How to be Truly Free – The Path of Joy
Updated: Sep 22, 2025
Written by Victor L. Almeida, Martial Artist
Master Victor Almeida is a lifelong martial artist dedicated to the roots of the arts, teaching Taekwondo, calisthenics, and yoga to unlock our highest potential. Beyond the dojang, he is an accomplished artist working in glass, fire, digital, and mixed media, creating expressive works that embody freedom and inspire transformation.
Freedom comes in many forms, yet the deepest lies within. Many believe it is money or power, but true freedom transcends the prisons of mind, emotion, and body. We prepare our bodies and minds to delve deep and become aware of what we truly are, the very thing we are observing. Learning to sit with the emotional and mental barriers, dissolving them. Sharpening our bodies like a true temple to allow divine energy to flow. We become dedicated to bringing harmony with our true selves. We transcend our perceived limitations. We are responsible for the change we seek.
The mental
By rejecting the moment as it is, we create suffering. We must let go of the past and future. Then, bring all of our emotions, feelings of physical pain, and our gaze up to the third eye. Our guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, teaches us that the third eye is the seat of consciousness, where we may achieve self-realization. We can also relax the body, every muscle. We now bring ourselves into a state of mental focus. Meditation isn’t thoughtless. Instead, it actively harnesses all of your willpower and focuses it on one spot with laser-like precision. Feeling the breath moving in and out. The coolness of the air as it comes in. The warmth as it returns back up and out. Keeping that gaze uplifted and the attention on the breath, notice the calmness spreading throughout your mind and body. Most meditations then add a mantra like Hong Sau, ”I am spirit”.
We breathe in mentally chanting Hong, and out chanting Sau. Like any practice, meditation and breathwork is not easy. At first, you feel awkward, and you aren’t getting anywhere. That’s how I felt when I first started. I could only sit for 5 to 6 minutes. After a few months of consistent practice, I was easily doing 20 to 30 minutes. After a few months of meditation, I noticed my mind and life had changed completely. Without it, I was a different person. Meditation alters neural pathways in your brain and increases your neural plasticity. The practice truly brings about calmness, which induces clarity of the mind. If you train in martial arts, you know how critical that is. These effects help decision-making, faster processing, and allow us to handle stress in a more graceful way. In learning mental grace, we also implement physical grace through exploration of physical strength and mobility.
The physical
Martial Arts teaches us how to learn while increasing our awareness. You’ll notice that after mastering a discipline, it becomes easier to learn another. Jack of all trades, Master of one. Or two? Or three? Through the lifestyle of martial arts, we must train our bodies to be healthy. Implementing physical fitness, technical, and mobility training that supercharges the temple that is your body.
Martial Arts is a way of life that creates a healthy outlet for emotions while instilling discipline of mind and body to create a pure channel of expressive movement. With every strike, we find out more about ourselves. At Fera Academy, we practice Taekwondo, Muay Thai, and BJJ. These disciplines are vessels. Once you understand and truly embody their function, you can transcend their definitions. We learn to adapt to any situation, either flowing, crashing, or guiding, depending on what is required. Life is dynamic, and as true peaceful warriors, we must be too. We achieve this dynamic nature through harsh training that teaches our mind and body to fully surrender to the flow state. The body is refined to perform while the mind expands in awareness and sharpens into focus. We harmonize with our spirit to transcend fear and become what must be true love and joy.
Through Calisthenics and Strength Training, we bring the body to a new level of raw power. Together with the martial training, it creates fast-twitch muscle fibers, improves hand and eye coordination, increases mobility through supporting often neglected muscles, and does so in a functional way that supports daily life. This training helps reduce fat, increase our cardiovascular efficiency, and reduce the chances of injury and sickness through increased muscle defense, which supports immune system health. The training truly helps you transcend to a new level.
Yoga postures, Asanas, are critical to releasing the body's tightness after such exercises. They allow these strands to loosen, creating a more relaxed state of existence. Oftentimes, we can hold tension in muscles from our experiences in life. Addressing these areas can help us move about with more ease in our daily lives. Most importantly, it allows us to sit in meditation longer without experiencing pain. Using the breath to guide us, all of these practices combined create an entire way of life, Sanatan Dharma.
The wisdom
Daily instilling calmness in our minds, we learn not to be as affected by the world. If something doesn’t go our way, we have the wisdom to follow the truth instead of allowing emotions to cloud our judgment. In taking care of our bodies, we increase our strength, mobility, energy levels, and toughness, creating a richer physical life. With meditation and breathwork, we release stress and instill true focus. Together, keeping us locked into our true mission, creating an indomitable spirit filled with joy. These practices set us free from the restrictive programming, allowing our true purpose to shine. To follow our passions and spread our joy. We are here to spread light.
Our guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, teaches us that because our environment places constant pressure on us, it is more powerful than willpower. We must consider the influences currently affecting our lives. The people and place we are in directly reflect the direction we’re headed. To be more effective in changing your situation, change your environment. How the people around us treat us, what we eat, the practices and priorities. All of these environmental aspects have a great effect on us that are often neglected. If your willpower is strong yet no progress is being made, look at your environment.
This is the start, then comes growing and making your own healthy food, generating your own electricity, and capturing and filtering your water. Yet the most important thing is freeing your mind. Everywhere you go, you carry yourself with you. Free yourself within, and you’ll be free everywhere.
At Fera Academy, we teach this way of life. It is our mission to spread our joy through an exemplary way of being. We teach what we train. Martial Arts, Yoga, Fine Arts, Holistic Healing methods, and so much more. We’ve found the only way is to live these truths. Integrity breeds trust, love, and harmony that we can spread. If you are interested in training with us, our classes are in person and online. Our online classes provide a tailored fit solution for high-performing individuals to truly break through their barriers. We’ve helped high-performing entrepreneurs, artists, engineers, and seekers from all walks of life gain traction in aspects of their lives they never dreamed of. We teach group and private lessons. Visit our website to find out more about our training programs. We also have an entire podcast dedicated to talking about this lifestyle.
Read more from Victor L. Almeida
Victor L. Almeida, Martial Artist
Master Victor Almeida is a dedicated artist whose life’s work is to spread joy and love through self-awareness. With decades of experience in Taekwondo, BJJ, Muay Thai, and Haedong Kumdo, he also integrates calisthenics and yoga to cultivate strength, balance, and inner awareness. Beyond martial arts, Master Victor is an accomplished glass, fire, and digital artist. Creating large installation works aligned with bringing awareness to our true enemy, the ego. With these workshops, classes, art installations, and passionate performances, his goal is to spread that joy, sparking creativity and the light inside others. Teaching not only how to care for oneself but also how to express oneself freely.
