Qi and eventually connects the human to heaven and earth. When done in isolation, in a meditative fashion, before integrating it back into the other mentioned methods, we work with stationary sitting or standing practices, micro-movements and internal cues that build a strong energetic body, which translates into an elastic physical “frame” inside the body—tendons and connective tissue doing more of the work, surface muscles doing less. Over time, this changes how you walk, stand, sit and even sleep. Power begins to feel as if it arises from the ground, waves through the body and leaves through the hands, rather than being pushed out locally from the shoulders or arms. Nei Gong is demanding, often requiring quit retreat, and absolutely central to becoming an internal martial artist rather than just someone performing forms and drills. Nei Gong is like learning the secret blueprint of your own body, and through yourself likewise Cosmos secrets, due to the holistic holographic quality of this universe; eventually if pursued with vigor over long stretches of time, it leads onto the path that all genuine spiritual masters have walked before you.
Meditation in this Academy´s context is done primarily while moving, as the unique aspect of Taoist internal arts is the capacity to actually do this properly. The great advantages with this approach are, firstly, that it through physicality grounds any consciousness-breakthroughs more or less immediately, a fact which can not be overstated the importance of and, secondly, that it also, through the martial aspect, protects the sensitive heart openings instantaneously in real-time, also not possible to overstate the importance of. Over time, the practitioner learns to rest safely in a broader field of awareness and open-heartedness, while sensations, thoughts and emotions come and go. This clarity and depth then inform everything else: how you receive instruction and respond to partner work in the academy, and how you, in your life as such, meet conflict and navigate the thresholds of your own life. In the academy, meditation is the place where the warrior, the healer and the personal spiritual authority meet in mature authenticity. ________________________________________