Self-image is the thinking minds way of taking control.

A heart big enough to contain itself

Heart engulfs first the body. This is how big it needs to be. In fact the body acts as template for the heart – gives it shape and structure. Discontent, which is really just an inability for whatever reason to love, stems from a heart too small to contain (love) itself.

Metanoia denotes a change of mind, a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook . . . and a new way of loving others and the Universe.

Mind out of time, and time out of mind

Tension indicates lack of faith

Heart expresses as much in the foot as it does in the hand or face.

In Tai Chi we strive to balance root and heart – form and feeling. Too much heart and I become carried away with emotion, too much root and I become heartless and unfeeling – detached from my humanity. This balance is not a cancelling out but a growing together in the sense that as one strengthens then so does the other, but also in the sense of entwinement. My struggle to keep root and heart always together pays off in the transformation of each: root softens and lightens and takes on an ethereal quality, and heart becomes gradually physical – almost concrete – in its insistence.

Extend a welcome: invite the other into the hospitality of the heart. The ensuing embrace is the receiving – the bringing in – the realization and acceptance that that moment of melting together is the whole moment – complete and full to overflowing. The excess spills into our future togetherness, and is largely responsible for the becoming – the renewal – of my own heart.

respect and wonder for the irreducible difference of the other

the "I" ... has a tendency to organize everything around itself and to ensure that everything that it gives out is returned with interest

John D Caputo

Space is mind

to rise beyond being, beyond ourselves

Put it into practice

Swimming not so much in air as in love

When I do Tai Chi I leave an energetic trace – lines surfaces and sweeping trails – in the physical space I share. I also leave an affectionate trace – an honest profile of how I feel to be fully immersed in the doing of Tai Chi – in the heart-space I share. Softness allows these two realities to merge so that my physical movements flow as much from my heart as from my root, and my feelings emanate as much from the Earth as from my heart.

Softness is the most mind-stopping, earth-shattering, heart-wrenching, revolutionary concept. It throws the known world sharply out of focus and opens up unknown worlds so numerous that any attempt to enumerate and define – grasp – necessarily limits and distorts. It becomes clear when confronted and opened by softness that even the will to understand closes – hardens – separates.

Confidence in softness

coiled in the heart of things

internal bleeding

fixed meaning is a neurotic delusion

Jacques Lacan

Central Equilibrium – the art of finding first the storm and then the eye.

We are all responsible for everyone else – but I am more responsible than all the others.

Dostoyevsky

A radical alterity

Strength lies not in my ability to create a life free from suffering – an independent life, but in my ability to welcome suffering the other before me. A passion for connexion.