A Field Guide to Elemental Chi Kung
Where stillness moves and movement stills
Each time I teach Elemental Chi Kung, I step into the unknown alongside those who practise with me. I might lead with a theme, like let life come to you, and I usually have the outline of a sequence in mind, but what I’m really doing is listening. Listening for what is needed, moment by moment. It’s a kind of dance between me and life, where no one is leading, and neither of us knows the steps. My commitment is to be in conversation with formlessness — the Chi — which I experience as the connecting force of the universe.
As my teacher Thalbert always says: where the mind goes, the Chi flows.
Earth
Feet planted beneath the shoulders, knees bent, soft belly, small tuck of the chin. This is Wu Chi, or Emptiness Stance. We begin by noticing gravity — the downwards current that gathers everything we’ve been carrying and lets it drain to the ground. The chatter of the mind slows; attention sinks inwards.
This is the path through the woods without a map. The one you don’t usually take.
Stillness arrives not on demand, but as atmosphere. You feel it first in the soles of your feet, then in the space all around you. Breathing softens. The body remembers what it means to pause.
“In stillness, the movements of the universe unfold. In movement, stillness finds its expression.” — Eva Wong
Metal
As the centre of your being rises and falls with the rhythm of each breath, the arms trace the quiet arc of the diaphragm. A simple form, moving in and out like the tide, holding the discipline of completing everything we begin — that bittersweet moment where commitment and surrender meet in ending.
Metal asks us to simultaneously sharpen and soften the edges: the boundaries between you and I, inhale and exhale, life and death. To know and respect the limits of the human domain, and to release those limits into something larger, wilder, and more unknown.
There’s a reverence in the air. The kind that asks for nothing more than attention. Metal is the sacred inside the ordinary — the ability to stop without collapsing, to cut without harm, to complete without closing.
Water
Effortlessly, surrender transmutes into flow. Centre moves, wrists lead, breath deepens — the rest follows.
Eyes shut, we enter the depths of the ocean. Black, quiet, holding. Not lost, or adrift, but carried.
Water has no need for control; its wisdom is that it cannot be held. When we truly exhale, letting go of all that is no longer needed, replenishment becomes possible. We learn that the season of Metal with all of its dying, births the fluidity of Water.
The wave rises and falls through us. The work is not to move, but to be moved.
Wood
A deep twist at the waist, a spiral in the spine. Little green shoot pushing through soil — not straight, but weird and wonderful, and flexible, and persistent.
Wood holds movement and vision, the practical and the infinitely possible. Centred in the liver, where the pulse of vital detoxification is happening right now inside your own biology. Each twist wrings out what has been stagnant, inviting new life to thrive.
Sometimes I guide the group to hug the tree. Not with thought, but through play: What kind of tree is your tree? What message does it have to tell you? The answer often arrives in unexpected ways — as riddle, myth, symbol, and mischief.
Fire
Finally, we gather the arms around the heart.
Fire doesn’t always blaze; sometimes it is a single steady flame. The question here is clear: what would it be like to let your heart come first?
Not as metaphor, or aspiration, but as a consciously chosen act.
A quiet heart still speaks. A withdrawn heart still burns. In the tender holding, when the striving stops, its warmth expands.
As the form completes, we bring that fire down into the belly — both hands gently placed upon the body, a simple human gesture of nourishment and integration. Contact. Reassurance. I’m here. I receive this. I let life in.
Return
We step out of the form without fanfare. The room is ordinary again. People stretch, blink, smile. Yet something subtle has rearranged itself.
The practice of Elemental Chi Kung is not about progress. It is about meeting what is already moving — in the blood, the breath, the bones — and giving it space to lead.
The body knows the way.
Our task is simpler: to listen, to welcome, and — when we’ve found that place beyond the noise of the mind — to let life flow, unresisted.
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If you’d like to experience this work in real time, join me for an Elemental Chi Kung class (online) on Saturday 8th November, 9:00–10:15am (UK). The practice will set you up for your weekend in a different way — reconnecting you to your centre, your authentic voice, and your body’s wisdom: