How and Why to Align our Personal Practices with Ancient Principles
If we actually care about what our practices are doing to us...
Introducing The Practitioner’s Course (I know—I got really creative with the name, didn’t I?). Below is a video gifting you the first two chapters of the first module, which will be one of three over the next few months. These two chapters are:
Introduction: Taking your practice to a whole new octave through the application of ancient principles and concepts. This allows is to reanimate practice with a new (old) level of depth.
Daily Practice, Ancient Virtue and Traditional Cultures: The essence at the heart of this course.
This course is for people who desire to be more deliberate with their personal practice as a whole, and allow it to rise to a new octave of resonance. This is not about exploring any single tradition in depth, but more so, embracing the syncretic nature of modern life, while at the same time Eating Ancient Virtue by applying traditional principles to our self chosen practices.
Daily practice is one of the core elements at the heart of ‘ancient virtue’, at least for modern people. While the perspectives, mythologies and cultural structures of the past can be immensely nourishing, they have the potential to be ‘lost in translation’ to some degree; yet practice as a principle, remains one of the surest ways of transmitting across generations. This is because it can ‘more reliably’ alter you in ways that bypass our conditioning.
Modern people have the luxury (and potential pitfalls) of access to a wide variety of practices from many traditions, at the click of a button or the turn of a page. One of the main pitfalls today is that the whole or entirety of personal practices lack a ‘cohesive meta-structure’ that can act as container.
We mix modern yoga, western weightlifting, Buddhist meditation, Daoist Chi gung, contemporary biohacking, depth psychology, and clinical therapy - often with no underlying architecture, and at times, cobbling everything together haphazardly; whereas traditions often transmit a cohesive set of practices (or at least attempt to).
This leads to several problems:
Constantly leaking power: put simply, our practices accomplish a fraction of what they could.
No connection between personal practice and the deeper values that guide our life, including the soul’s move towards destiny/completion.
A lack of cohesion between your calling, craft and personal practice. What does that yoga YouTube video have to do with your work in the world? Maybe something, maybe nothing.
Aspects of the practice can be at odd ends with one another, which means we literally stifle ourselves, because instead of practices feeding into one another, they do the opposite.
Hiding from ‘problematic’ aspects of ourselves, because our practices ignore them. Ancient practice was a ‘whole person’ (and often whole community) affair. Not so today.
And more, really…but those are some of the big ones.
Also found in Module One (which is only one of three large modules):
Coherence: What it is and why it’s so important to practice
Practice, Philosophy and Psyche: Your practice can only ever accommodate your philosophy
Practice as Oracle: The oracular nature of practice
The Ship In Sail: ‘If you want your ship to go north, point it north’ - Zen Saying
Triangulating: North star, your calling & limitations
The Different Mountains: The notion that ‘all paths lead up the same mountain’ is likely wrong. There are different mountains that lead to distinct places.
Finding the Correct Technology: Some tools do not work for what you want
Defining Your Core Influences: Lineage and The Current of Power
Core themes and sentiments from the video preview above (and yes, A.I. summarized it, but I checked it out and it wasn't bad):
Modern Practice Is Unanchored: People today often piece together random practices without coherence or a guiding core, which leads to confusion or stagnation rather than real transformation.
We Have Access—but No Framework: We can access practices, teachings, and commentary from all over the world—books, courses, science, tradition—but without principles, it can become noise instead of signal.
Old Practices Were Cohesive Ecologies: Ancient cultures built entire ecosystems of practice that aligned body, spirit, community, and cosmos. It wasn't random—it was deliberate, tested, and transmitted.
Modern Approaches Can Lack Depth or Direction: Without discernment, it’s easy to build a Frankenstein's monster of practices that feel good but don’t lead anywhere meaningful—or worse, feed the ego.
The Point Isn’t to Copy the Ancients, But to Learn from Them: This course isn’t about going back in time—it’s about taking the timeless principles of old systems and applying them intelligently in today’s world.
Practice Isn’t Just Something You Do—It’s How You Change: Practice is one of the few reliable methods for enacting ongoing, conscious, directional change in life.
We Are Conditioned Beings: Our biology, ancestors, society, and karma all shape our behavior. Practice allows us to recondition ourselves—consciously and skillfully.
Daily Practice = Agency: Through practice, we change our conditioning, which shapes our character and ultimately shifts our destiny.
Ancient Practices Survived for a Reason: They're like sacred cargo floating down the river of time—if we understand them well enough, they can still bring about the same kind of alchemical change today.
Coherent Practice Creates Inner & Cultural Stability: Traditions weren’t just for personal development—they were how communities cohered, how virtue was cultivated, how people remembered who they were.
Your Practice Can Be Modern—But It Must Be Rooted: Whether you’re meditating, breathing, chanting, aligning your posture, or paying attention to your relationships—if it’s rooted in solid principles, it has the potential to become powerful.
If you would like to get access to the course, please join the Eating Ancient Virtue premium membership!