The Great Unlearning (of how to live)

Allergic to stress?

A friend of mine reacts badly to gluten and stays away from products that contain it. He used to live in London where he had a more stressful job, longer working hours, shorter sleeping hours, a higher intake of alcohol and marijuana, and a difficult relationship with his girlfriend. If he ate anything with gluten in it, his body went on to red alert. He’d experience intense discomfort in his torso and feel physically ill.

But since moving back to the north of England, he has settled into a less pressured existence. He has an enjoyable job, gets more exercise and better-quality sleep, is happily single, and has pretty much stopped drinking and taking recreational drugs, at least with any kind of regularity. Now, he can eat a sandwich made with wholewheat bread and experience only the mildest of symptoms. The reaction is still there, but it has been dialled right down.

It has been widely reported that allergies are on the rise. Allergies that only a few years ago were rare or unheard of are now becoming widespread. More and more children are growing up coping with allergies, some of which can be quite debilitating. Some are even potentially lethal histamine responses. But nobody really seems to know why this is the case. Air pollutants are often blamed. Or pesticides and chemicals used in food processing.

These could well be true. But I’d suggest, at least judging by my friend’s experiences, that stress is a huge factor. When we are locked in a sympathetic nervous response, producing excessive amounts of cortisol over prolonged periods, our bodies’ inflamed state is much more sensitive to allergens.

So many people are living as my friend used to do. Under pressure from work and family commitments, they are pushing their bodies and brains further and further. They are sacrificing essential things like sufficient quality sleep and rest, a good diet, slow and mindful eating behaviours, country walks and hobbies, time to play and to slow down for a while, all for the sake of the next deadline, the next sale, the promised pay rise, fear of redundancy, of being late, of missing out, of falling behind. They push themselves harder and harder until finally there is a collapse. Their health fails them. They suffer a heart attack, or a nervous breakdown. And then, if it’s not already too late, they begin to make changes.

Perhaps this hypersensitivity to allergens is a kind of warning signal our bodies our giving us. The body is saying, “Hold on, I’m getting really inflamed here. I’m exhausted. Haven’t you noticed?” But too many people don’t notice. They’re too busy to notice. Too focused on external pressures to look inside and see what’s going on.

Can’t sleep? Take some sleeping pills and fall unconscious instead. Can’t wake up? Pump yourself full of caffeine and nicotine. Can’t wait for the guy in front of you to pull away from the traffic lights? Fly into a boiling and impotent rage at your steering wheel. No time to eat? Grab some ultra-processed fast food and guzzle it while you type. Type faster. Take fewer breaks. Squeeze more and more out of yourself until you’re a neurotic, zombified husk.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Why are allergies becoming more prevalent in children, then? They don’t work twelve-hour shifts. They don’t have to cope with pressure and deadlines. Except, increasingly, they do. From primary school they are tested and graded. Play is sanitised and increasingly proscribed. They are infected by our obsession with safety. They are swamped with information, overloaded with the burden of knowing.

And when they’re not being pushed at school, they’re often mesmerised by flickering blue screens at home, where even more information floods unchecked into their prefrontal cortex. They struggle to find their own identities in a vapid, glamorous, shimmering, false world of global social networks and unprecedented disconnection. Their growing, restless bodies move less and less, and their anxieties and disruptive behaviours spiral out of control. We have more clinical depression now amongst children than ever before, and it’s getting worse.

Not only that, but children are sensitive creatures, and they are bound to soak up and reflect the stresses of the adults around them. Stress is like a contagion, and it’s so entrenched now in our frantic society that it has become normalised. It’s what we expect and accept. The trouble is, our bodies don’t accept it. They can’t. When we are always “On”, our bodies go haywire. And so we see record numbers of people, both old and young, with chronic anxiety, sleeping and eating disorders, anger and addiction issues, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, ulcers, migraines, problems with blood pressure and immunity, hormonal imbalances, cancers… and allergies.

It’s not that allergies are on the rise. Stress is on the rise. And not the healthy kind of stress that pushes us to act and excel, and then switches off for us to recuperate and gather ourselves; but the unhealthy kind of stress that is chronic, habitual, and excessive. When we live continuously in this inflamed, sympathetic state of “fight or flight”, our ability to deal with aggravating factors such as allergens is suppressed. Allergies may well be exacerbated by pesticides and greenhouse gases, but I would suggest that our inability to deal with allergens is exacerbated by stress. In a state of enervation, our immune systems panic at the slightest disruption. The result? A mysterious epidemic of gluten intolerance.

Solutions in stillness

So what can be done? I would suggest that rather than raging at “the system”, at our bosses, or fossil fuel magnates, big business, big pharma, food corporations, banks, governments, social media, news stations, or any of the other “evils” that perpetuate this stressful status quo, we should look instead to ourselves. Those things are only symptoms of the world we create for ourselves. And the world we create comes from within us. Our experience is not “out there”. The more time we spend ruminating on the injustice of it all, the angrier we are going to get. Those cortisol levels are just gonna keep on climbing. The only thing you really have control over, it may horrify you to know, is yourself. Your own responses. Disengage automatic and shift to manual.

Slow.

Down.

Make time. Switch off the TV, switch off 24-hour breaking news, switch off social media, switch off the endless parade of podcasts and box sets, and just slow down. Go to bed earlier. Eat carefully. Eat healthily. Exercise, but gently and moderately, without some pointless external goal of beating a certain time, or lifting a certain weight, or losing so many kilograms, or burning so many calories. Just enjoy it. Pay attention to what’s going on inside.

Observe the quality of your breathing, the tone of your voice, the way you move.

Slow down.

Wake up from this state of self-induced hypnosis. When was the last time you did nothing? I mean, literally nothing. No distractions. Just you, by yourself, in a dark room. Sitting. Being. Listening. You can make time for it. It’s not a waste of time. It’s the most productive thing you’ll do all day.

Give it twenty minutes at first. Just sit. Don’t try to do anything. Don’t slow your breathing. Don’t acquire a certain posture. Don’t try to stop thinking. All of that will come with practice. For now, just sit. Do nothing and pay attention. If your mind wanders, gently draw it back to listening, to feeling the body breathe. It’s intensely pleasurable, if you just let go and allow it. Give yourself space. Give yourself time. Just twenty minutes, and your whole body will unwind. It will enter a parasympathetic state. You’ll digest your food better. You’ll breathe better and deeper. You’ll be able to sleep. You’ll have more energy. Your mind will relax.

With practice, you will become more patient, kinder, more content and comfortable in your own skin. You will react to things more consciously, more wisely. You’ll become more aware, more focused, less scattered and under-pressure. Instead of feeling drawn and tired, you will feel spacious and present. Everything will slow down, and you will have more time. All this from just sitting and doing nothing.

It takes practice, of course. And it’s a practice that can go really deep. It can really change things. But anybody can do it. There are no barriers, except for your own excuses, your own reluctance, your own doubt and forgetfulness. My suggestion is, don’t think of it as “Meditation”. Don’t make it a chore. Don’t add it to your To Do list. Look forward to it. Make room for it. Just sit for a minute. Allow that minute to roll into two, three… before you know it half an hour will have passed, and you will feel wonderful. Centred. Rejuvenated. Forget those anti-ageing creams… forget Botox… external concerns will fade away.

But if meditation seems too intense, or too “out there”, there are alternatives. Brisk, mindful walking, with a soft gaze and your attention on your steps. Try not to waste any energy as sound. Make light, silent footfalls. Feel your body moving and breathing. Enjoy it. If a thought comes along, step away from it mentally and watch it drift away.

Or, when it’s time for a meal, prepare one yourself. Enjoy the scents and textures. Anticipate. Then, when you sit down to it, turn off any distractions. Focus only on your food. Be ponderous and sensuous. Luxuriate in it, like you’re in one of those phoney chocolate advertisements. Eat one morsel at a time. Chew thoroughly – experience all the flavours, and notice how they change as you masticate. Only select the next morsel once you’ve swallowed down the first. Don’t hurry. And if you catch yourself hurrying, poke fun at yourself and slow down again. Don’t take things too seriously. No crime has been committed here; you’re just eating your dinner.

When you finish, sit a while. Allow your body to digest. Feel the food inside your digestive tract. What? No reflux today? How strange… Sit a little longer. Read for a while. Now go for a little walk… Hold on there! Slow down! Think reggae, not techno. Adagio, not presto. You’re still digesting; we’re just encouraging a little movement to help things along. You see, it’s all about the quality of how you do things. It ain’t wotcha do, it’s the way that you do it: that’s what gets results.

A treatment such as therapeutic massage or acupuncture could also be a great way to slow down. Talking to an acupuncturist in a therapeutic relationship, lying on a table and being touched in a reassuring and relaxing way, allowing the needles to gently steer your body into healing itself… just lying there and resting your mind, feeling the weight of gravity upon your body, feeling the breath move in and out of your torso, will help to bring you out of your chronically wired, hyper-vigilant state. That’s guaranteed.

Moving solutions

Personally, I get a huge amount of pleasure and benefit from practising tai chi. Over and over, the same, slow, precise, flowing movements. Remaining observant and curious amidst the repetition. “What else is here? What else?” Going deeper, layer after layer. Never saying, “Okay, that’s it. That’s as far as it goes. I know it all now.” There’s always another layer to uncover. Only when we stop holding on to what we think we know, and embrace what we don’t know, can we truly start to live. Only then can we be present, spontaneous, and respond to what is really here, rather than what we think is here.

But if tai chi sounds too dull, there are other ways, too. Yoga, or Qigong, or martial arts like Aikido, Wing Chun, Baguazhang, or Xingyiquan, all place great emphasis on internal awareness. Integrating mind and body. Listening. Exploring. Feeling. Being mindful of our limits.

Many of the professional athletes we admire actually end up sacrificing their health because they’ve pushed their bodies too hard. They end up with chronic injuries, or simply depleted. Chinese health practices value quality of movement (fluidity, connectedness, grace and balance) over quantity (how much, how far, how fast, how strong). The point of exercise is to nourish the body, not to exhaust it. If we end up breathless, beetroot-faced, and dripping with sweat, we’ve probably gone too far.

Warming the body to the point of just beginning to sweat is about right. Push yourself a little, by all means, but don’t do it all the time. I love going barefoot running over moorlands and on woodland trails, but I don’t do it every day, and I take it easier in the winter months. Cardiovascular exercise is an important facet of a comprehensive exercise plan, but we shouldn’t over-exert ourselves.

Nor should we focus too much on one aspect. Chinese methods include standing practice (known as Ding Shi or Zhan Zhuang), where we stretch, relax, focus the mind, raise the skeleton, sink the soft tissues, and find and develop internal connections through static postures; and loosening practices (known as Fan Song Gong), where we allow the body to soften and swing, move from our centre and release muscular tension. In Qigong we keep the mind still while the body moves gently, smoothly and fluidly; in Dao Yin we move more forcefully to purge and cleanse the body.

There are lots of other options beyond the punishing slog of treadmills, spin bikes, free weights and machines. Pick something you can look forward to. Find a realistic level of commitment. Make it sustainable, and make it fun. Be creative and diverse. Don’t “train” or “work out”; just move and enjoy moving. Inquire into sensations, get a sense for your internal structures – your bones, muscles, sinews and organs – and for the spaces around and between those structures.

Try stretching and foam rolling; using acupressure or massage balls; using Swiss balls, balance boards, and skipping ropes; try asanas, inversions, and resistance work using body weight; or finding new and unusual ways of moving the body – animal mimicry, spontaneous movement, dance… anything! We just need to get things flowing. Think babbling brook, not stagnant pond.

Placing more value on organising the body around the core, and improving suppleness and joint mobility, seems eminently sensible, rather than just trying to run further and faster, or lift heavier and heavier weights. In our bodies, in our minds, in our lives, we need to find centre.

Most of the people I know who are regular long-term gym-goers have some kind of chronic or recurring injury. Generally, this is due to bad form, over-enthusiasm, peer pressure, or over-exertion. Also, because they’re plugged into their headphones they’re not really listening to their bodies, and they have purely external goals such as stopwatch times or rep counts. Internal practices like yoga, tai chi and qi gong emphasise actively listening to the body, and with this kind of inner awareness you’re much less likely to strain something. What’s more, when your mind is immersed in your body’s activity, when you’re actually present, your efforts are more fruitful. Your awareness and intention are essential parts of it, and these are much-neglected factors in the modern, mechanistic approach to exercise.

I don’t think you can really put a value on how much is too much exercise – that depends entirely on your age, weight, diet, constitution, gender. It fluctuates according to your state of mind, your general level of activity, the climate, the seasons, the time of day. What matters is to refrain from draining the body’s resources, and to have an appropriate balance between activity and rest. Yin and Yang, brother…

Give it a rest

Rest is vital. We underrate it in modern society, or rather, we pay it lip service and then get on with the really important stuff. We have a mechanistic approach to sleep. We allocate a minimum number of hours to be “wasted” on instructive dreams and deep rest, and dispel this annoyingly unproductive state with a shrill, insistent torture-alarm in the morning.

Then we dither and delay.

Then we rush around like lunatics, enacting the same mindless, unvarying routines each morning, so we can go exhaust ourselves with tasks and meetings and chatter at work, and then collapse in front of flickering screens and tubs and buckets of greasy and sugary foods in the evening. We wonder why we’re tired. “All I did last night was sit and watch my latest box set and then drift into a mindless scrolling trance on my phone.” Active, active, active. Doing, doing, doing. Always looking out, never in. Never stop. Always go.

And then we collapse.

Everything caves in. Blue lights flash. If only we’d listened. If only we’d slowed down.

We may well have an allergy crisis in modern society. But it’s only a symptom; a symptom of stress. But even stress isn’t the root cause. There has been a Great Unlearning in the modern age. We’ve arrogantly dismissed the old wives’ tales, the folk wisdom, the elders and shamans, the witch doctors and scholar sages. We’ve supplanted it all with productivity targets, profit margins, packed schedules, full diaries, fussin’ an’ fightin’. We live in a permanent state of distraction. We’re terrified of silence. Strangers to ourselves.

We’ve forgotten how to live. We fight against nature instead of flowing with it. We enforce artificial patterns on our lives. Timetables. Rotas. Alarm clocks. Shifts. We illuminate the night. We eat or exercise before bed. We view our bodies and minds as machines or tools. Things to be used and exploited. We search endlessly for efficiency, for maximum output. We cover our failings and inadequacies with pills and quick fixes. We become increasingly unconscious. Increasingly serious. Increasingly knowing.

Where does all this get us? Our technologies are like superpowers. Our understanding of nature, chemistry and cosmos is supreme. We’re subatomic. We’re supersonic. Our medicines are like miracles. We’re connected like never before. But we’re disconnected from our own selves. We’ve never been more miserable, bored, and ill. Never been more inflamed, frantic, and neurotic. Most of us don’t realise until it’s too late. This is the insidious reality we’ve created. We’ve lost our way. Forgotten the point. Divorced from meaning. We’ve defined ourselves silly and forgotten who we are. What this is.

We’ve polluted our world, but don’t worry – we’re too clever by far. We have a cunning plan. We know exactly how to solve this conundrum, and can foresee all possible consequences. Interference is the best policy. Here’s the graph to prove it. Just don’t look back.

We think we know best. We cram everything in and suffocate ourselves, as though it’s all so incredibly important. And we leave out the things that actually are important: good eating habits, sleep, rest, exercise. Peace. Ease. Satisfaction. It’s so simple and obvious, yet it’s so easy to ignore. And then we suffer. We create our own problems, and then struggle to resolve them. We make things complicated. We need more. We need to try harder. Push harder.

No. We need less. We need to release our iron grip. We need to wake up, take notice, and respond appropriately. Our bodies know best. Let’s just listen to them. Let’s just relax a little. Let’s make time for ourselves. Let’s just slow down, and let go. Bring everything to stillness. And then listen. Really listen. Stop doing. Stop knowing. Slow down. And let go.

Let.

Go.

This is going to hurt: Pain, Acupuncture, Meditation, and Qigong

We get many people coming to our student acupuncture clinic with chronic pain. Some are looking for a solution that avoids surgery, or reduces the need for painkillers; others have tried everything and acupuncture is their final, desperate recourse! (Charming!)

Chronic pain is a strange phenomenon. In many cases of musculoskeletal injury, the actual tissue has long repaired itself, but still the pain lingers, as though the brain is stuck in a habitual and unhelpful loop. There is no longer any need for pain signals to tell us to protect the area, yet still the nervous system persists.

Not only can our nervous response to pain be baffling, but so can our psycho-emotional response. People tend to mentally separate pain out from themselves. They take ownership of it (“My bad leg…”). They even, as with one patient we had recently, actually personify their pain and give it agency: “My bad back doesn’t like it when I move like this.”

Is this healthy? On one level, it is an instinctive coping mechanism. Like anything else for which we feel aversion, we naturally want to push it away, remove it from our experience. So this mental trick of objectifying pain is our mind’s way of reducing it. The trouble is, it just doesn’t work. In fact, by solidifying it as a definable “thing”, we’re probably making it worse. We’re probably embedding it deeper, entrenching it into our daily experience. This mental response could even be the very thing that is blocking our ability to heal.

I discovered a wonderful little book recently, called “Pain is Really Strange”, by Steve Haines, and illustrated by Sophie Standing. Laid out in comic strip format, it makes for a short but entertaining and enlightening read. The main thrust of it is that pain is not the simple, mechanical response to injury or dangerous stimuli that most of us imagine it to be. It’s much more complicated than that. And thoroughly subjective, too.

Haines gives various examples: there is one person who felt agony at the merest touch of a feather, and another individual who ran a race with a broken leg. Surgeries to remove nerve endings around painful cancers only result in the pain returning later, and more severely. I’ll refrain from summarising the whole text, but it suffices to say that pain is… er… well, it’s really, really strange.

But it is an entirely malleable phenomenon, and chronic pain can be reduced – even cured. Even understanding our pain better can help to reduce our experience of it.

Acupuncture can certainly work, too. In Chinese Medicine, pain is viewed as a stagnation of Qi and Blood. By needling appropriately, we can instruct the central nervous system to move energy in the relevant channel and shift the area of stagnation. Unblock the dammed river and get things flowing again.

In fact, in many cases, working to retrain the brain is a far better strategy than painkillers or surgery. Haines suggests a few techniques, including the visualisation of joyful and free movement, and also changing our linguistic relationship with pain.

Often, the problem is compounded by the language and metaphors we use. We talk about “combatting” pain, and view it as our enemy – something outside of ourselves. Perhaps this dissociative relationship is only further embedding our experience of pain? Perhaps it would be far better to feel and accept the sensations we experience, and refrain from labelling it as “pain”, or even something “bad”, at all?

This is easier said than done, of course, and I certainly don’t mean to belittle people’s experience of chronic pain, but there is much evidence in mindfulness research that the meditative technique of refraining from overlaying judgements on our direct experience is in fact an extremely healthy approach. As a way of dealing with chronic pain, which seems to be as much a habit of the mind as anything else, this attitude of detachment and acceptance, this method of direct perception without subsequent labelling, could be a crucial part of the healing process.

Then, of course, there’s the obvious response to a state of stagnancy… move! Literally, physically move. Move the body, move the blood, move the lymph, move the Qi. Move in small ways. Move in new ways. We all intuitively know that if we sit still for prolonged periods, our bodies get clunky; we get aches and twinges, we lose our flexibility and our connection to our physical selves. Muscles shorten. Joints stiffen. I have definitely seen a huge increase in suppleness and fluidity of movement since I started practising yoga, Qigong, Taijiquan, and Baguazhang. Better posture. Better connectedness. More relaxation. Less stiffness. Less pain.

By viscerally connecting, immersing, your mind into your body, yoking your breath, and switching off your headphones, you can reach unimagined levels of inner awareness.

Which brings me to the solution to pain that Haines seems to emphasise most: we should seek to increase our skills at proprioception and interoception. In simple words, we should learn to look inside. By increasing our awareness of our own bodies, we can reduce our experience of pain. The parallels here to Daoist meditation techniques are uncanny and undeniable. Neidan (internal alchemy) methods incorporate looking at and listening to the internal body with a great deal of sensitivity and detail, employing contrasting methods of both stillness and movement. Neidan teaches us to explore our thoughts and our breath, and to fully inhabit the physical body, by feeling the internal organs, paying attention to inner spaces and structures, feeling sensations, and becoming aware of inner processes, all with a mindset of calm, detached curiosity…

… It would appear that modern pain research may have just “discovered” the benefits of Daoist meditation and Qigong in the same way progenitors of western dry needling techniques “discovered” the efficacy of acupuncture!

Oh well, we may be a few thousand years behind the Chinese, but we get there in the end…!

Haines’ book is excellent, and I highly recommend it, but it is particularly interesting when viewed through the lens of traditional Chinese health practices. It turns out that our best recourses to reducing pain are a combination of Daoist meditation and mindful movement, such as Qigong, yoga, or martial arts. Or dance. Or swimming. Or running. Or walking. Anything, really, as long as it is done with our fullest attention and awareness.

What’s more, establishing a meditation and mindful movement practice won’t just help you to deal with pain; it will help you to relax and let go of all sorts of anxieties, ruminative thinking patterns, stuck and attritional emotions, self-doubt and negative thoughts, lack of confidence and motivation, emotional trauma, unhealthy cognitive loops, habitual responses, unconscious and automatic behaviours… the list goes on!

Haines reassures us that pain is plastic, and we can change it in a similar way to learning to write with our weak hand. It requires small steps, gentle persistence, and a creative approach to retraining our own minds. Pain is a subjective phenomenon, and as such it is within our capacity to change it. We all know experientially that if we tell ourselves something is going to hurt, then it probably will.

Qi Gong, Chinese Martial Arts, and daily life

Absorbing fully into a martial form practice, a Qi Gong set, or even just paying attention to your posture and breathing patterns, is a simple and ever-available method to realise the real presence of the present.

Formally practising conscious movement and breathing translates into a more conscious and truthful experience of everyday life. You become more aware of how you’re acting and speaking, and spend less of your life “on autopilot”. In other words, it facilitates a state of being whereby you can act consciously, rather than just react, to events around you. You also become more attuned to the quality of your thoughts, words and actions.

As a result, you are less prone to mistakes, accidents, poor judgements, omissions, obsessions, confusion, and conflict. Furthermore, moving (or not moving) consciously can help create a sense of separation between “you, the quiet observer” and “you, who is identified with your own internal monologue”. As such, your whole experience of life becomes less delusional. By simply paying attention more, you can live more truthfully – more in harmony with your actual external and internal environments – and see things less and less through the lens of your own individual preferences and self-concept.

There are lots of other benefits, too. I think a daily routine of some kind of movement and stillness practice (whether that be Qi Gong, Baguazhang, Taijiquan, meditation, or some other martial art or embodied practice) improves concentration, self-discipline, self-confidence, peacefulness, patience, and generosity.

It encourages a more flexible and less controlling or compulsive approach to life; a more self-contained and content disposition that allows you to take things (including yourself!) less seriously. It invites you to let go. And, as well as increasing your sensitivity to your own state of mind and body, I would say it even heightens your sensitivity to that of others around you. It improves your intuition for empathy and for well-judged and honest communication.

There’s something of a paradox in that these practices are kind of self-absorbed on the face of it, but the result is a way of being that is less self-centred and actually benefits the people around you. I’m not trying to claim that hours spent navel-gazing in Nei Dan practice, or perfecting your Zheng Manqing, chain punches or mud-wading step, will solve the world’s problems; but they might just improve your own immediate environment and relationships.

More obviously, they help you to function optimally on a physical level, increase your energy levels, and (perhaps less obviously) help to smooth out your experiences on an emotional level. That’s got a lot to do with getting blood and Qi flowing, training fluid and precise movements, and taking full, even, calming breaths, as well as getting into the habit of turning your attention inwards instead of always looking outwards for stimulation and validation.

I definitely feel more relaxed, comfortable and balanced after practice. It gives me a sense of being stable and anchored, and helps to make life feel less overwhelming. In particular, calmly enduring yoga asanas or taking punches and joint locks, helps you to endure or roll with whatever life throws at you off the mat; they help you to be more humble, to be more at ease with yourself, and to be more acceptant and less inclined to push things away (or grab on to things) in a reactive or compulsive manner.

Through martial arts training you learn how to maintain calmness and clarity when under attack, you learn to be less fearful, to accept defeat graciously, to remain humble in victory, and to test things in reality instead of nurturing fantasies inside your own mind. All this translates directly into our social interactions with other people.

I think training martial forms can also translate into your own natural body language, and therefore into everyday social interactions also. Standing tall, a level gaze, expansive and space-filling gestures, open palms, and relaxed body language, all influence hugely how other people see us, and therefore how we interact with others, and as a result can directly influence and alter the things that happen for us in life, too.

Finally, by practising every day you can get a real sense of how your internal state changes over time, and it perhaps even helps you to become more at ease with change in general. And change is inevitable and inexorable, regardless of whether you want it or not.

We spend far too much of our lives “living in our heads”, and in my experience this only leads to self-deception and dissatisfaction. Eventually, it will result in disharmony and ill-health. By sinking your awareness into your body, you can begin to peel away your individual perspective, and experience the world as a perceiving rather than as a perceiver. This is a subtle but profound shift. Embodied practices can be, with perseverance, a powerful vehicle towards this transformative end.

This might seem high-minded or even far-fetched, but there is really nothing to lose; at the very least you will discover a more equanimous, self-directed and flexible outlook, and experience a more mobile, supple, and energised, healthy body.

Listening inwardly will probably bring everything you’ve kept buried into the spotlight at first, bringing things up that you thought were already dealt with, or perhaps weren’t even aware of at all. But with perseverance you can learn to recognise and accept what’s there, and move towards a more conscious existence.

By adopting regular mindful movement and stillness practices, we can train ourselves to inhabit our bodies more completely, become more aware, and live entirely more creative, open, and meaningful lives.

The Mysterious Middle

The Lower Dantian. The Field of the Golden Elixir. The mystic central pivot of the human body. Mysterious, elusive, undefinable…

Or is it?

Since I first started practising Chinese martial arts and meditation, the concept of the Dantian has been ubiquitous. And the explanations I’ve heard regarding its nature have ranged from resolutely practical, to dismissive, to utterly bonkers.

I think first there is an important distinction to make. The Dantian referred to in martial arts is not exactly the same as that in Daoist meditation practices.

In martial arts it is the entire region of the torso, incorporating the lower abdomen, lower back and hips. In alchemical meditation practices it is a specific area deep within the lower abdomen located between Qi Hai (Ren 6 – Sea of Qi) and Ming Men (Du 4 – Gate of Life), directly above the perineum, where energy can be gathered and worked with in preparation for opening the channels.

The “alchemical” process is normally described as refining Jing into Qi, and subsequently Shen, but I’m going to try to avoid Chinese terms as it’s their misapprehension that tends to lead to the dismissive or preposterous positions I referred to above.

That said, there are similarities between the martial Dantian and that referred to in Neidan (alchemy).

In meditation, the Dantian is a focal point for the attention and the breath, serving to help quieten a person’s emotions and inner narrative.

As the breath becomes increasingly tranquil and deep, the mind sinks with it and the body can begin to conserve and build its energy. This process occurs within the lower abdominal space behind and beneath the navel.

As the body reaches a state of efficient, natural functioning, undisturbed by the mind, it releases nervous and muscular tensions, corrects habitual misalignments, and invigorates the organs.

Undistracted by external stimuli or internal stressors, the production and transportation of substances like blood, lymph, marrow, hormones and enzymes becomes optimised. Stagnancy is slowly eradicated and the body mobilises internally, unobstructed by emotional and physical blockages (which are not separated in Chinese Medicine as they are in the Western model).

There are many specific exercises that lead the body through this process, but with diligent long-term practice the body and mind can both settle and stabilise at a steady, open awareness and easeful, healthy flow.

The Lower Dantian is central to this “alchemical” change. As the process continues to advanced levels, which I certainly do not have authority to write about, the Middle Dantian (at the heart space) and Upper Dantian (at the forehead behind Yin Tang, which some theories have associated with the pineal gland) become more important as Qi is further refined to Shen, usually translated as Spirit and encompassing the insubstantial realm of consciousness.

In martial arts, the breath is also sunk to the region of the Lower Dantian. A degree of tension is maintained in the abdominal wall on inhalation, as with the reverse abdominal breathing technique of Neidan, and dissimilar to the calming abdominal breathing method of Buddhist meditation, where the belly is allowed to inflate with the in-breath.

Reverse abdominal breathing is not unhealthy or unnatural, as I’ve heard claimed. It simply allows the back and upper abdomen to inflate rather than the lower abdomen. Reverse breathing is still a deep and soothing breath, and with practice can feel quite natural and easy. It “pressurises” the body on the inhalation, with a feeling of squeezing into the centre.

It also encourages a total relaxation on the exhalation, allowing everything to further sink and let go (whereas “Buddhist” breathing can introduce some tension into the abdomen on the out-breath if overextended). Done properly, reverse breathing is a soothing and stabilising practice that helps to locate the energetic Dantian.

Why is the breath so emphasised? Because it’s the gateway between our bodies and the rest of the world, where our conventionally perceived boundaries between external and internal become blurred and fuzzy.

It also marks a boundary between surrender and control; we can’t help but breathe, but we can influence the breath, and the quality of our breath can in turn influence our body and mind. It can help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, eliminate airborne toxins, and aid in purging our “inner toxins” of excess stress, dysfunctional feelings, and retained and repressed emotional trauma.

I’m not saying we can literally breathe out our wounds and scars, but we can create the right conditions in the body and mind to encourage such a release.

Let’s turn our attention to our attention. As in meditation, in Chinese martial arts the attention is gently placed in the Dantian (and in similar arts such as Aikido, where it is given the Japanese term, Hara).

Why place the attention here? Shouldn’t you be alert to external threats? Looking outward?

It’s because, from here, at the centre of the body, the mind can move in all directions. There is an equality of awareness, and a heightening of peripheral awareness. You are not unaware of the external; you are finding a global awareness that encompasses everything rather than making distinctions between front and back, inside and out. If at least part of the mind is always at the centre, it can respond more quickly, as it doesn’t need to be pulled from total engagement with another stimulus.

Here, at the centre, the mind can be quiet, and listen. Placing the attention at the Dantian has a calming effect on the mind, nerves, and emotions, allowing for smoother and quicker reactions as the awareness has no distractions or preoccupations, being totally present with, comprehending of, and intuitively responsive to a situation. (See the discussion of Yi in my previous post, “Internal Circles”).

It helps ensure an appropriate response, too, as the practitioner is less likely to be overcome by fear, anger or an unhealthy desire to dominate another person.

Sinking the mind to the Dantian also allows for a finer sensitivity to the inner connectedness, flow and tension within the body. These are crucial qualities to be nurtured in the internal martial arts, without which much of their power, depth and intrinsic beauty are lost.

Finally, and perhaps most obviously, the Lower Dantian is emphasised in martial arts because it is literally the centre of the body. Here we find our centre of balance, and, when the pelvis is sufficiently dropped from the thorax, our centre of mass.

Being mindful of the Dantian helps us to move in a balanced and coordinated way. When we organise the body around this central fulcrum, our movements are more powerful and united. No part of the body is left out, detached from, overextended or exposed (and therefore vulnerable), as everything is contained and always returning to its centre.

When a strike is generated from the body’s centre, it is not only more biomechanically forceful, but it also allows us to return immediately to a relaxed, sunk and rooted posture that can’t be easily manipulated or overcome. It also allows us to move smoothly in all directions equally, physically as well as mentally.

Our rootedness is created by the physical relaxation of the soft tissues around the bones, as we release tension from the mind and muscles, and allow gravity to connect us strongly to the earth.

It’s interesting that when we carry stress and tension, we tend to hold it in our upper back and neck, it causes our shoulders to raise, and it gives us headaches. It rises within us and disconnects us from the earth we stand on.

When we relax the body and, while maintaining a sound skeletal posture that’s also aligned with gravity, allow everything to drop away from the head at Bai Hui (Du 20 – Hundred Meetings), the shoulders and the sacrum can be released, and the habitual anterior pelvic tilt that office jobs have inflicted on so many people, can melt away. This is what gives the characteristic “sitting” posture of Chinese martial arts. The pelvis isn’t deliberately posteriorly rotated – it’s simply released to its natural, healthy position.

This relaxed positioning of the Dantian area allows us to move from our centre with fluidity and efficiency, and allows for more effective transference of power from the legs to the upper body.

I love the Chinese way of explaining concepts such as the Dantian. Their talent for precise but poetic metaphor is one of the things that draws me to their whole culture.

But sometimes things get lost in translation, such that Westerners either decide not to engage with it at all, because they don’t understand it; or they start imagining all kinds of fanciful things that are simply not present in their somatic experience.

And, to me, it’s our somatic experience that facilitates our accurate comprehension of reality. Our imaginations are powerful, and wonderful, but they shouldn’t override and distort our basic perception of reality.

By allowing our awareness to sink and settle at the Lower Dantian, we find a place of equilibrium, rootedness, peace, relaxation, sensitivity, calm understanding, connectedness, and holistic health.

The Dantian is not mysterious, elusive or undefinable; it’s simply the centre of our being, of our unified experience of body, breath and mind.