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Breaking open the door of heaven.

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Approaching the gates of eternity.

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Welcome to my world.

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This is the Dragon's cave.

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Clearing tangles from the mind.

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Slicing the butterfly.

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This cave is mine.

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Slicing the butterfly 2.

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Crane walks on water.

If you've ever spent much time at the beach, you'll know the feeling. My wife and I had just enjoyed several days on the remote beaches of North Carolina's Outer Banks. Suntanned and wind-burned, we settled in for the long drive back to Tennessee. It was a hot and sultry day. The top was down on our cherry-red Cadillac Eldorado. The breeze blew our hair as mile upon mile of remote landscape passed.

It was mostly swamp grass, reeds, an occasional wind-gnarled tree. Nothing else. No houses, no gas stations-my wife alerted me to the fact that the gas gauge was close to empty. It was like we had been driving in a dream of our own making. A sort of euphoria had overcome us, almost like something out of the old black-and-white "Twilight Zone" TV vignettes.

At last, a store appeared on the horizon. An old Esso sign marked the turn-in. There were rusty metal signs for Redman's tobacco and some type of motor oil. Two gas pumps stood in front of the wooden storefront. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear Rod Serling welcoming me to the "Twilight Zone." Oddly, there was a beat-up old car in front with the motor running. Walking past, I noticed bent beer cans tossed on the floor and I could smell the beer-soaked seats.

World of Violence

Opening the store's squeaky screen door, I suddenly entered a dark world of violence. Five thugs were standing in front of the shopkeeper by his cash register. One man helped himself to a sandwich from the cooler, took one bite and then threw the remainder at the frightened store owner. The owner's face was white with terror. I had stepped into the middle of a robbery.

Maybe it was the decades of martial arts, meditation or my work with qi gong that triggered what happened next. I don't know. An unearthly feeling of physical invincibility overcame me. Crazy, don't you think? After all, even if you're a top-ranking black belt, are you nuts enough to take on five men at once? And it's a fact that many black belts have had their butts kicked by good streetfighters. Hey, all that kung-fu looks pretty classy, but don't take on that homeless man sleeping under California blankets (that's newspapers, by the way); he's liable to kick your butt.

Listen, when the chips are on the table, you're going to have to draw on something more than your physical strength and martial technique. The guy under the California blankets can summon an uncanny level of strength. Why? Because he's been living in survival mode and keeps his hand on the trigger of the pharmacy of his mind. He can flush his body with the neurohormones of a fight-or-flight situation just like an animal.

Survival 101

Do you want to fight someone like that? Or how about someone who will go to prison for the rest of his life if he loses? How motivated do you think he'd be? All the bells and whistles of Survival 101 are on. The big problem you and I have is that we wait to rationally weigh the consequences of our decisions. However, that hesitation can get you killed.

Once, I stupidly attempted to stop a huge male bear from terrorizing a mother bear and her baby cub. Old dominant males have been known to kill young cubs so they can mate with the sow. Now, don't laugh yet! I took a pellet pistol, shot the big 550-pound bear in the butt and yelled at him to get away from the tree where the mother had taken refuge.

Well, you might have already figured out what the bear did. You know, just as if I'd kicked the guy sleeping under those California blankets. Yep! Mad as heck that I would interfere with his love life, he rushed me in a roaring rage. Listen, running wasn't an option. A bear can sprint up to 30 miles an hour.

As I stood there, experiencing a tachyphysio-psychic reaction, an adrenal dump and an endocrine cascade, everything felt like it was in slow-motion-like stepping into the middle of a robbery. I'll tell you more about that in a moment, but this is important for you to understand.

Not So Fast

So, if everything is in slow-motion, shouldn't this mean you've got plenty of time? Of course it does. "But not so fast," you say, "then why do people freeze up?" Ah, now you're beginning to understand the premise of my "Art and Science of Physical Invincibility" course. I've trained myself to recreate the tachyphysio-psychic reaction and overcome the neurohormones that freeze my muscles and make me feel like I'm running in mud.

Do you know the feeling just before a contest or fight when you feel as weak as a baby, have butterflies in your stomach and walk a little funny-then you try to put on your toughest, bravest face, only to discover it looks funny on ghost-white skin? Yep! Now you know what I'm talking about. How would you like total mastery over that? I mean to never, ever have to worry about it again? Do you think that might be a good idea? How many more contests would you enter? How much more confident would you feel about handling an emergency?

Well, back to mine-you see, I even had time to write to you as this big bear was attempting to maul me. He missed me with his first swipe, and I calmly pressed the pellet pistol to his nose and shot him on its tip three very fast times. He kicked up the dust, and all I saw was his butt racing away at 30 miles an hour. Well, Mama Bear and her cub came down and safely sauntered peacefully away. I also learned a lesson-don't do that again! Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong.

The secret is to practice recreating incredible physical stress and coupling it with extreme calm. Soon, you'll begin to find that your body has an internal strength that you can consciously manipulate. You have a storage battery located just below your navel that contains the juice of physical invincibility. In traditional Chinese medicine, it's called the dan tian. When you can drop your breath into this vortex, you strengthen your personal power by supercharging your life force or qi (chi).

On a bar magnet, this point is the exact balanced middle between the north and south poles. This is referred to as the "Bloch Wall." At this point on the magnet, it is neither north nor south. It is a point of zero magnetism, somewhat like a black hole in space. Yet it is this point on the human body that is our creation point. Isn't it interesting that it's also the area where our life cords from our mothers were attached?

In the many exercises I teach for developing physical invincibility, the focus is on creating an inner magnetic tension at this zero point of the human body. That's also why I've created qi gong balls known as ThunderBalls because of the 12,500-gauss rare earth magnets. They can increase the skin's oxygen pressure by an amazing degree. This is why certain martial artists appear to be impervious to strikes or kicks. Think of two tires, one inflated, the other not inflated. The inflated tire is able to hold a truck up. Imagine your body fully inflated with internal energy; anyone striking you will have his hand bounce off. Now, of course, this is a very high state to achieve.

This is why I use magnets to speed up and intensify qi (chi) development. When Dr. Benjamin Lau of Loma Linda University used pulsed magnetic forces, in 90 percent of his patients the increase in oxygen partial pressure ranged between 100 percent and 400 percent. Now, if this is new and sounds crazy to you, bear in mind that Linus Pauling (of vitamin C fame) received a Nobel Prize in 1954 for 24 years of research on the magnetic properties of hemoglobin. Oddly, the ancient qi gong masters knew that qi (chi) circulated within your blood oxygen. This is why the breathing techniques I teach can connect the human mind with the physical body to generate qi.

Our minds, once charged to a high degree, become our greatest protection. None of us finds it difficult to believe that we can take a laptop computer and send messages to someone else's computer simply over the airwaves. So, then, why would it be difficult to believe that a far more complex computer, the human mind, can send powerful messages to other people's neurological receiving centers? However, just like the laptop, you need a live battery. Once the dan tian is fully charged with qi, you can command the neurological functions of those of harmful intention.

So, back to the robbery in progress. I felt strangely invincible. A total calm came over me. My physical body was encased in a jacket of qi as I spoke. I looked into the eyes of the gang's leader and spoke as if I were Moses giving the Ten Commandments. "So, gentlemen, what seems to be the problem here?" In a split-second, all their strength and bravado evaporated. Their bodies became as physically weak as an infant's. I pointed to the door and they obediently filed out like five convicts on a chain gang.

As their car roared away, the store owner cried and kept repeating, "You've saved my life! You've saved my life! How can I ever thank you?"

Peter Ragnar is the author of "The Art and Science of Physical Invincibility." For more information, visit www.roaringlionpublishing.com.