This morning felt like “the morning after.” I woke with a sore throat and a headache. My body’s quiet signal: time to stop and take a little self-care.
My morning practice is a mix of silent reflection, daily prayer from A New Way of Living, drawing a rune, casting the Yijing, and jotting a few lines in my Field Notes journal. These elements shift in emphasis each day. Today, sipping tea, I settled into the rhythm.
I sensed a movement in two directions at once. One image of emergence—light on the horizon, the day about to break. The other of withdrawal—a retreat to higher ground, not in defeat but for perspective. The tension of emergence and withdrawal—seemingly opposites—are perhaps better seen as complementary aspects of the same phenomenon. My guess is that this is the kind of tension my recently graduated students are feeling—emerging from their years at university, but uncertain of what lies ahead. I hope they can find time to retreat for a while and gain perspective.
It set me thinking about complementarity. My shifu, Jesse, has been teaching compressibility, elasticity, and twistability as basic principles of Tai Chi:
- Compressibility is the ability to draw energy inward, to store power through stillness and grounding.
- Elasticity is the capacity to absorb and release energy smoothly, like a coiled spring returning to form.
- Twistability is the spiral, the torque of internal change, where rootedness meets adaptability.
Compressibility and elasticity live in dynamic tension. We draw in to gather energy. We extend to release it. But the two are one movement. Without the inward sink, the outward gesture is empty. Without withdrawal, emergence is premature.
My reflections today suggest a gentle retreat, a taking stock—not from fear, but from strength. There is potential stored in stillness. There is integrity in restraint.
Yesterday, both driving to and from the university, we saw the sun breaking through the clouds—the kind of breakthrough that looks like a bolt of light striking the earth. It was remarkable enough to comment on both times. A breakthrough. A sign of life. A promise.
+Ab. Andy