At the beginning the student is riddled with both tension and anxiety. Tension is under-activity (blockage, stiffness, tightness, immobility) and anxiety is over-activity (nervousness, incessant thoughts, hypersensitivity). The work enables the novice to start to relax – release tensions and calm anxieties – by seeing these for what they are – external alien institutions rather than anything intrinsic to themselves. A sense of space, of distance between things, then pervades, and the student is overcome with clarity. After a while of wallowing in this clarity, which may be months or may be decades, the student, with the urging of their teacher, begins to suspect that this clarity is a luxury they shouldn't really afford themselves, and they again throw themselves into the fray, but this time as warriors rather than fools.