Welcome to Inner Dharma, the martial arts website of Mark Raugas. From 2005 to 2020, this site hosted a blog called Inner Dharma concerned with traditional martial arts and culture. I want to thank its readers for their interest and feedback.

I live in the Pacific Northwest and continue my practice of traditional internal martial arts as a form of mindfulness and austerity (shugyō). Below I summarize my current training activities.

Yuèshān Guǎn

Internal Martial Arts

I practice traditional internal martial arts, including Northern Wu Style Taijiquan, Hebei Xingyiquan, and the Yin Style of Baguazhang. I am a lineal student of Zhang Yun laoshi, who leads North American Yin Cheng Gong Fa, an organization dedicated to preserving the internal martial teachings of the late Grandmaster Wang Peisheng. I was introduced to Paul Cote's YCGF classes by Bob Galeone, and later travelled to Pittsburgh regularly to continue my training under Zhang Yun. My sponsors for baishi in 2015 were Paul Cote and Clayton Shiu.

As part of my training, I maintain a practice of jian (sword), dao (saber), and qiang (spear). Quan You, the founder of Wu Style, was a Manchurian member of the Yellow Banner Brigade and Imperial Guard during the Qing Dynasty, so our style of Taiji incorporates a robust traditional weapons practice handed down by his senior disciples. Ma Gui, disciple of Yin Fu, was famous for his practice of the willow leaf saber. Liu Dekuan was also a famous weapons practitioner of his time, and arranged several forms that survive to this day.

Gassankan Kenpō

Classical Japanese Fencing

I also maintain a practice of classical Japanese fencing, focused on the practice and analysis of kata, and pressure testing in free practice. I studied aspects of Kashima-shinden Jiki Shinkage-ryū heihō at the Hobyōkan Dojo of David Hall beginning in 2008 and received a Hobyōkan chuden menjo license in 2018. I work with a small group in Seattle on aspects of sword methods derived from the Jiki Shinkage-ryū I learned at the Hobyōkan in a manner that I feel is compatible with my broader study of traditional internal martial arts.

Mark Raugas
mark [at] innerdharma [dot] org