Stephen Russell: The Barefoot Doctor

Stephen Russell, also known as the Barefoot Doctor, is a practitioner and teacher of Taoism, its medicine, philosophy, meditation practices and martial arts and “magic” system, or wu wei.

Russell’s training comprised studying Aikido at 11, a Japanese martial art relying on the practitioner using the opponent’s strength against them without having to use their own. He also learned to meditate and do basic energy healing as part of the training. In his teens he switched to studying Tai Chi, one of the three Taoist ‘internal martial arts’, so called because they rely on following a set of internal principles while in the midst of movement or action. In his early twenties, he studied human consciousness with psychiatrist R D Laing for three years.

In 1979 he lived for four years with the Taos tribe in New Mexico, where he studied shamanism. During this time, he also trained in the two other Taoist internal martial arts, Hsing I and Pa Kua, as well as Taoist meditation and acupuncture, acupressure, moxibustion and massage techniques.