Things must be approached through sensitivity rather than understanding.

Georges Vantongerloo

The deepest relaxation we call forgiveness.

Happiness is being on the beam with life - to feel the pull of life.

Agnes Martin

Empty of thoughts and full of nothing.

truth must be meaningless

How to animate this corporeal clod?

God looketh not to the work of praying, but to the heart of the prayer.

All tension originates in the mind.

Heart and Soul : the whole of one's affections and energies; one's whole being.

An intelligence that cannot see beyond itself will always hold me back. This is why the heart is the true centre – not the belly nor the head. The head contains all I know and all I can conceive – imagine. The belly contains my physical centre – my energy. But the heart contains all there is – it is my only true inlet into reality.

Ever noticed how hysterical reason becomes when it fails to get its own way? Reason requires comfort – it needs a reasonable environment to function at all well – it feeds on itself and propagates itself.

Attack is more piquant than concord.

Thomas Hardy

Correct posture is not a matter of realignment but remodelling : progress must be gradual.

No stone unturned

If we are honest then we will reveal ourselves . . . we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

Josef Albers

The imagination is the ego's attempt to emulate the heart.

The hip bones (ilia, ischia and pubis) are like two hands atop the femora that clasp gently but firmly the sacrum and cradle the dantien. Similarly the shoulder bones (scapulae and clavicles) are like two hands atop the humeri that touch the sternum and envelop the heart.

The free white sea, infinity, lies before you.

Kasimir Malevich

The romantic heart – the one that makes and heeds miracles – can quickly fall into wallowing sentimentality unless firmly tied to a grounded sacrum. Paradoxically this attachment (root) allows the heart to lift and do its wondrous work.

the way is upward
through exhaustion
a scree of resistances

Thomas A Clark

an unquenchable urge to quest

Action is triggered by tensing : non-action is triggered by releasing.

Be true and meaning reveals itself – in time.

devouring obsession

a whim
of wind
in dry
whin thorns

a song
of wind
through bare
rib bones

Thomas A Clark

Yielding is about how we present ourselves.

The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.

John Holt

When painters feel the need to make a shift toward self-discovery, they turn to black and white for a time.

Barnett Newman

Sacrum and sternum are intimately connected. When the sacrum is in and driving down through the legs then the sternum naturally lifts and projects forward issuing a stream of connecting energy from the heart : the rooted sacrum allows the Heart to lift and be free. Thrusting the chest forward is not right, and neither is tucking the bum in.

spontaneity and purposiveness

The mind receives reflexions : the heart creates connexions.

an emotional foundation unassailable by reason

The conscious mind objectifies experience – makes objects of the phenomena that enter it. Hence language : naming and maiming.

The heart subjectifies experience – invests everything with life and love, making conscious subjects of all it touches.

Too much clarity means I'm refusing the plunge.

the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception

Robert Motherwell

When the mind's free / The body's delicate:

Second thoughts drive a wedge between impulse (spirit) and action, opening up a rift impossible to bridge with honest energy. This is the terrible violence of the fearful : 'better safe than sorry.' It reveals rationale to be nothing more than sentimentality : an immature wallowing in safety – a cry for mother.

The only thing I care about is the expression of man's basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, destiny.

Mark Rothko

Doing should not interrupt being. Being is a matter of relaxing into body, space, time, connexion and relationship. Doing should be likewise. Or, to be more specific, the stimulus for action should be release rather than tension. To constantly release I must feel the supporting hands of God propping me up. This is why people believed in God : because it helped them be and do. Any other way is an arrogance.

Thinking generates a stream of energy from my depths to emanate from my head. In taiji we reverse this stream : by relaxing mind and body we allow energy to pour in from all around and into the belly – our natural reservoir and centre of power. We become gatherers of energy.

Let yourself go

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Ad Reinhardt

Internal movement is within my body : external movement is of my body.
Internal movement generates/absorbs energy : external movement follows energy.

blue purples
grey through other

kinds of knowing
disappearing clearer

to divine still

to understate mind

Jess Mynes

We tend to assume that viewing things rationally is not only the best but the only way. Yet remember those interminable lessons in school, sedentary on hard surfaces, being beaten into reasonable and considerate – thinking – beings. What a violence! Far better to have been shown passion and fire, energy and spirit.

The whole world is built to keep it from being said.

William Carlos Williams

Rational thought is unnatural behavior : an imposition between impulse and action.

Reason isn't value-free.

John Zerzan

Our tragedy is that we willingly accept a life of energetic poverty for the sake of material security : a wasted life.

Sui generis : be yourself.

to emancipate from emancipation

the first word for ‘freedom’ known in any human language ... literally means ‘return to mother’

David Graeber

In the world of Heart there is barely distinction.

Taichi is like tango – meaningless if not impossible without the other. The pressure of the partner opens me up in ways not possible alone.

the gladness of freedom

The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.

John Holt

Swept off my feet

thwart opposites

Thinking gives me unfair advantage and lets me swagger.

focused inward
burned an exit
through the center

Rose Drachler

The best way to control others is to confuse their minds and then offer one's own clarity.

Nothing comes uninvited