OUR STORY

It began with breath.

Three classes a week. One room in Phoenix. A practice that kept proving itself until it outgrew the walls that held it.

Where it began

Asé Flow started as a breath-centered training system: three weekly breathwork sessions and Gungfu at the Dojo. Small rooms, consistent practice, and people who kept coming back changed.

The practice worked. That was the problem worth having. The people who most needed the work could not always reach the room, and the room could not reach them. The old model served the early vision. It could not serve the long one.

What the name means

Asé is the power to make things happen. The work is breath. The work is discipline. The work is power: the one the name has always carried.

The turn

So Asé Flow became something larger: a nonprofit healing ecosystem. Classes became Healing Circles, structured cohorts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Attendance became outcomes. A single teacher became a platform of vetted practitioners. And a single address became a delivery model that travels: the practice now moves to wherever the community already gathers. A community resource space in downtown Phoenix. A dojo. A community center. A park. Every cohort receives a full itinerary naming the place and time for every stage of the arc.

This is not a studio trying to grow. This is a movement building the infrastructure to sustain itself.

The mission

To awaken the body, regulate the nervous system, and restore personal power: through breathwork, movement, and community-based healing delivered at scale by a vetted practitioner ecosystem and sustained by a community of donors.

The mission points where the need is greatest: holistic education for underserved communities across the Phoenix Metro area, funded by donors so the people who need the tools most never pay at the door.

The three sides

Participants

Not students buying classes. Community members entering structured programs built around real outcomes, with donor-funded seats for those who need them.

See the Healing Circles

Practitioners

The healers and sages the community already holds: yogis, sound healers, energy workers, martial artists, herbalists. Identified, vetted, funded, and amplified under one umbrella.

Meet the roster

Donors

Not passive supporters. Every gift is tied to a seat, a participant, or a cohort. The floor the whole ecosystem stands on.

Sponsor a seat

How the wheel turns

Practitioner
Circle
Campaign
Donor
Program
Content
Growth

Every turn makes the next one easier. Nobody pays at the door because the wheel already turned.

What never changes

Breath as the foundation.
The sensei voice: direct, grounded, attentive.
The Hive and the Dojo as home base.
Phoenix as home.
The practice itself: Breathe. Move. Transform.

The five Healing Circles

The two who hold it

James is the voice of Asé Flow. Dwayne is the breath of it. Neither one is the whole of it, and the structure is built that way on purpose.

The Voice of Asé Flow

James "Overkill" Sesay is a co-founder of Asé Flow, a breathwork and movement teacher, martial arts instructor, community builder, and former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant. His approach is shaped by discipline, service, and the belief that healing should leave people with practical tools they can carry into everyday life.

A devoted martial artist with more than two decades of experience, James holds a black sash in Gungfu from Uneed Martial Arts. His journey has also included extensive training in Pencak Silat, Tai Chi, boxing, Jiu Jitsu, and 7 Circles Shaolin Kung Fu. He continues to be guided by his teacher, Sifu Joe Martinelli, whose mentorship remains an important influence on his practice and teaching. James also carries deep gratitude for the wisdom shared by Master Mike Selmon, Master Phil Selmon, Baba Seifu Umar Sharif, and Cranston Forte'.

Beyond martial arts, James has studied yoga through the Isha Foundation and explored the relationship between breath, movement, alignment, and balance. His teachings bring these disciplines together through the principles of geometry, frequency, and Asé, the vital energy that gives life, movement, and purpose to all things.

James began Asé Flow in Phoenix as a small, breath-centered practice. What started with a few weekly classes grew into a nonprofit platform connecting participants, practitioners, and donors through structured Healing Circles. He continues to teach at The Hive Collective while guiding program design, practitioner alignment, community partnerships, and the voice of the movement.

At the heart of his work is a simple conviction: everyone has the right to feel grounded in their body, connected to their inner strength, and capable of protecting themselves. As a teacher, James helps others discover their personal flow and develop greater balance, confidence, and self-awareness.

James does not see himself as the center of Asé Flow. He sees himself as a steward of its foundation. His role is to hold the standard, protect the integrity of the work, and help build an organization strong enough to carry the practice beyond any one teacher.

"Build the foundation. Hold the standard. Let the work move through many hands."

Dwayne Mc Gordon, co-founder of Asé Flow

The Breath of Asé Flow

Babalawo Onisegun Dwayne OriSagbemi Mc Gordon is a co-founder of Asé Flow, an Ifá priest, a master herbalist, and a teacher of the martial sciences for more than two decades.

He was initiated at Ile Awo Orisa under Babalawo Umar Sharif. Babalawo names a priest of Ifá, the Yoruba tradition of divination and healing. Onisegun names a master herbalist, one who works with the medicine of plants. He is a graduate of The Healing Wings Institute, a fourth-degree Reiki Master Practitioner, and a devotee of Kriya Yoga. He holds body, mind, and spirit as one system rather than three appointments.

Asé is a Yoruba word for the vital force that makes things happen. It is the word this organization stands on. Dwayne is a priest of the tradition that word comes from, which means the name has a living lineage inside the house and not just a meaning on a page.

For over two decades he has practiced and taught Wing Chun, Kuntao Silat, Satria Silat, and 7 Circles Shaolin Kung Fu. He and James came up under the same teacher. Umar Sharif is Baba Seifu in the training hall and Babalawo in the spiritual house, and both men carry the 7 Circles Shaolin lineage from him. Their Silat runs on different branches, Satria for Dwayne and Penchak for James. The partnership is older than the organization.

He blends what the traditions carry with what a person can use on a Tuesday: healing, energy work, and the practical means to defend yourself. His conviction is plain. Every person has the right to protect and defend themselves, and every person has a current of their own to understand. Chi, Qi, Ki, Prana, Asé. Different names, one flow.

Inside Asé Flow, Dwayne holds the Senior Mobility Circle, the eight-session cohort for adults sixty and up. He argued for it before it existed: real practice for elders, short enough to sustain, priced so a fixed income is never a closed door. He teaches breathwork and defense across the community programming, and he carries the tradition the name comes from.

"To conquer your enemy, first conquer the man in the mirror. We are our own worst enemy."

Voice and breath. One holds the standard, one holds the current. The movement is larger than either of them, which is the reason it was built as a nonprofit and not a school with one teacher's name on it.

Board and leadership

James "Overkill" Sesay, Co-Founder
Babalawo Onisegun Dwayne OriSagbemi Mc Gordon, Co-Founder, Officer of the 501(c)(3)
Darol Lucas, Chief Operating Officer

Financials and transparency

Asé Flow is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. EIN 99-4879759. Financial documentation is available on request at info@aseflowstudio.org.

Asé Flow is not a business trying to look like a movement. It is a movement building the infrastructure it needs to survive long enough to matter.

Begin here.

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