“Do not try to fight a Puma if you're not one yourself.” Linford Christie

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke

The terminology of Daoist practice does not denote discrete physiological entities but serves as a descriptive framework for regulatory processes and prereflective experience, which can be related, from a contemporary perspective, to concepts of interoception, autonomic regulation, and embodiment.

Qi as Inner Craft

In classical Qi texts, the body is often described as a vessel in which Qi gathers, rises, and sinks. Qi is breath, tensile vitality, flow, and awareness. The image of the body as a pulsating, living обол—a permeated, animate sheath—points to something that in modern physiology is discussed as interoceptive presence or embodied consciousness.

When Daoist practice speaks of true Qi sinking to the dantian, this is not a literal description of metabolism but the expression of a somatic state. Attention turns inward, the breath deepens, the autonomic nervous system regulates itself—often mediated by the vagus nerve—toward relaxation. A sensation of centered heaviness emerges, of inner density or fullness, as also described in body-oriented therapeutic practices.

The lower dantian—located in the lower abdomen—is regarded in Chinese tradition as an energetic center. In Western terms, one might understand it as a subjective center of gravity. It is a place where body and consciousness gather, a focal point for self-regulation, coherence, and somatic safety. The notion that Qi is guided by the mind—“where the mind goes, Qi follows”—can be read as a poetic paraphrase of neurobiological processes in which attention steers motor, sensory, and emotional activity.

When Taiji practitioners speak of a surging fullness, of being inwardly charged, this is not merely metaphorical—it is a precise testimony of embodied experience. It involves an interplay of breathing rhythm, muscle tone, inner dialogue, and silent observation. The practice itself—regular, attentive, and decelerated—acts like a form of embodied meditation in which mind and body are not separated but mutually shape one another.

What sounds like magic in traditional language—Qi, essence, dantian—can, from a contemporary Western perspective, be read as a differentiated system of perception; a language for what lies beneath the threshold of speech—prereflective, subcortical, felt.

Aslan was warming up. Dew steamed in the morning heat; his Stone Age sportswomen rolled furiously across the green on campus—deep squats, lateral walking on hands and feet, crawling with bodies kept close to the ground, squat jumps, flat creeping along the earth, moving on hands and feet with hips raised, wave-like motions, two-legged hops, cat stretch.

Aslan loved this moment. When thinking dissolved. When consciousness lagged behind the movements.

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Imagine a late-afternoon summer moment in Aslan’s studio; the jack-of-all-trades standing barefoot before a dozen female students. Aiko is present. She wears a flowing gongfu suit of unbleached cotton, white with a greenish shimmer. The buttons are frog closures, hand-knotted. The collar stands monastically plain and recalls ancient Daoist lines. The sleeves are wide but not fluttering. When Aiko moves, the fabric carries her Qi. Standing still, she is a rock in silence; walking, water in mist. She wears no shoes, only cotton socks that cling almost invisibly to her feet.

Sunlight falls at an angle through panoramic windows, patterning the scene. Aslan refers to internal energy cultivation as inner craft. He wears a silk suit—the extravagance of the stand-up collar—in the style of training clothes for inner work—liàn gōng fú; inspired by wabi-sabi. Indigo. Ash. Matte sand. The cut is not geometrically perfect but balanced in its asymmetry—like life itself. In this way Aslan professes a poetic aesthetic. Wabi-sabi is not a design style in the Western sense but a Japanese worldview. It celebrates the simple, the imperfect, the transient. Beauty does not lie in smoothness, not in shine, but in slight fragility.

Wabi refers to sufficiency in stillness; sabi to passing away. In his hand, the philologist holds a worn, faded fan with the brushed inscription: 真氣 — Zhen Qi. He holds it so that Aiko recognizes the signal. She wonders when and where he has satisfied himself. He has been in the oasis for hours.

The listeners form a semicircle.

“In classical Daoism it is said: Zhen Qi elevates the human being. It is not made—it is recognized.”

Aslan now stands before Aiko, though he speaks to the room.

“You may think Zhen Qi is a special energy, a goal. But Zhen Qi is not a state—it is a relationship. A relationship between inside and outside, between will and surrender. Between intention and letting go.”

He raises his hand, points to his heart.

“When we practice, whether Qigong or Taiji, it is always about discharging foreign impulses and laying bare what is true. Zhen Qi is what remains when nothing interferes anymore.”

His gaze, when she performed a form in the dōjō for the first time not merely executing it but being it—the image suddenly appeared before her mind’s eye. His face, in half-shadow. The fine crease between his brows that signaled concentration. And then a barely perceptible nod that meant praise.

“Aiko.”

In her daydream, her hands found him.

“Stand up,” he said.

Aiko rose. Her body had long known what would happen—perhaps it had always known. She stood before him, looked up at him, felt the benevolent power he embodied. When he entered her, it was like the continuation of a sentence that would never be finished. When he asked her:

“Come for me now.”

She came for him.

Just then she thought: this is a scene as if after the abolition of original sin. But what use is that—neither Akio nor Aslan juggle Christian terms, and in Zen Buddhism there is no original sin.