From this purified ground, new life arises. Fermentation and Distillation mark the awakening of deeper intelligence — subtle, embodied wisdom that feels less forced and more sovereign. The nervous system reorganizes, the body becomes more responsive and alive, and movement begins to feel purposeful rather than effortful. The process culminates in Coagulation: the embodiment of the Work. Here, transformation is no longer theoretical. It is lived. The gold is not an idealized perfection, but a grounded freedom — transforming lead into gold, shadow into light, and unconscious habit into conscious power.
This course is for those who sense that real change requires more than surface adjustments. It is an invitation into a disciplined yet poetic process of becoming — where posture, breath, psyche, and soul are refined together, and where the ancient promise of alchemy becomes something tangible, embodied, and real.
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A Zoom link will be sent the day before the Course begins, as well as in the afternoon the day of the class.
Registration closes 30 minutes before the start of the first class on March 19th.
A video for each class will be sent out to registrants the following day, and at the end of the Course, registrants will receive access to all 7 videos on Bowspring.com under their personal account.
The 7 Steps of Alchemy – March 19-April 30, 2026 — 7-week online course on Thursdays with John Friend
$150.00
The 7 Steps of Alchemy is a 7-week online journey into embodied transformation, using the Bowspring method as a living, somatic form of alchemy.
Practiced weekly on Thursdays from 7–8 pm ET, this course explores how true change does not come from adding more techniques or self-improvement strategies, but from a courageous willingness to break down what no longer serves. In this sense, Bowspring is inherently alchemical: it dissolves rigid ideas about posture, alignment, health, and even identity, inviting a deeper encounter with truth in the body, the nervous system, and the psyche.
Alchemy has always been a path of shadow and fire before light and gold. In the early stages of the work, we enter the Nigredo — the blackening — where old patterns, unconscious habits, and false structures are exposed and challenged. Through Calcination and Dissolution, resistance is burned away and emotional rigidity begins to soften. This is not pathology or self-fixing; it is purification. As the weeks progress, the work clarifies through Separation and Conjunction, refining discernment and restoring inner polarity — strength with softness, discipline with compassion, structure with flow.