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What happens when we stop holding?
Maria asked about how her injured shoulder can sometimes move during Qi Flow in ways that don't seem available to her ordinarily.
When we've had an injury, there can be an unconscious guarding around it. The body protects the area, and this can involve holding tension. That efforting can remain for quite a long time, particularly if an injury or discomfort is still present. It may be very subtle, but maintaining that protection uses energy.
When Qi begins to flow freely, something different can happen. Rather than us moving the body in order to move the energy, the energy becomes the vehicle of the movement.
In other words, rather than you moving to try to move energy, energy moves you.
It is a little like the wind moving a tree. The tree isn't trying to move the wind.
Sometimes movement then becomes available that didn't seem available moments before. From a Qigong perspective, we might say that the Qi is flowing more freely through that area. At the same time, the mind-body relationship that has been doing the holding may have relaxed enough that there is less need to brace or protect.
Maria then asked, "What is the function of the brain here?"
That's a huge question, but we can think about it quite simply.
When there is pain or injury, part of our attention can become focused on the injured area. There is a conversation going on between the brain, nervous system, muscles and the rest of the body. If the underlying message is, I need to be careful here, the body may respond by holding a little tighter and restricting movement.
In a sense the body is saying:
Don't worry, I've got you. I'll hold you a little tighter so that you don't injure yourself again.
That's useful. It's protective.
But sometimes that protective pattern continues beyond the moment in which it was originally needed.
In Qigong we enter a Qigong state of mind and gradually stop interfering quite so much. In Flowingly Still, the mind or Shen becomes clearer. In Flowing Breeze Swaying Willows, the body becomes freer. As we move into Flowing Stream Floating Clouds, Qi increasingly becomes the vehicle of the movement. We aren't consciously deciding where every part of the body should go.
And this can develop into Self-Manifested Qi Movement, where we let go even further and allow the Qi to flow where it needs to flow.
Eventually we return again towards Flowingly Still and Standing Meditation.
The interesting thing is that the Qi hasn't stopped flowing simply because the body has become still. There can be a considerable flow of energy with very little outward movement.
This is one reason Flowingly Still can be such a powerful practice for cultivating internal force. Rather than the energy being expressed through larger physical movement, it can nurture and nourish. We cultivate not only the amount of energy available to us, but also its quality, while the mind and spirit become clearer.
So the different levels of Qi Flow are not simply different amounts of physical movement. They give us different ways of working with energy, body and mind.
And perhaps the simplest way of knowing what has happened is the question I asked Maria afterwards:
How do you feel?
"Much lighter," she said.
And then she noticed something else.
The silence in the mind remained.
Entering a Qigong State of Mind is Not What You Think
“Don't go into a Qigong state of mind.”
It was a slightly strange way to begin this morning's class, particularly as some of the people standing there have been practising with me for years. Stand in Wuji and something already knows what to do. The eyes close, the breath settles, and before long we have moved into that familiar place we call a Qigong state of mind.
So this morning I asked everyone not to.
Keep your eyes open for a moment. Don't regulate the breath. Just notice.
It is quite hard, actually.
Because after a while these things become familiar, and Wuji itself can become a sort of signal. We stand there and something shifts. We move from the part of ourselves that has been thinking about the morning, what we have to do next, whether we've had breakfast, whether we've had coffee yet, into something else.
And I became curious about that something else.
Not so much what a Qigong state of mind is. I'm not sure I particularly want to define it. More, what changes when we enter it?
Because something does.
And as we stood there this morning, it seemed to me that one of the things changing was attention.
There was less need to know what was happening.
Less need to understand it.
And, without really doing anything at all, a little less holding.
This took me towards something we will be exploring later this month in our Unholding circle. What do I actually mean by unholding? Is it just another word for letting go?
I'm not sure it is.
Years ago, in a class in London, Anthony said to me, “Letting go is hard.”
It was one of those little comments that stayed with me, because there is something rather interesting in it. We can try very hard to let go. We can notice something we are holding onto and decide that we shouldn't be holding it anymore. Then another part of us gets involved and starts trying to make the letting go happen.
Have I let go yet?
What do I need to do to let go?
What happens if I do?
And the very part of us that wants to let go may be the part that still wants to hold on, because it needs to know what will happen next.
So unholding feels slightly different.
Not something we do to ourselves, but something that happens when, for whatever reason, we no longer need to grip quite so tightly.
And standing in Wuji allows us to notice that.
We don't have to get rid of thought. We can think about our day quite easily while standing there. We can analyse the practice. We can wonder whether our posture is right, whether our breathing is right, whether we are relaxed enough. We can probably think about what we're having for lunch at the same time.
But then something changes.
We enter.
And it was around here in the class that something else came to me.
Wu Wei.
Sometimes we talk about Wu Wei as non-doing, or even undoing, but I'm not sure that language quite grasps it for me anymore. Because undoing still sounds as though there is something I have to undo.
Maybe nothing needs undoing.
It is simply not doing what we were doing before.
There is less need to grasp.
Less need to know.
Less need even to understand what is happening.
And that feels closer to unholding for me.
Not opening the hand because I have told the hand it must open, but noticing that it is no longer closed.
There is a difference there, although I'm not sure it needs too much explaining. In fact, explaining it too much probably takes us straight back into the very thing we are exploring.
There is nothing really to get in Wuji.
We can let the experience be enough.
And then we smile from the heart.
Even that is interesting.
Because smiling from the heart can very easily become another instruction. Smile. Be happy. Be open. Feel love. And suddenly we are standing there with something that looks more like a grimace because we are trying very hard to look as though we are not trying.
That isn't quite it either.
Smiling from the heart seems to arrive.
We could say it comes from a place of love. I think it does. But I'm not sure I can measure that or prove it, and I don't particularly need to.
There is a quality to it that we know.
And that is enough.
This is where the practice begins to teach us something that words struggle with. We can talk about a Qigong state of mind, Wu Wei, relaxation, unholding, smiling from the heart, but eventually we have to enter the experience.
Otherwise we are just talking about it.
So we began to move.
We came into Lift the Sky, a pattern many of us have practised thousands of times, and I became interested in what attention was doing within the movement.
There is a focus as the hands rise. There is an awareness of the palms, the movement, the body connected as a whole, and then as we come upright and the arms begin to descend, something spreads.
The attention spreads.
The awareness spreads.
You don't really have to think about how the arms are going to get from the top to the bottom. They seem quite capable of doing that themselves.
And there is this lovely absence of unnecessary effort.
Not an absence of effort altogether. We are standing. We are moving. Muscles are working. Attention is present.
But only the effort that is needed.
And as the qi begins to flow and the body is allowed to move, even the need to manage the movement begins to soften.
We go with the flow.
That is another phrase we can say very easily, of course. “Go with the flow.” It can become one of those things that sounds good on a mug.
But in Qigong we can actually experience it.
There is movement, and then what looks like a pause, but even in the pause there is movement. There is stillness within movement and movement within stillness.
Again, that can sound like a clever Taoist quote.
But when you're standing there and you can feel it, it doesn't need to be clever.
It is simply what is happening.
And the quality of attention that allows us to notice it seems to come from some of that absence of unnecessary effort.
There is an openness without needing to open anything.
We simply aren't gripping or closing quite so much.
I want to be careful here, because gripping and closing and thinking and analysing and measuring aren't bad things. We need them. I certainly wouldn't want to drive home from class in some wonderfully expansive state in which I had decided that focusing on the road was an unnecessary form of attachment.
There is a time to focus.
There is a time to measure.
There is a time to work something out.
What we are exploring is the ability to move between these different ways of attending, rather than becoming caught in only one of them.
And Shooting Arrows made that much clearer.
Here we deliberately brought the attention to a single point, the fingertip of the extended hand.
There is quite a precise focus there, but we explored whether it was possible to have that focus without unnecessary tension.
Not concentrating.
Focusing.
I'm aware that those words may sound as though they mean the same thing, but they didn't feel the same in the practice.
There was a quality of arriving at the fingertip without contracting everything else around it.
And then the arms released and awareness broadened again.
Then back to the fingertip.
Then the whole.
And as we repeated the pattern, it occurred to me how often this happens the other way around in ordinary life.
Something happens.
Someone says something.
There is a problem, a person, an event, a worry, something we have forgotten to do, something we think might happen next week, and our attention becomes incredibly focused on that one thing.
Sometimes we need that. If something needs sorting out, it needs sorting out.
But we can also become so focused on the part that we lose our awareness of the whole.
And that seemed to be what Shooting Arrows was allowing us to play with.
We could arrive at the fingertip completely.
And then leave.
Broaden.
Return.
Not because the fingertip was wrong and the whole was right, but because both ways of attending are available to us.
There was something of the rhythm we have been exploring recently in that too: arriving, entering, pausing, leaving, returning.
Except it didn't feel like a sequence we had to remember.
It was happening within the movement.
We arrive at the fingertip. We return to the whole. We arrive somewhere else. We leave again.
There is a rhythm to it.
And I wonder whether this is part of what gets lost when we become stuck in something. We haven't become focused because focusing is a problem. We may simply have forgotten that attention can move again.
That it can return.
Then we came into Plucking Stars, and something else happened.
With Lift the Sky there had been this sense of up and down, focus and release. With Shooting Arrows, a single point and then the broader field.
But in Plucking Stars one hand is above while the other is below.
We are, in a way, in two places at the same time.
Awareness doesn't necessarily have to choose.
There is above and below.
Gathering and spreading.
We return to holding the ball and gather again, then spread.
And as we played with it, the movement became freer. The hands began to go where the hands went. For some people there was a very tangible sense of energy between them, expanding and contracting, becoming bigger and smaller.
I suggested that the sphere might spread all the way out into the cosmos.
Which sounds slightly ridiculous when I write it down.
But there we are.
Qigong can be like that.
And if that isn't someone's experience, it doesn't matter. We can play with the movement. We can imagine the energy. We can notice whatever is actually there.
Again, nothing to prove.
Nothing particular that has to happen.
Let the experience be enough.
What came to me in that moment was this possibility that our awareness can include what at first seems to be different things.
We don't necessarily have to choose between the part and the whole.
Or between focus and openness.
Or even, perhaps, between holding and unholding.
They are in relationship.
That has become increasingly important to me about unholding. I don't want holding to become the thing we need to get rid of.
We hold for reasons.
Sometimes holding is useful. Sometimes it has protected us. Sometimes it is exactly what a situation requires.
The invitation isn't to become someone who no longer holds. It is to notice the relationship.
To notice when holding is needed, and when it isn't anymore.
And somewhere in all of this, I think Qigong has been teaching us that for years, long before I started using the word unholding.
We focus and release.
Gather and spread.
Move and become still.
Leave and return.
There is no argument between these things.
There is movement between them.
By the end of the class we had returned to Wuji again, flowingly still, and it occurred to me how easily all of this could disappear again once we returned to the rest of Friday.
Because life will take over.
It should.
There are things to organise and people to speak to and jobs that need doing. We will become focused again. We will think and plan and analyse and worry a bit. We will lose that spaciousness.
And then there can be these little moments of returning.
Not twenty minutes of practice necessarily.
Maybe we walk outside for a minute.
Maybe there is a moment standing at the kettle.
Maybe we notice that we have become very small around one particular problem and, just for a moment, remember the rest of the body, the breath, the space around us, the ground underneath us.
The whole.
Not to make that a thing either.
I don't want returning to become another chore.
Something else we are supposed to remember to do because it is good for us.
With practice it becomes increasingly familiar, in the same way that standing in Wuji has become familiar. Something in us recognises the way home.
We return to that spaciousness.
We smile from the heart.
We return to centre.
And then we carry on.
As I sit with the class now, I think that may be what interested me most about those thirty minutes. We didn't really learn anything new. Lift the Sky, Shooting Arrows and Plucking Stars are old friends. Wuji is where we have stood together countless times.
What changed was the way we met them.
And maybe that is why, after years of practice, we can return to something apparently simple and find that it isn't quite the same practice anymore.
Because we aren't quite the same either.
So entering a Qigong state of mind isn't what we think.
I'm not even sure it is somewhere we enter.
It may be closer to remembering what it feels like when we are no longer holding quite so tightly to one small part of ourselves.
When the part can still be there, but the whole hasn't disappeared.
And then, when we inevitably lose ourselves again, as we all do, there is the possibility of returning.
Not forcing.
Not fixing.
Just returning.
Still the Student
Still the Student
My Sifu taught me far more than I could ever realistically practise.
I was thinking about this during this morning's Qigong class.
Whenever I trained with Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit, there were always more practices, skills and ways of exploring than I could possibly take away and train deeply at one time.
So I didn't try.
I would sometimes take one thing that had particularly caught my attention and spend the next year exploring it. Not simply repeating the technique, but practising it, experiencing it and gradually discovering what was there.
Over the years this gave me a broad training, but it also gave me something else. It taught me that we don't necessarily understand a teaching when we first receive it.
Sometimes we need to live with it.
Coming full circle
My training has always seemed to move in circles.
I return to the foundations. Then something takes me a little deeper. Something else catches my attention and I follow that for a while. Eventually I find myself returning again to something I thought I already knew.
But of course, I am not the same person returning.
Recently, internal force has been calling me back.
I don't really know why.
And perhaps that is part of what has changed in me too. I don't feel such a need to know why.
For much of this last year I have increasingly approached my practice as an explorer rather than as the person who knows what is supposed to happen.
There are foundations I trust. Skills that Sifu gave us. Principles that have guided decades of practice.
But beyond that, there is an enormous landscape still to discover.
Perhaps that is one of the gifts of practising an art for a long time. You can come back to where you started and discover something you couldn't see before.
Returning to internal force
When I first encountered internal force training, it immediately grabbed my attention.
I had spent many years practising martial arts and I was searching for something I felt was missing.
Internal force seemed to be it.
And in one sense, it was.
I discovered that it was possible to develop considerable force without relying upon muscular strength and tension. But I also began discovering things I hadn't been looking for.
I had more energy.
My mind became clearer.
There was a groundedness and stability that came from the training. And there was another dimension to it that was much harder to describe, where physical training, energy and spiritual cultivation no longer seemed quite so separate.
Back then, having more energy mostly meant that I could do more.
And I did.
A lot more.
Looking back from where I am now, that makes me smile.
Because as internal force has begun calling me back again, I find myself approaching it with a different question.
I'm less interested in how much energy I can develop.
I'm interested in what happens when that energy becomes something we can rest within.
Strength without holding
There was a moment in this morning's practice when this became particularly clear to me.
We had been practising Pushing Mountains and Separating Water, cultivating internal force through the arms and palms before returning to stillness.
I found myself saying:
We're not holding ourselves, but any position that becomes held gets held by the energy, the force that you've built.
That stayed with me.
Because so much of my exploration recently has been around holding and unholding.
We often associate strength with our ability to hold.
Hold our posture.
Hold ourselves together.
Hold our emotions.
Hold our ground.
Keep going.
Perhaps there is another kind of strength.
One that doesn't require us to continually brace ourselves in order to remain steady.
In internal force training, what can look quite powerful from the outside can feel remarkably soft from within. The body isn't limp, but neither does it need to become unnecessarily tense.
There is structure, but less effort.
Strength, but less forcefulness.
Perhaps even resilience without quite so much holding.
What kind of resilience?
Towards the end of this morning's class, a student, Kate, asked a lovely question.
Could cultivating internal force ultimately be cultivating resilience? Physical resilience, emotional resilience and spiritual resilience?
I think it can.
But my understanding of resilience has changed too.
There was a time when resilience meant that I could withstand more. I could hold steady when things became difficult. I could keep going.
There is undoubtedly value in that.
But sometimes even resilience can become another form of holding.
We become very good at holding ourselves together.
What I am becoming more interested in now is whether there is a resilience that doesn't require quite so much effort.
A steadiness that comes from being grounded enough to meet what is happening.
To feel an emotion without immediately needing to escape it.
To experience uncertainty without immediately having to resolve it.
To wobble without assuming something has gone wrong.
To trust ourselves enough to remain present.
Perhaps internal force isn't simply about having more energy.
Perhaps it is also about how we inhabit ourselves.
Still learning
This is where I find myself returning to Sifu.
There are things he taught me many years ago that I thought I understood.
And perhaps I did understand them, as the person I was then.
Now I sometimes return to one of those teachings and something else reveals itself.
During the class this morning I imagined Sifu looking at me with that familiar smile and saying:
So... you're ready to hear it now?
And probably having a little chuckle.
There are moments in practice when something suddenly becomes obvious and I find myself thinking:
Ah.
That's what you meant.
Thank you.
More than three decades into this journey, I find that rather comforting.
Still the student.
Still practising.
Still discovering.
And still occasionally coming full circle, only to realise that the circle has brought me somewhere new.
Cultivating Internal Force
This September I am beginning a new Monday evening class exploring the cultivation of internal force.
We'll be returning to some of the practices that have accompanied me for many years: stance training, Qigong, breath, mind, stillness and the traditional methods through which internal force is developed.
But I don't want this to be simply a collection of techniques.
I want us to explore.
To practise deeply enough that the practices themselves have an opportunity to reveal something.
Because perhaps the most interesting question isn't:
What am I supposed to get from this?
But:
What might I discover if I stay with it?
Seven Steps to Solving Any Problem
Seven Steps to Solving Any Problem
I've been returning to the power of the pause recently.
It reminded me of a sunny afternoon in London many years ago, spent with my Sifu at Middle Temple Hall. I'd always been fascinated by the history of the Knights Templar, so there was something rather special about spending an afternoon practising Zen on those ancient grounds.
There were around ten of us gathered together in one of the rooms when, during one conversation, Sifu smiled and said that he could solve any problem in seven steps.
My mind immediately became curious.
What were these seven steps?
Seven principles? Seven stages? Some ancient Zen teaching I hadn't yet come across?
Someone offered him a problem. Sifu listened quietly, stood up from his chair and began to walk. One step. Then another. Until he had taken seven. He stopped, turned, and answered the question.
I remember smiling to myself. The seven steps weren't symbolic at all. They were simply seven steps across the room.
For years I remembered that afternoon because it made me laugh. It had that wonderful quality Zen sometimes has of exposing how quickly the mind rushes ahead, looking for meaning somewhere other than where it already is. I had been so busy wondering what the seven steps meant that I'd almost missed the seven actual steps.
It wasn't until this week's Qigong classes that the memory returned with a different flavour.
We found ourselves exploring the pauses within practice. As people shared their experiences afterwards, it struck me that many of us naturally pause in retrospect. Something happens, then we stop. We look back. We reflect. We begin to understand. There's great value in that, and perhaps it's how many of us begin to learn.
But what if we paused first?
That simple question has stayed with me.
In Qigong, this is what Wuji, and Entering a Qigong State of Mind, quietly invite us into. Before the first movement. Before trying to do anything well. Before deciding what should happen next. We simply arrive.
For some years now, I've found myself returning to a simple question. I wonder whether the quality of what follows relates to where we are coming from.
Not as a conclusion.
Just as something I've found myself returning to.
Perhaps that's why the pauses have been catching my attention recently. Not because they are empty, or because pausing is somehow relaxing, but because they offer an opportunity to notice what is here before something else is added. What am I bringing into this moment? What is already here? What has already begun before I've even taken the first step?
Looking back now, I wonder if that's what I was really being shown all those years ago.
Not seven steps to solving any problem.
Simply a pause before responding.
Long enough for the mind to stop searching quite so hard.
Long enough for something else to emerge.
Perhaps that's all those seven steps ever were.
Or perhaps, after all these years, that's simply what they've become for me.
My Dog the Teacher
What an ordinary walk revealed about the way we live.
The other morning I was out walking the dogs. Phoebe, the youngest one, and Daisy, our older dog, each had their own way of meeting the morning.
I had work to get to and, although I wasn't rushing, my mind had already begun moving into the day ahead. There were things to do, people to see and, without really noticing it, I had fallen into the rhythm of what came next.
Phoebe stopped every few steps to sniff. Not just a quick sniff before moving on, but a long, unhurried exploration of a scent that seemed to deserve her complete attention.
Daisy would often pause too. She'd wander over to see what Phoebe had found, have a brief sniff herself, then quietly carry on with her walk. Every so often she'd look back, just to make sure we were still there, before happily continuing on her way. She does that.
Phoebe was different. She loved getting completely involved in whatever had captured her attention, as though nothing else in the world existed for those few moments.
At first, I found myself gently encouraging her along. We had a walk to finish, after all.
Then, after one of her many stops, something changed.
Instead of encouraging her to move on, I stopped too.
I found myself wondering what it was she had found that was so fascinating. I couldn't tell you. I don't have her nose. Whatever she was sensing belonged entirely to her world, not mine.
But as I stood there waiting, something else happened.
The pause was long enough to change my rhythm.
I stopped thinking about the day ahead and found myself simply staying with what was happening. I wasn't interested in the scent itself; I found myself enjoying that Phoebe was. She took such delight in exploring it, as though it was the most important thing in the world.
Watching them, I realised neither of them was trying to slow life down. They weren't trying to notice more. They weren't trying to be present.
They were simply being completely where they already were.
As we carried on walking, it struck me that nothing remarkable had actually happened. Phoebe had eventually finished sniffing, Daisy had wandered on as she always does, and the walk simply continued. Yet something had changed, and it stayed with me long after we got home.
It wasn't that I'd suddenly become more relaxed, or discovered something hidden in the grass alongside Phoebe. I still have no idea what had captured her attention so completely. What stayed with me was the realisation that, for those few moments, my own rhythm had changed. I had stopped living in the next part of the day and quietly returned to the part I was already in.
As I thought more about it, I found myself wondering whether we sometimes approach practice in the same way we approach everything else. We try to fit it in. Another thing to remember. Another thing to do. Another item on an already full day.
I wonder how that has worked out for you.
I know I've spent many years trying to fit things in. But that is another story.
The moments that have stayed with me most over the years haven't usually come because I squeezed another practice into my day. They've arrived unexpectedly while walking the dogs, making a cup of tea, sitting quietly after a conversation, or simply noticing something I would normally have hurried past.
A few days later, Dr Damian Kissey, a fellow senior instructor in our Shaolin Wahnam school, reminded me of something our teacher, Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit, often spoke about. He called it Informal Chi Kung—those ordinary moments when the qualities we cultivate during formal practice begin accompanying us through everyday life. It made me smile because our recent conversations about Mini Moments of Mindfulness seem to be exploring much the same thing.
The invitation isn't to find more time. It's to notice the life that is already unfolding around us. Sometimes all it takes is a young dog becoming completely absorbed in a scent that I couldn't even smell, and a pause that is long enough to change my rhythm.
As I walked home, I realised I hadn't really been teaching the dogs anything that morning.
They had been teaching me.
Not through words or techniques, but simply by being completely themselves.
I still don't know what Phoebe found so fascinating that day.
I don't need to.
The pause was enough.
Why Do Some Conversations Leave Us Feeling So Tired?
What happens when we carry more than the conversation itself?
I was talking with my mum today about stories.
She likes to begin with a story. Before sharing an opinion or making a point, there is often a story that leads into it. As we spoke, she shared something she had noticed about herself.
When she tells a story, she often finds herself justifying herself. Not deliberately. It simply seems to happen.
The story begins as a story, but somewhere along the way, it becomes an explanation. A way of helping other people understand why she thinks what she thinks, or why she did what she did.
As she described it, something felt very familiar.
Not the storytelling itself. I use stories all the time in my teaching and writing. Stories help us connect. They help us see ourselves in each other. They bring ideas to life.
What felt familiar was something underneath the story.
During my counselling training, one of the things I gradually became aware of was how much effort I was putting into conversations. Most people would never have seen it. On the surface, I was simply listening, talking, and connecting. Yet beneath the conversation, something else was often happening.
I was trying to get things right.
Trying to make sure I was understood.
Trying to land well.
Trying not to say the wrong thing.
Trying to connect.
Trying to make sense.
The conversation itself wasn't difficult. It was everything I was carrying alongside it that made it tiring. Listening to my mum, I recognised something similar.
A conversation begins, and then something extra joins it.
The need to explain.
The need to justify.
The need to make sure the other person understands.
The need to make sure they see things from our perspective.
The conversation is no longer just a conversation. It is carrying something else. And carrying something extra takes energy. Most of this happens quietly, beneath the surface. So quietly that we often don't realise how much energy it takes. We meet a friend for coffee. We spend time with family. We attend a meeting. We have a conversation we've had many times before.
Nothing particularly difficult happens.
There is no argument. No conflict. No drama. Yet we arrive home feeling exhausted. The kettle goes on. We sit down. And there it is.
That feeling of being drained.
Not because of what happened. But because of everything we were carrying while it was happening.
The effort of explaining. The effort of monitoring. The effort of making sure we are understood. The effort of making sure we land well. The effort of carrying a version of ourselves that we hope will be accepted.
After reading this, my mum shared something else. She said that when she is explaining herself, she is often worried about using the wrong word. She described herself as being very good at bluffing her way through a conversation, then added, "That's not clever, it's embarrassment."
I suspect many of us have our own version of that. We are not simply carrying the conversation; we are carrying the hope of not getting it wrong.
Not being misunderstood.
Not appearing foolish.
Not being exposed.
And that can be surprisingly heavy.
The strange thing is that this can become so normal that we stop noticing it altogether.
We assume the tiredness comes from being with people. Yet sometimes it isn't people that tire us. Sometimes it is the extra holding we bring into the conversation.
The extra layer.
The extra effort.
The extra weight.
When that begins to soften, conversations can feel very different. There is less to manage.
Less to defend. Less to explain. The conversation is allowed to be a conversation. And we are allowed to be as we are. Perhaps that is why a simple question has stayed with me since speaking with my mum.
What are you carrying into your conversations that this moment isn't asking you to carry?
Not what are you saying. Not even what are you feeling. What are you carrying?
Because sometimes the exhaustion comes from the conversation.
But sometimes it comes from the extra holding we bring into it.
Why Do We Brace Ourselves?
What a simple Qigong exercise revealed about tension, trust, and the habit of holding
This morning in Qigong class, we were exploring a simple exercise.
Standing upright, we gently leaned forwards onto our toes and backwards onto our heels. As the body moved forwards, there came a point where a step was needed. As it moved backwards, the same thing happened. Simple enough. Yet what interested me wasn't the step itself. It was everything that happened just before it.
For some of the newer students, there was a moment where the body seemed to put the brakes on. Rather than allowing the movement to continue naturally into a step, the shoulders tightened a little, the legs stiffened, and the body began trying to stop itself. Nobody was doing anything wrong. In fact, they were discovering something important.
The body already knew how to step forwards.
The body already knew how to step backwards.
The difficulty wasn't learning the movement.
The difficulty was trusting it.
One student shared something else that was equally interesting. As the exercise continued, they became more aware of tension in their legs and lower back.
For many people, this can be confusing. If the exercise is helping, shouldn't everything feel easier?
Shouldn't the tension disappear?
Yet often the opposite happens at first. Not because the practice is creating tension, but because it is revealing it. The tension was already there. The effort was already there. The body had simply become so accustomed to it that it no longer stood out.
When the body begins to align, and unnecessary effort starts to soften, those habitual patterns often become easier to feel.
What was hidden in plain sight becomes visible. I have seen this happen countless times over the years.
Someone begins meditation and discovers how busy their mind has been.
Someone slows down and realises how tired they are.
Someone starts counselling and becomes aware of feelings they had been carrying for years.
The practice doesn't create the experience.
It reveals what has quietly become normal.
One of the things I have always appreciated about Qigong is how often it reflects everyday life. This morning's exercise was no different. The students weren't really learning how to move forwards or backwards. Most of us mastered that years ago. What they were discovering was the habit of putting the brakes on.
The habit of tightening when tightening wasn't needed.
The habit of trusting the holding more than the movement.
And once you see it in the body, it becomes surprisingly easy to recognise elsewhere.
A difficult conversation approaches, and we tense.
An uncomfortable feeling arises, and we tense.
Something uncertain appears on the horizon, and we tense.
Not because there is anything wrong with us.
Because the holding feels familiar.
Over time, many of us learn to trust it.
We trust the tension more than the relaxation.
We trust the efforting more than the non-efforting.
We trust the holding more than the letting go.
The strange thing is that these habits were usually learned for good reasons. At some point, they helped us. They protected us. They helped us navigate uncertainty and avoid mistakes. They may even have helped us feel accepted and safe. Yet what serves us in one moment can quietly become our response to every moment.
Eventually, we stop noticing it. The holding feels normal. The effort feels necessary. The brakes feel safer than the movement.
What I love about this simple exercise is that it offers another possibility. As the unnecessary tension begins to soften, the body remembers something it already knew.
It knows how to move.
It knows how to find balance.
It knows how to take the next step.
Nothing new needs to be added.
Something unnecessary simply begins to fall away.
Perhaps this is why practices like Qigong can be so revealing. They don't always teach us something new. Sometimes they remind us of something we have forgotten. This morning, the reminder was simple. The body already knew how to step.
The challenge was learning to trust the movement more than the brakes.
I suspect that is a lesson many of us continue to meet, both in practice and in life.
Why Does Everything Feel So Heavy?
Sometimes the Heaviest Part Isn't the Experience
Sometimes the heaviest part isn't the experience.
It's everything wrapped around it.
Imagine carrying a few shopping bags from the car to the house.
The bags themselves are heavy enough.
Your fingers begin to ache. Your shoulders tighten. You start shifting the weight from one hand to the other.
Now imagine someone quietly adding another bag. Then another. Then another.
At some point, it becomes difficult to tell what is actually making the load so heavy.
Life can be a bit like that.
A feeling arises.
Perhaps sadness.
Perhaps anxiety.
Perhaps disappointment.
Perhaps uncertainty.
The feeling itself can be difficult enough to carry.
Yet it rarely arrives alone.
The story about the feeling often comes too.
"Why am I feeling like this?"
"What does this mean?"
"What's wrong with me?"
Then comes the worry.
"How long will this last?"
"What if it gets worse?"
"What if I never get past this?"
Then comes the struggle.
The attempt to push it away.
To distract ourselves.
To think our way out of it.
To make it disappear.
Before long, what started as one experience can feel like a whole collection of burdens being carried at the same time.
And because they arrive together, they can feel like one thing.
One heavy thing.
It is easy to assume that all of the weight belongs to the original feeling.
But does it?
A question that has been quietly accompanying me recently is this:
What belongs to the experience?
And what has gathered around it?
Not as an intellectual exercise.
Not as something to analyse.
Simply as something to become interested in.
Because there can be a difference between sadness and the story about sadness.
A difference between anxiety and the worry about anxiety.
A difference between grief and the struggle against grief.
When everything becomes wrapped together, the weight grows.
And yet not all of that weight belongs to the original experience.
This isn't an invitation to get rid of anything.
Some feelings need to be felt.
Some losses need to be grieved.
Some conversations need to be had.
Some situations genuinely require support, action, or intervention.
The question is not whether the feeling should be there.
The question is whether we are carrying more than the feeling itself.
Life has a remarkable capacity to move.
A cut heals.
A seed grows.
The body finds sleep.
Grief slowly reshapes itself around loss.
Understanding emerges when we stop forcing answers.
Often, life is already moving in ways we cannot yet see.
What sometimes gets in the way is the extra weight.
The stories.
The worries.
The resistance.
The layers wrapped around the original experience.
Sometimes the heaviest part isn't the experience.
It's everything wrapped around it.
And sometimes something begins to soften when we gently ask:
What belongs to the feeling?
And what has been added to it?
Healing is Not Always the Cure
This morning in Qigong class, we explored something very simple.
We began, as we often do, by noticing what was already here.
Not trying to relax.
Not trying to create a special state.
Not trying to improve anything.
Just noticing.
Where does the body feel open?
Where does it feel held?
Where is there flow?
Where is there congestion?
As we moved through Lifting the Sky, Carrying the Moon, and Pushing Mountains, something became increasingly apparent.
The movements themselves were not really doing the work.
Or at least, not in the way we often imagine.
What seemed to matter most was becoming aware of what was already happening.
One person noticed how a small adjustment in opening the palms seemed to change the whole feeling of the exercise.
Another noticed a greater sense of flow.
Others noticed places that felt tight or places that seemed to soften without being asked to.
Nobody was trying to fix anything.
Nobody was trying to get rid of anything.
The practice simply created the conditions for something to happen.
And that got me thinking.
Many of us approach wellbeing as though we need to add something.
A new technique.
A new insight.
A new routine.
A new solution.
Sometimes that is exactly what is needed.
But this morning reminded me that many of the most meaningful shifts in my own life have happened in a different way.
Not because something was added.
But because something unnecessary stopped getting in the way.
A tension I hadn't noticed.
An effort I didn't need to make.
A habit of rushing.
A need to control the outcome.
A story that had quietly taken up residence and started running the show.
As these things soften, something else often appears.
Not something new.
Something that was already there.
The body knows how to breathe.
The heart knows how to soften.
The mind knows how to settle.
Life already knows how to move.
Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit often taught Qigong as a way of overcoming illness and restoring health. Many people first came to the arts because they wanted relief from suffering.
Yet alongside this, he often spoke about living a rewarding life, here and now.
The more I practise, the more important those three words seem.
Here and now.
Not when everything is fixed.
Not when all our problems disappear.
Not when life finally matches our plans.
Here.
Now.
Perhaps this is one of the gifts of practice.
Not that it cures every difficulty.
But that it helps us recognise the conditions that allow life to flourish.
A tree does not grow because someone pulls on its branches.
It grows because the conditions support growth.
A river does not need to be taught how to flow.
It simply needs a clear path.
Maybe we are not so different.
This morning left me wondering whether healing is not always the cure.
Whether sometimes healing begins when we recognise what is already present and gently remove what unnecessarily interferes with it.
The Habit of Holding
The Habit of Holding
My sister recently left me a message about something that had happened while she was driving.
She had pulled over to let another driver pass. Instead of a wave or a thank you, the other driver stopped, wound down the window and made a rude comment before driving away.
What stayed with her was not so much the interaction itself. It was what happened within her.
Almost immediately, there was a tightening.
Perhaps you know that feeling.
A comment from somebody at work.
An unexpected email.
A message that goes unanswered.
A look across a room.
A driver sounding their horn.
For a brief moment something shifts. The body responds before we have had time to think much about it. The stomach tightens. The shoulders lift a little. The breath changes. The jaw firms. Something prepares.
Most of us have experienced this many times. Yet because it happens so quickly, we rarely stop to notice it.
Over time these small moments can become part of everyday life. We become accustomed to them. They seem ordinary. We may not even think of them as tension. They simply feel like the way things are.
Nearly one hundred years ago, a physician named Edmund Jacobson became interested in this very thing. He spent years studying muscular tension and discovered that people who believed they were resting were often still making effort. The body remained active long after the need for action had passed.
What interested him was not relaxation. It was awareness.
How much effort are we making without realising it?
It is an interesting question.
Not because there is something wrong with us.
Not because we need fixing.
But because many of us spend our lives carrying small amounts of effort that have become so familiar we no longer recognise them.
The shoulders that never quite settle.
The jaw that remains slightly engaged.
The stomach that continues preparing.
The eyes that keep searching.
The body that remains ready.
Ready for what is not always clear.
As I have been exploring Jacobson's work, I find myself less interested in relaxation and more interested in noticing. What happens when we begin to recognise these moments? What happens when we notice the tightening as it appears?
Not with the intention of getting rid of it.
Not with the intention of becoming calm.
Simply noticing.
Perhaps the invitation is not to ask, "How do I relax?"
Perhaps it begins with a different question:
What am I doing right now that no longer needs to be done?
There may not be an answer straight away.
There may only be a small moment of recognition.
A shoulder softening.
A breath completing itself.
A jaw no longer working quite so hard.
Not because we made it happen.
Simply because it was finally noticed.