Understanding and Embracing Plateaus in QigongDharma Practice

by Teja Fudo Myoo

Seeds rest in winter earth—
invisible, the roots spread wide
before spring’s first leaf.

The Nature of Plateaus in Practice

In the journey of learning and embodying QigongDharma, we traverse many layers, levels, and dimensions of experience.  An essential insight on this path is recognizing and understanding plateaus—those mysterious periods where progress seems to stall despite continued effort.  During these phases, familiar movements, meditations, and energetic experiences may not appear to deepen or change significantly.  The body remembers its patterns, the mind traces its familiar grooves, and we may wonder: Have I stopped growing?

Yet a plateau is not an obstacle to overcome but an integral and necessary phase of development.  Far from signifying stagnation, a plateau represents a period of profound stabilization where previous breakthroughs are being refined and integrated into the body-mind system at levels we cannot consciously perceive.

Modern neuroscience confirms what contemplative traditions have long understood: the brain and nervous system require time to consolidate new skills.  When we learn a new movement sequence or energetic practice, the initial experience—what researchers call “fast learning”—happens within the practice session itself.  But this newly acquired skill exists in what neuroscientists describe as a “fragile state,” easily disrupted and not yet stable. The deeper transformation—true consolidation—requires a period of several hours to days, during which the nervous system reorganizes itself at cellular and synaptic levels. This consolidation happens largely outside our awareness, in the spaces between practice, even during rest and sleep.

What seems like a plateau is often the invisible architecture of mastery being built beneath the surface.

Insights and transformations in QigongDharma do not follow a linear trajectory but unfold in natural rhythms—expansion and contraction, deepening and consolidating, movement and stillness. These rhythms mirror the fundamental patterns of nature itself: the breath that fills and empties, the seasons that cycle from growth to dormancy, the ocean’s eternal advance and retreat. When we resist these rhythms, we create suffering. When we embrace them, they reveal a greater intelligence at work within the practice itself—an intelligence that knows, far better than our conscious minds, what the body-mind system needs in order to truly transform.

The plateau, therefore, is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be entered.

Mountain climber rests—
not because the peak is gone
but to grow wings first.

The Hidden Dimension: Integration and Somatic Insight

Plateaus serve as the time-space continuum for integration—a phrase that sounds abstract until you feel it in your bones.  As your practice develops, you gain what we might call direct somatic insight: a knowing that arrives not through thinking but through intuitive feeling, an embodied wisdom that lives within the tissues themselves.  This is knowledge of a different order entirely—not conceptual understanding but felt experience, not mental maps but living terrain.

The body knows things the mind has not yet learned to articulate.

Yet this somatic insight requires its own season of ripening.  Accompanying each new realization or refinement is the necessary time for integration—time for the nervous system, energetic body, and consciousness to adapt, align, and stabilize.  This is especially true in practices involving energetic refinement, internal harmonization, and deep structural-developmental shifts that reach into the very foundation of how we organize experience itself.

Recent discoveries in neuroscience reveal the exquisite complexity of this process. When we learn a new skill or deepen an existing one, different brain regions contribute at different stages of development.  Early in learning, cognitive networks involving working memory and attention predominate—we must think our way through the movements, consciously directing each shift of weight, each rotation of the pelvis, each refinement of breath. But as practice matures, these cognitive networks gradually recede, and the motor cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia assume primary roles, allowing movement to become more automatic, more fluid, more ours.

This transition doesn’t happen overnight. The reshaping of neural pathways, the strengthening of synaptic connections, the pruning away of inefficient patterns—all of this unfolds over days and weeks, not hours. The integration period is not passive waiting; rather, it is an active reorganization of the entire being—physically, energetically, emotionally, and mentally. Although this reorganization is active, much of it occurs at subconscious levels of our being, in the dark soil where roots spread before any shoot breaks through to light.

Here we encounter one of practice’s profound paradoxes: the most important growth happens when we’re not practicing.

Consider fascia, that magnificent web of connective tissue pervading every cell, muscle, bone, and organ of the body. Once thought to be merely structural scaffolding—inert packing material between the “important” parts—fascia is now recognized as the body’s largest sensory organ. It contains a dense network of mechanoreceptors and interoceptors—specialized nerve endings that detect pressure, stretch, and internal states. In fact, fascia contains up to seven times more interoceptive receptors than the better-known proprioceptors that track joint position and movement.

This means fascia is not simply what holds us together;

it is how we feel ourselves from within.

When we practice qigong or meditation, we are literally educating this fascial network, teaching it new patterns of sensing and responding. But fascia adapts slowly, subtly, at its own organic pace. The tissue must physically remodel itself—collagen fibers realigning, ground substance shifting its viscosity, the entire matrix reorganizing to accommodate new patterns of movement and energy flow. This remodeling cannot be rushed. Push too hard, and the tissue responds with inflammation, restriction, protective guarding. Honor its timeline, and it blossoms into extraordinary responsiveness and intelligence.

The plateau, then, is not empty time.  It is the period during which fascia learns, neurons rewire, and the body’s deepest intelligence integrates what consciousness has only begun to grasp.

Clay sits on the wheel—
the potter’s hands, barely touching,
shape what can’t be forced.

 

Still Waters Run Deep: The Invisible Progress

“Still waters run deep”—this old saying carries a truth that plateau periods embody perfectly. One of the most overlooked aspects of plateaus is the invisible progress happening beneath the surface. While externally nothing seems to change, while the forms look the same and the sensations feel familiar, the body-mind system engages in profound transformation that escapes the measuring eye.

Consider what unfolds in the hidden dimensions:

Cellular Intelligence & Fascial Adaptation: At physiological and energetic levels that elude ordinary perception, tissues, fascia, and internal structures undergo subtle adaptations to new alignments. The myofascial web reorganizes its tensional integrity. Collagen fibers reorient themselves along new lines of force. The viscous ground substance that bathes every cell shifts its properties, becoming more hydrated, more responsive, more alive. Mitochondria—those ancient power generators within each cell—multiply and become more efficient, quietly building the energetic capacity for deeper practice.

These changes happen at timescales measured not in breaths or minutes, but in days and weeks. They are the body’s patient alchemy, transforming base experience into embodied gold.

Subconscious Learning & Neural Replay: Perhaps most fascinating is what neuroscientists have recently discovered about the sleeping and resting brain. During periods of rest—even brief pauses of ten seconds between practice repetitions—the brain spontaneously “replays” the neural patterns of what was just practiced. These replay events happen at hyperspeed, consolidating in moments what took minutes to perform. It’s as if the nervous system is reviewing the footage, editing out the unnecessary, strengthening the essential connections, burning the pattern deeper into neural circuitry.

During sleep, this process intensifies. The brain cycles through the day’s experiences, and motor sequences practiced hours before are reactivated, refined, and stabilized. The very structure of the brain changes: synapses strengthen or weaken, dendritic spines grow or retract, entire networks reorganize their connectivity. By morning, you are neurologically not the same person who went to sleep—though you’ll never consciously witness this metamorphosis.

This is why sometimes we return to practice after a day of rest and discover, to our amazement, that something has shifted. A movement that was awkward now flows. A posture that required effort now feels natural. A breath that was forced now arrives of its own accord. We might think, Where did this come from? The answer: from the still waters, running deep.

The Wisdom of the Pause: Recent research reveals that even micro-pauses—those brief moments of rest between repetitions—facilitate rapid consolidation through neural replay. The breath between movements is not empty time but generative space. This validates what Daoist and Buddhist masters have taught for millennia: that the pause is as important as the action, that silence contains the seed of sound, that emptiness is the womb of form.

In meditation traditions, this is sometimes called “the gap”—that space between thoughts, between breaths, between one moment and the next. It is in the gap that transformation occurs. Not during the doing, but in the space that allows the doing to settle and become integrated.

Have faith, then, that significant changes are happening even when—especially when—they aren’t immediately visible. Like seeds germinating underground, like roots spreading through dark soil, like the moon moving through its invisible phases, the work continues beneath the threshold of awareness.

The plateau is not a flatline.  It is the smooth surface of deep waters, where unseen currents carry you forward.

Bamboo grows in silence—
for years nothing, then suddenly
sixty feet in weeks.

The Wisdom of Underdoing

In QigongDharma, a key principle is learning the value of “underdoing”—a concept that runs counter to almost everything our achievement-oriented culture teaches us. This approach stands in stark contrast to forcing progress or chasing results. Instead, underdoing emphasizes allowing the practice to settle deeply into and through the body’s intelligence, trusting that the most profound transformations often occur in the stillness and ease between effort and release.

We live in a world intoxicated with more: more techniques, more knowledge, more forms, more credentials, more hours logged. Yet in the realm of internal cultivation, this accumulation often obscures rather than reveals. Having more techniques, knowledge, and forms doesn’t necessarily lead to better qigong or deeper practice results. In fact, the opposite is frequently true.

By diving deep into the simplicity of each element and embodying each principle fully, we uncover the true value of practice. One movement, practiced with complete presence, teaches more than a hundred movements performed mechanically. One breath, felt in its entirety—from the first whisper of inhalation through the tender pause at fullness, from the soft surrender of exhalation through the spacious emptiness before the next breath arrives—contains the entire universe.

This understanding aligns perfectly with the Daoist principle of Wu Wei (無為), often translated as “non-action” or “effortless action.” But Wu Wei is not passivity, nor is it laziness masquerading as philosophy. The classical texts describe it as action that emerges from harmony rather than forceful striving. The Dao De Jing teaches: “The Way never acts, yet nothing is left undone.”

This is the great paradox at the heart of Wu Wei: maximum effect through minimum force, profound achievement through non-grasping, deep transformation through allowing rather than demanding.

Consider water, that most humble of elements, which the Daoist sages revered as the supreme teacher of Wu Wei. Water never forces its way. It doesn’t attack obstacles with violence or insist on a predetermined path. Instead, it flows around resistance, finds the lowest places, yields and adapts—yet over time, it carves through solid stone, shapes entire landscapes, and makes the rigid yield to its patient persistence.

In our practice, Wu Wei manifests as this water-like quality: soft yet persistent, yielding yet unstoppable, effortless yet effective. We don’t force the qi to move; we create conditions where it naturally flows. We don’t wrestle our minds into stillness; we allow the turbulence to settle of its own accord. We don’t strain toward enlightenment; we remove the obstacles that obscure our inherent clarity.

During a plateau, Wu Wei becomes especially relevant. The temptation arises to do more—practice longer, push harder, add more techniques, seek more teachings. But often what the plateau asks of us is the opposite: to do less, to simplify, to return to fundamentals with fresh eyes. To practice not with the grim determination of forcing a breakthrough, but with the gentle curiosity of watching what wants to emerge.

The Tang dynasty Daoist masters spoke of this as “guarding the One”—not scattering our attention across a thousand possibilities, but gathering our presence completely into this moment, this breath, this simple gesture. They understood that mastery is not found in complexity but in depth, not in accumulation but in penetration to the essence.

When we practice with Wu Wei, the plateau ceases to be a problem requiring a solution. It becomes instead a teacher revealing to us where we are still forcing, still grasping, still believing that our will alone can manufacture transformation. The plateau asks: Can you practice without needing to get anywhere? Can you move without demanding that the movement take you somewhere new?

This is the wisdom of underdoing: less technique, more presence. Less acquisition, more integration. Less achieving, more allowing. Not because we lack ambition or dedication, but because we understand that the deepest changes in human consciousness cannot be forced—they can only be invited, cultivated, and trusted to unfold in their own time.

The master’s brushstroke—
decades to learn emptiness,
one instant to paint.

The Yin~Yang Cycle of Practice Development

Rather than seeing plateaus as “stuck points” or failures of progress, they can be understood through the lens of natural cycles—specifically, the ancient wisdom of Yin and Yang, those fundamental complementary forces that dance through all existence. This is not mere philosophy but observable pattern, lived reality that anyone who practices deeply will come to recognize in their own experience.

Yang Phases (Expansion & Breakthroughs): These are times of visible progress, dynamic shifts, and tangible deepening. Energy feels abundant, almost effervescent. Insights arrive with clarity and force. New movements click into place as if they’d always been there, waiting to be discovered. The body opens in unexpected ways. The mind grasps teachings that were opaque just days before. These are the mountaintop experiences, the moments when practice feels like flying, when we taste what the masters have been pointing toward all along.

Yang phases seduce us. They feel so good, so validating, so right that we naturally want them to continue forever. We begin to believe this is what practice should always feel like. We mistake the expansion for the totality, forgetting that Yang, by its very nature, cannot sustain itself indefinitely.

Yin Phases (Plateaus & Consolidation): These are periods of absorption, internalization, and energetic stabilization. The fireworks cease. The dramatic breakthroughs give way to what appears to be mundane repetition. Energy that once felt expansive now feels contained, even subdued. We practice the same forms, sit in the same meditation, yet nothing seems to be happening. The mind says, I’ve already learned this. Why am I doing it again?

But Yin is not the absence of Yang—it is Yang’s necessary complement and completion. Just as in nature, seasons of rapid growth require seasons of dormancy for sustainability. A tree that flowered continuously, without the restorative rest of winter, would exhaust itself and die. The seed that tried to sprout without first swelling in darkness would never develop the root system to support its future growth.

Yin phases are not failures; they are foundations. They are the dark moon before the new crescent appears, the exhale that makes the next inhale possible, the silence between notes that allows music to exist. Without Yin consolidation, Yang expansion would be like building a tower with no time allowed for the mortar to set—each new level would collapse under its own unintegrated weight.

The wisdom, then, lies not in trying to remain perpetually in Yang expansion, but in learning to align with these natural cycles. To recognize when we’re in a Yang phase and ride that wave fully, bringing total presence to the opening, the insight, the breakthrough. And equally, to recognize when we’ve entered a Yin phase and honor its different requirements—patience instead of pushing, deepening instead of expanding, being instead of becoming.

Attempting to force progress during a Yin phase is not just ineffective; it can create energetic disharmony and lead to frustration, strain, or injury. It’s like trying to make a plant grow faster by pulling on its leaves. The Yang energy of forceful effort, applied during a time that calls for Yin receptivity, creates internal conflict. The nervous system becomes agitated. The tissues resist rather than yield. The mind turns practice into another battlefield where the ego wages war against itself.

The ancient Daoist cultivation texts speak of this as “reversing the flow”—working against the natural current of one’s energy rather than harmonizing with it. They warn that such reversal, sustained over time, can scatter one’s vital essence (jing), disturb one’s energy (qi), and agitate one’s spirit (shen). Modern practitioners experience this as burnout, injury, or the strange phenomenon of getting worse at practice despite increased effort.

Conversely, when we honor the Yin phase for what it is—a time of integration, stabilization, and deep cellular learning—something remarkable happens. We stop fighting ourselves. The practice becomes spacious again. And often, paradoxically, it’s precisely this surrender to the plateau that allows the next Yang breakthrough to emerge naturally, organically, in its own time.

The I Ching (Book of Changes) teaches that all phenomena move through cycles of waxing and waning, fullness and emptiness, advance and retreat. Nothing remains static, yet nothing changes randomly. There is an order, a rhythm, a rightness to the timing. The superior person, the text suggests, does not resist these changes but moves with them, neither clinging to the pleasant nor fleeing from the difficult, understanding that each phase contains its own perfection.

In practice, this means developing a quality of awareness that can recognize which phase we’re in—not intellectually, but felt-sense recognition arising from attunement to our own energy. Are we in a Yang expansion that invites exploration and experimentation? Or a Yin consolidation that calls for simplicity and repetition? The answer changes from month to month, sometimes week to week, occasionally even day to day.

And here is perhaps the deepest teaching: Yin and Yang are not merely sequential phases but interpenetrating realities. Even in the heart of Yang expansion, there is Yin stillness. Even in the depth of Yin consolidation, there is Yang vitality. The classic Taijitu—the Yin-Yang symbol—shows this with its seed of darkness in the white, its seed of light in the black. Nothing is ever purely one or the other.

This means that even during a plateau, if we bring sufficient presence and sensitivity, we can detect subtle shifts, micro-movements, tiny deepenings. The plateau is not absolute stasis but relative stability—like a long musical note that, listened to closely, contains infinite gradations of tone and timbre.

The art, then, is learning to rest in the plateau without collapsing into dullness, and to ride the breakthrough without inflating into pride. To honor Yin as Yin and Yang as Yang, while simultaneously recognizing their mutual interdependence and ceaseless transformation into each other.

This is the dance of practice itself: eternally changing, fundamentally rhythmic, always returning to balance even as it spirals toward greater depth.

Tides don’t apologize
for their retreat from shore—
they’re gathering the moon.

The Psychological and Energetic Dimensions of Plateaus

Beyond the physical and neurological aspects, plateaus carry profound psychological significance. They test our patience, dedication, and capacity for equanimity in ways that breakthrough moments never do. During these phases, doubt may arise—doubt in one’s abilities, in the effectiveness of the practice, in the possibility of further growth, even in the teachings themselves.

Am I doing this correctly?

Have I reached my limit?

Should I be doing something different?

This is where the true practice begins—not in external progress but in the cultivation of inner steadiness. The plateau becomes a mirror reflecting back to us our relationship with progress itself, our attachments to achievement, our hidden beliefs about worthiness and value.

Emotional Challenges During Plateaus

It is entirely natural to encounter emotional turbulence during plateaus. Frustration arises when the body won’t do what it did last week. Doubt whispers that perhaps this path isn’t the right one after all. Restlessness makes us want to abandon the practice for something—anything—that promises faster results. A peculiar kind of grief may even surface: mourning the loss of those heady days when each session brought revelation.

These reactions emerge from several sources:

Attachment to Progress: The modern mind craves measurable improvement, treating practice like a stock portfolio that should show consistent returns. When the metrics stall—when the sit isn’t deeper, the movement isn’t smoother, the breath isn’t fuller—the mind feels betrayed. This attachment reveals how thoroughly we’ve internalized the values of a progress-obsessed culture, even in practices designed to free us from such conditioning.

The plateau asks us: Can you practice for its own sake?

Can you show up without the ego’s need to “get somewhere”?

Energetic “Detoxification”: Sometimes plateaus indicate that deeper energetic layers are surfacing—old patterns, unresolved holdings, subtle blockages that need time to clear. In traditional Chinese medicine and Daoist internal alchemy, this is understood as the process of releasing stagnant qi and transforming accumulated turbidity. As these deeper layers become activated, they may temporarily create sensations of heaviness, confusion, or emotional volatility before they resolve and integrate.

Imagine a clear stream suddenly running cloudy. Is the water getting dirtier? No—sediment that was long settled on the bottom has been stirred up and is now moving toward release. The cloudiness is temporary; the clearing is in process. Similarly, when practice stirs the depths, what rises to the surface may feel uncomfortable, even regressive, but it represents movement toward greater clarity and flow.

The Default Mode Network: Modern neuroscience offers another lens for understanding the psychological challenge of plateaus. Research on meditation and the brain reveals that experienced practitioners show reduced activity in what’s called the “default mode network”—a collection of brain regions associated with mind-wandering, self-referential thinking, and the constant narrative of “me” and “my story.”

This network is most active when we’re not focused on a task, when the mind drifts into rumination about the past, worry about the future, or self-judgment about the present. It’s the internal radio station that never stops broadcasting the show called “The Story of Me,” complete with commentary on how well or poorly we’re performing, whether we’re succeeding or failing, progressing or stagnating.

During plateaus, when external markers of progress disappear, the default mode network often becomes more active—because there’s nothing exciting happening to capture attention, the mind turns inward and starts its critical commentary. The plateau becomes fertile ground for the ego’s anxious self-monitoring. Without the dopamine reward of breakthrough moments, the default mode network fills the space with doubt, comparison, and self-criticism.

But here’s the profound opportunity: the plateau can actually serve as a practice ground for quieting this network. When we meet the plateau with curiosity rather than judgment, with acceptance rather than resistance, we’re training the brain to function differently. We’re learning to be present without needing stimulation, to practice without needing validation, to exist without the constant narrative of progress. This is precisely the quality that meditation cultivates—and neuroscience confirms that this cultivation literally changes the brain’s structure and function over time.

Meeting Plateaus with Curiosity

The shift from frustration to curiosity transforms everything.

Instead of asking, Why am I stuck? We might inquire, What is this plateau revealing?  Instead of fighting the experience, we become interested in it: What does this feeling of stagnation actually feel like in my body?  Where do I notice it?  What happens if I breathe into it rather than resisting it?

This is the difference between being trapped by the plateau and being taught by it.  Frustration closes us down, making the plateau feel like an enemy.  Curiosity opens us up, revealing the plateau as a teacher with its own curriculum—one that perhaps includes lessons in patience, surrender, trust, and the release of agenda.

Meeting plateaus with curiosity rather than frustration allows us to explore what arises within them—be it impatience, fear, or attachment to achievement. This exploration itself becomes part of clearing the pathway to deeper insight and realization.  We discover that the plateau is not an obstacle to practice but is the practice—the practice of being present with what is, rather than demanding what should be.

The Buddhist tradition speaks of obstacles (the Five Hindrances) not as problems to eliminate but as objects of mindfulness. When doubt arises, we practice being mindful of doubt.  When restlessness appears, we practice being mindful of restlessness.  These energies are not enemies to be defeated but phenomena to be known, and in the knowing, they lose their power to disturb our equilibrium.

Similarly, the plateau asks us to be present with the experience of apparent non-progress.  To feel the frustration fully without acting it out or repressing it.  To notice the stories the mind tells about what this “means.” To observe the urge to quit or the compulsion to try harder.  All of this is practice.  All of this is growth—just not the kind that shows up on the surface where the measuring mind can see it.

In this way, the plateau becomes not merely a necessary phase in skill development but a profound spiritual teaching. It reveals where we’re still identified with outcomes, still attached to becoming rather than being, still believing that our value depends on our performance. And in revealing these attachments, it offers us the opportunity to release them—not through force, but through the gentle, persistent practice of being present with what is.

Storm clouds gather low—
the tree neither rushes away
nor forgets its roots.

Different Types of Plateaus: Recognizing the Patterns

Not all plateaus are the same. Just as a physician distinguishes between different types of fever—each with its own cause and appropriate treatment—so too can we learn to recognize distinct patterns of plateau experience. Each type carries its own teaching, its own requirement, its own pathway through. Identifying which type you’re experiencing allows you to respond with precision rather than flailing with generic solutions.

This is the art of diagnosis in internal cultivation: learning to read the subtle signs of your own process.

Physical Plateaus: The Body’s Boundaries

These manifest as a sense of being stuck in terms of physical strength, flexibility, coordination, or stamina. The hip won’t open any further. The balance posture that improved steadily for months now refuses to deepen. The arms grow tired in the same places they always have. The body seems to have hit a wall, a ceiling, a limit.

Physical plateaus often call for a counterintuitive response: less emphasis on the purely physical. When we’ve been working muscularly—pushing, stretching, strengthening—the plateau may be signaling that we’ve taken the physical approach as far as it can go for now. What’s needed is not more force but greater internal awareness.

This might mean shifting attention from the outer form to the inner landscape: noticing the subtle distribution of weight, the minute adjustments in alignment, the quality of breath supporting movement, the energetic pathways activating beneath the muscular layer. Sometimes the body stops progressing physically because it’s waiting for consciousness to catch up—waiting for our awareness to penetrate deeply enough that the next physical opening can happen safely and sustainably.

The body is wise. It sets boundaries not as punishment but as protection. When we honor these boundaries and work with internal refinement rather than external force, the physical often begins to shift again of its own accord.

Energetic Plateaus: When Qi Seems Dormant

These appear as a feeling that qi is not flowing as it once did. Practice that used to generate warmth, tingling, or vibrant aliveness now feels somehow flat. The sense of energy moving through channels or gathering in the lower dantian becomes elusive. You might think, Where did the juice go?

Energetic plateaus invite us to refine our perception of subtler nuances and movements. What we’re often experiencing is not an absence of energy but a refinement of it. As practice deepens, qi becomes less dramatic, less obviously perceptible, but more refined and penetrating. It’s as if our energy has shifted from being a rushing river to being a deep aquifer—still flowing, but at depths that require more sensitive instruments to detect.

This is where the cultivation of what Daoists call “inner listening” (nei guan) becomes essential. We learn to perceive not just the obvious currents of energy but the whisper-quiet movements, the barely-there tingles, the sensation of spaces opening microscopically. We begin to distinguish between the absence of sensation and the presence of extremely subtle sensation—a crucial distinction.

Sometimes energetic plateaus also indicate that the body-mind system is reorganizing its energetic architecture at a fundamental level. The channels are being refined, cleared of more subtle obstructions, prepared for a different quality of circulation. This work happens in the background, often without the fireworks of earlier stages. Trust the process. The energy hasn’t disappeared; it’s transforming.

 

Mental/Emotional Plateaus: The Fading of Motivation

These manifest as losing motivation, feeling disengaged from practice, or experiencing a kind of flatness or boredom with what once felt fascinating. The forms feel mechanical. The meditation feels like going through the motions. You show up out of discipline rather than desire, and sometimes you don’t show up at all.

Mental and emotional plateaus serve as an invitation to explore new aspects of QigongDharma, to integrate contemplative elements that may have been neglected, or to shift focus toward effortless presence rather than effortful doing. They’re often signals that we’ve fallen into habit, that practice has become routine in the deadening sense rather than in the stabilizing sense.

This is an opportune moment to ask: What aspects of practice have I been avoiding? What teachings have I been resistant to? What would it mean to approach this familiar form with completely fresh eyes, as if I’d never done it before?

Sometimes we need to temporarily set aside advanced practices and return to absolute basics—standing meditation, simple breathing, walking with awareness. The plateau might be revealing that we’ve built an elaborate structure on an insufficiently deep foundation. By returning to fundamentals, we often rediscover the aliveness that drew us to practice in the first place.

Other times, the mental/emotional plateau calls for the opposite: branching out, exploring related practices, studying texts that illuminate practice from a different angle, finding a teacher or community that can reflect back aspects of our practice we’ve become blind to. The stagnation might be signaling that we’ve become too narrow, too insular, and need new input to catalyze the next phase of growth.

  

Spiritual Plateaus: The Dark Night

These are perhaps the most subtle and the most challenging. A sense of spiritual stagnation settles in—practice continues, perhaps even consistently, but it feels empty of meaning. The insights that once illuminated the path now seem like just words. The sense of connection to something larger, which animated the early years of practice, has faded. There may be a kind of existential flatness, a questioning not just of practice but of its ultimate purpose.

This is territory that contemplative traditions across cultures have mapped. Christian mystics called it “the dark night of the soul.” Buddhist texts speak of it as a stage in the progress of insight where the practitioner becomes disenchanted with all conditioned phenomena. Daoists understand it as a necessary phase in the alchemical transformation, when the old self must completely dissolve before the new can emerge.

What appears as spiritual stagnation often indicates a shift toward deeper wisdom rather than a lack of progress. The insights that once dazzled us were perhaps still tinged with ego’s fascination with its own awakening. The connection we felt may have been somewhat dependent on peak experiences and special states. Now we’re being asked to practice without these consolations, to show up without needing to feel anything particular, to continue without the ego’s validation.

This is the maturation of practice. Not the flashy breakthroughs but the quiet deepening. Not the mountaintop experiences but the long, patient walk through the valley. The spiritual plateau is where faith—not belief, but trust in the process itself—is cultivated.

Traditional texts counsel that during such periods, the most important quality is simply to continue. Not to abandon practice in despair, not to frantically seek new methods or teachers, but to maintain presence through the desert crossing. To trust that this apparent emptiness is actually a purification, a stripping away of what’s inessential, a preparation for understanding that cannot yet be imagined.

As the Zen saying goes: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” The spiritual plateau teaches us that the ultimate fruit of practice is not spectacular states but the capacity to be fully present with whatever is—even when what is feels like nothing at all.

Skillful Response: Matching Medicine to Symptom

Learning to identify which type of plateau you face allows you to respond with the appropriate approach instead of forcing movement in the wrong direction. A physical plateau may need less pushing and more subtlety. An energetic plateau may need refined attention rather than dramatic cultivation methods. A mental plateau may need novelty or return to basics. A spiritual plateau may need nothing but patient continuance and faith.

The wisdom lies not in trying to escape the plateau but in understanding its nature and meeting it with what it’s actually asking for. This is responsive practice rather than habitual practice—practice that listens to the moment and adjusts accordingly.

And sometimes, perhaps most importantly, we must recognize when a plateau is simply asking us to be patient, to trust, to continue showing up without trying to fix anything at all.

Four seasons, one tree—
each asks something different,
all yield the same fruit.

The Paradox of Progress: Regression as Integration

A powerful yet often misunderstood phenomenon in practice is experiencing what appears to be regression after a major breakthrough—what may seem like “losing progress” when, in reality, it represents something far more profound: deeper integration at a more fundamental level.

This paradox confounds us because it violates our assumption that development should be linear, that once we’ve achieved something, it becomes permanently ours. We imagine progress as a staircase we climb, each step solidly beneath us, never to be revisited. But the reality of transformative practice is far more spiral than linear, more cyclical than simply ascending.

After moments of great expansion in practice—those luminous breakthroughs when everything suddenly clicks, when the body moves with unprecedented freedom, when meditation drops into profound stillness—the nervous system and energetic body often need to recalibrate. This recalibration can manifest as a temporary reversion to an earlier stage, a seeming loss of the capacities we’d just discovered.

The hip that opened so beautifully last week now feels tight again. The meditation that touched such depth now feels shallow and distracted. The qi that flowed so powerfully has become sluggish.

What’s happening?

The Necessity of Revisiting

The body-mind system, in its infinite wisdom, brings us back to earlier stages not as punishment but as pedagogy. We are being given the opportunity to revisit foundational aspects with a new level of awareness, to deepen our understanding rather than merely move beyond what came before.

Think of it this way: when we have a breakthrough, we’ve glimpsed something, touched something, experienced something at the leading edge of our capacity. But that glimpse is fragile, tentative, not yet integrated into the totality of our being. The structure beneath it—all the earlier learning, all the foundational patterns—hasn’t yet adapted to support this new level.

So the system wisely returns us to the foundation. Not to the very beginning, but to aspects we thought we’d already mastered, inviting us to experience them now through the lens of what we’ve just touched. This is not repetition but recapitulation—returning to the same territory but seeing it with different eyes, feeling it with greater sensitivity, understanding it with deeper wisdom.

Developmental psychology recognizes this pattern. Jean Piaget observed that children don’t simply acquire new cognitive abilities and leave old ones behind; rather, they reorganize their entire cognitive structure at each new stage, integrating earlier capacities into more complex and sophisticated wholes. What looks like regression—a teenager occasionally thinking in more concrete, less abstract ways—is actually the system consolidating, ensuring that new capacities are genuinely embodied rather than merely tacked on to the surface.

In somatic practices, this manifests as a kind of conscious de-construction and re-construction. After a breakthrough in, say, spinal articulation, we might find ourselves returning to basic standing practice, but now we’re feeling things in the feet, the pelvis, the breath that we couldn’t perceive before the breakthrough. The breakthrough opened new perceptual channels, and now the system needs to map these new perceptions onto the fundamental practices. This mapping takes time. It requires revisiting. It looks like regression but is actually integration.

The Spiral Path

The ancient symbol of the spiral captures this perfectly. A spiral doesn’t simply circle back to where it began—it circles back at a different level. Each return to familiar territory occurs from a higher vantage point, with greater circumference, with deeper understanding. What seems like “going backwards” is actually spiraling around to the same thematic material but from an elevated perspective.

Traditional martial arts training embodies this principle. A student learns a basic form, then advances to intermediate and complex forms. But eventually, the master insists that the student return to the basic form and practice it for years. Why? Because now, after exposure to complexity, the student can perceive subtleties in the basic form that were invisible to the beginner’s mind. The “regression” to basic practice is actually progression to mastery.

Buddhist meditation instructions often include the teaching that whenever you feel lost, confused, or like you’re going backwards, return to the breath. This isn’t regression—it’s the recognition that the breath, properly attended to, contains infinite depth. You never exhaust its teaching. Each return to this foundational practice reveals new layers, particularly after periods of more elaborate or concentrated meditation. The breath becomes the spiral’s center, always there to return to, always offering something new.

Developmental Stages and Temporary Setbacks

Modern research on motor learning confirms this pattern. Studies show that skill acquisition doesn’t follow a smooth upward curve but rather proceeds through identifiable stages, each with its own characteristics and challenges. What researchers call “performance variability” actually increases during certain transitional phases—meaning that as you’re integrating a new level of skill, your performance may become temporarily less consistent, not more.

This is because the nervous system is reorganizing. The old patterns are being dismantled even as new patterns are being constructed, and during this transitional period, there’s instability. It’s like renovating a house while still living in it—things get messier before they get cleaner.

Furthermore, researchers have identified what they call “consolidation-related performance decrements”—meaning that during the period when a new skill is consolidating (that invisible process happening between practice sessions), performance can actually dip before it improves. The skill is being transferred from one neural system to another, from working memory to long-term procedural memory, from conscious control to automatic execution. During this transfer, there’s a handoff period where neither system is fully in charge, and performance suffers temporarily.

What appears as regression is the necessary chaos of transformation.

Trusting the Apparent Setback

This understanding transforms how we relate to apparent regression. Instead of panicking—I’m losing it! All that work for nothing!—we can recognize the pattern: Ah, I just had a breakthrough, and now the system is integrating it at a deeper level. This temporary instability is part of the process.

This recognition itself is a form of development. We’re learning to trust the process even when it doesn’t match our expectations. We’re cultivating faith not in the sense of blind belief, but in the sense of experiential confidence built through repeated observation that the system knows what it’s doing.

The great Daoist text, the Zhuangzi, tells the story of Butcher Ding, who cuts up oxen with such skill that his blade never dulls because he cuts through the spaces between joints rather than hacking through bone. When asked how he achieved such mastery, he explains that at first he saw only the whole ox, then later he stopped seeing the ox and perceived only the spaces. The point is that mastery required not just addition but transformation—a complete reorganization of perception.

In our practice, after a breakthrough, we too must stop seeing in the old way and learn to perceive in an entirely new way. This requires a period of awkwardness, of seeming to lose what we had, before the new perception stabilizes and becomes natural. The “regression” is the transition period between ways of seeing.

Integration as Spiral Deepening

What we’re calling “regression,” then, is actually a normal, necessary, and integral part of our developmental process—not a setback but a spiraling back to touch ground again before the next expansion can occur. It’s the exhale after the inhale, the rest between musical phrases, the space that allows the next movement to emerge with greater depth and authenticity.

When we understand this, we stop fighting these periods. We might even welcome them as signs that something significant is integrating, that the breakthrough we just experienced is being woven into the fabric of our being rather than remaining a isolated peak experience.

The wisdom is to allow this revisiting, this apparent regression, to happen without resistance. To practice with the same dedication and presence whether we seem to be advancing or retreating, knowing that both are necessary movements in the dance of genuine transformation. To reaffirm, refine, and stabilize prior learning at a more embodied level rather than grasping at the leading edge where our footing is still uncertain.

In time, what felt like losing ground reveals itself to have been deepening roots. And deep roots, though invisible, are what allow the tree to grow tall and weather any storm.

Autumn strips the leaves—
this isn’t death preparing,
but spring dreaming deep.

 

Plateaus as Gateways to Subtler Awareness

In advanced practice, plateaus often indicate a transition to finer and more subtle dimensions of awareness. This represents not a cessation of development but an evolution in its nature—a shift from the gross to the subtle, from the obvious to the refined, from what announces itself loudly to what whispers in the silence.

Early in practice, progress feels more tangible and dramatic. We experience greater physical relaxation—the shoulders drop, the jaw releases, tension that’s been held for decades suddenly lets go. We feel increased energy flow—warmth, tingling, waves of sensation moving through the body. There’s a palpable sense of vitality, of things happening, of the system waking up. These experiences are real, valuable, and often necessary to build confidence that the practice is “working.”

But as practice matures and deepens, something interesting occurs: these dramatic markers become less pronounced. The fireworks subside. What felt like a rushing river of qi becomes more like morning dew—present, nourishing, but requiring a different quality of attention to perceive.

This is not regression. This is refinement.

The Progression from Gross to Subtle

Traditional cultivation texts map this progression with great precision. In Daoist internal alchemy, practitioners speak of refining jing (essence) into qi (energy), refining qi into shen (spirit), and refining shen into wu (emptiness). Each stage involves working with progressively subtler dimensions of reality, and each requires developing correspondingly subtler capacities of perception.

In Buddhist meditation, the jhanas (meditative absorptions) progress through increasingly refined states. The first jhanacontains relatively gross factors: directed thought, sustained thought, joy, happiness, and concentration. But as practice deepens through subsequent jhanas, these factors drop away one by one until only the most refined states remain—equanimity, one-pointedness, a stillness so subtle it barely qualifies as an experience at all.

The pattern is universal across contemplative traditions: what begins with obvious, tangible experiences gradually gives way to increasingly subtle perceptions that require greater sensitivity, patience, and refinement of attention to recognize.

What the Plateau Invites

What appears to be a plateau in this context may actually be an invitation to perceive more deeply—to notice subtler qualities of qi movement, breath, mind, and presence that were always there but remained beneath the threshold of our previous level of sensitivity.

We learn to sense not only what is happening but also what is absent, what is hidden within stillness, and *what is unfolding beneath the surface where the coarse attention cannot reach. This is the development of what we might call “subtle body literacy”—the ability to read the microscript of internal experience.

For example:

• Where we once felt large movements of energy, we now perceive micro-currents, barely-there tingles, the sensation of space expanding or contracting at cellular levels
• Where we once noticed only the breath’s obvious phases—inhalation, exhalation—we now detect the infinite gradations within each phase, the texture of the breath, its energetic signature, the way it interfaces with thought and emotion
• Where we once tracked only gross physical sensations, we now perceive the quality of presence itself, the “flavor” of awareness in different parts of the body, the felt-sense of consciousness touching experience

This is not imagination or making things up. Modern research on interoception—the body’s sense of its own internal state—reveals that with training, people can develop extraordinary sensitivity to physiological processes. Experienced meditators, for instance, can detect their own heartbeats with remarkable accuracy, perceive subtle shifts in body temperature, and sense changes in their internal state that would be invisible to untrained awareness.

The insula, a region of the brain intimately involved in interoceptive awareness and self-perception, shows increased activation and connectivity in long-term meditators. This isn’t just metaphorical refinement; it’s literally a reorganization of how the brain processes internal sensation, allowing access to information that was always present but previously unavailable to consciousness.

The Challenge of Subtlety

The challenge is that subtle doesn’t feel impressive. It doesn’t give the ego the satisfaction of obvious progress. When we’re learning to sense the barely-perceptible, there’s little external evidence to point to, no dramatic experiences to validate that we’re “getting somewhere.” The mind, trained by culture to value the spectacular, may interpret this subtlety as stagnation.

This is where many practitioners falter. Unable to recognize that they’ve entered a more refined level of practice, they conclude they’ve hit a dead end. They may abandon a practice that’s actually bearing fruit—fruit so subtle and refined that it doesn’t register on the crude instruments of the achievement-oriented mind.

The antidote is education: understanding that this transition to subtlety is a natural and necessary progression. And cultivation: developing the patience and sensitivity required to work with increasingly refined dimensions of experience.

Becoming Intimate with Emptiness

At the most refined levels, practice becomes intimate with what Buddhist philosophy calls śūnyatā (emptiness) and what Daoism refers to as wu (non-being). These are not nihilistic concepts but rather point to a dimension of experience so subtle that it escapes conceptual capture entirely.

We begin to notice not just the contents of awareness but awareness itself. Not just the movements of qi but the spaciousness in which movement occurs. Not just the breath but the source from which breath arises and into which it dissolves. These perceptions are so refined that describing them feels impossible—they exist at the very edge of what can be articulated.

The plateau at this level is not about developing new capacities but about releasing the last remnants of grasping, allowing perception to become so transparent, so effortless, that there’s barely a sense of “someone” doing the perceiving. This is perhaps the ultimate refinement: the perceiver and perceived merging into a single, seamless process.

Here, the plateau is not a problem to be solved but the ground of practice itself—a stable platform of subtle awareness from which even more subtle perceptions can emerge, not through doing but through allowing, not through acquiring but through releasing everything extraneous until only the essential remains.

The Invitation to Look Closer

So when the dramatic experiences fade and the plateau settles in, we might ask ourselves: What am I not yet subtle enough to perceive? What dimension of experience is inviting my attention to refine itself?

The plateau, from this perspective, is not a closed door but an open invitation—to slow down, to look closer, to listen more carefully, to feel more deeply. To discover that what seemed like emptiness is actually teeming with life, but life of such refined frequency that only the most sensitive instruments can detect it.

And we are those instruments. The practice is the tuning. The plateau is the calibration period during which our sensitivity adjusts to receive signals we couldn’t previously detect.

Night deepens—suddenly
you hear the silence breathing,
singing its dark song.

 

Essential Qualities for Navigating Plateaus

If plateaus are inevitable—and we’ve seen that they are not just inevitable but necessary—then the question becomes: What qualities support us in moving through these periods with grace rather than struggle, with wisdom rather than frustration?

Three fundamental qualities emerge as essential guides through plateau territory, each working in concert with the others to create the conditions for genuine maturation. These are not techniques to be applied but capacities to be cultivated, ways of being that gradually become second nature through patient practice.

Tolerance: The Capacity to Remain Present

Tolerance, in this context, means the capacity to stay present and open even when no immediate progress is evident. This is not passive endurance or grim acceptance, but an active, spacious allowing—a willingness to remain with what is, without needing it to be different.

This prevents frustration and resistance, allowing integration to unfold naturally at its own organic pace. When we resist the plateau, we create internal tension—the body-mind system splits into the part that wants to stay and the part that wants to leave, the part that’s practicing and the part that’s judging the practice. This internal conflict consumes tremendous energy and actually impedes the integration process we’re ostensibly trying to support.

But when we bring genuine tolerance to the plateau—when we can sit in meditation even though nothing seems to be happening, when we can practice the form even though it feels the same as yesterday—we create internal coherence. All parts of us are facing the same direction. The nervous system can relax into the work of consolidation without having to simultaneously defend against our own impatience.

The “tolerance of stillness” becomes a practice in itself, perhaps the most important practice of all. In a culture addicted to stimulation, novelty, and constant progress, the ability to remain present with apparent non-change is revolutionary. It’s a form of resistance against the tyranny of productivity, a declaration that our value doesn’t depend on measurable advancement, that being is enough without constantly becoming.

This tolerance ripens through practice. At first, it may feel forced, something we have to remind ourselves to do.  However, over time, as we repeatedly observe that integration occurs when we allow space for it, tolerance deepens into trust. We develop what might be called “metabolic faith”—a somatic confidence that the body-mind system knows how to digest experience and will do so if we stop interfering.

Perseverance: Showing Up Without Attachment

Perseverance in the context of plateaus means continued practice without attachment to results. This is not the blind persistence of stubbornness, not the grim determination to push through no matter what. Rather, it’s an intelligent and skillful perseverance grounded in trust—trust in the process, trust in the teachings, trust in one’s own deeper wisdom.

This quality fosters a deepening of commitment and maturity that transcends the beginner’s excitement or the intermediate practitioner’s ambition. The beginner practices because everything is new and fascinating. The intermediate practitioner practices to achieve goals, to get somewhere, to become something. But the mature practitioner practices because practice itself has become integral to their being—like breathing, like eating, like sleeping. It’s not done for a result but because it’s an expression of who they’ve become.

During plateaus, this kind of perseverance is tested and refined. When there’s no immediate reward, no dopamine hit of breakthrough, no validation from visible progress—why continue? The answer can’t be found in external motivation. It must come from a deeper source: the recognition that practice is not separate from life, that showing up to the cushion or the form is showing up to oneself, that the commitment is not to achieving something but to being present with what is.

Buddhist traditions speak of viriya (effort or energy) as one of the seven factors of enlightenment. But this is not ordinary effortful striving. It’s described as “right effort”—effort that’s balanced, sustainable, neither too tight nor too loose. During plateaus, right effort means showing up with full presence but without the strain of trying to force outcomes. It’s effort that’s paradoxically effortless, perseverance that’s somehow also surrender.

The Daoist principle of wuwei enters here again. True perseverance in practice has the quality of water’s persistence—it doesn’t assault obstacles but flows around them, finding the path of least resistance while never abandoning its nature. It continues not through force of will but through alignment with something deeper than will.

This is the perseverance that endures: not because we’re tough or disciplined, but because we’ve discovered that practice nourishes us even—especially—when it doesn’t give us what we think we want.

Simplicity and Depth: Returning to the Essential

The third essential quality is the willingness to return again and again to the essential foundations of practice with fresh awareness. This reveals the true gold of QigongDharma: not in the accumulation of advanced techniques but in the infinite depth of the fundamentals.

There’s a teaching story from the Zen tradition about a monk who studies with a master for years, learning hundreds of techniques, absorbing vast knowledge. Eventually, feeling he’s learned everything, he prepares to leave. The master asks, “Can you show me your breath?” The monk demonstrates various breathing techniques—Buddhist breath, Daoist breath, yogic breath, warrior breath. The master shakes his head. “No, just your breath. The one you’re breathing right now.”

The monk realizes he has no idea. He’s learned every sophisticated method but lost touch with the simple, immediate reality of breathing. He stays another ten years, this time studying nothing but the breath—not as technique but as direct experience, moment by moment, breath by breath.

This is what simplicity and depth mean: the recognition that we never exhaust the teaching of the fundamentals. Standing meditation, when practiced with full presence, contains everything. Walking with awareness is the entire path. One breath, fully experienced, unlocks all the mysteries.

During plateaus, this becomes especially relevant. Often we think we need something more—a new technique, a different teacher, a more advanced practice. But frequently what we actually need is to return to what we already know with deeper presence. To practice the basics not as remedial work but as the most advanced practice there is.

This requires humility—the humility to recognize that we haven’t actually mastered what we think we’ve learned, that there are always deeper levels of the same essential practices. It requires beginner’s mind—the capacity to approach the familiar as if encountering it for the first time, to see it fresh rather than through the lens of habit and assumption.

And it requires patience—the patience to stay with simplicity even when the ego craves complexity, to trust that depth is found not by adding more but by penetrating further into what’s already here.

The Triad Working Together

These three qualities—tolerance, perseverance, and simplicity with depth—work together synergistically. Tolerance allows us to remain present during the plateau. Perseverance keeps us practicing even when there’s no obvious reward. And simplicity with depth ensures that our practice remains rooted in essence rather than getting lost in elaboration.

Together, they create what might be called “mature practice”—practice that’s no longer dependent on external validation, no longer driven by ego’s agenda, no longer seeking to get somewhere other than where it is. Practice that’s settled, grounded, spacious, and paradoxically more transformative precisely because it’s stopped trying to transform.

This is the fruition of working skillfully with plateaus: not just getting through them, but allowing them to cultivate in us the qualities that make genuine transformation possible. The plateau, then, becomes not just a phase we endure but a crucible in which the gold of authentic practice is refined.

Stone worn by water—
not the torrent’s violence,
but the steady kiss.

The Art of Letting Go to Move Forward

A counterintuitive yet essential lesson in dealing with plateaus is learning to let go instead of pushing through.  This teaching runs so contrary to our conditioning that it often takes years to truly absorb; yet, it may be the most liberating insight that practice offers: breakthroughs arise not from more effort, but from surrendering expectations.

We’ve been taught, almost from birth, that achievement requires force. Want something?  Push harder.  Not working?  Push harder still.  This model makes sense in certain domains—lifting a heavy weight, meeting a deadline, finishing a difficult book.  But in the realm of internal cultivation, this approach not only fails to produce results; it actively prevents them.

The Breath as Teacher

The breath itself offers the most immediate and perfect model: one must fully exhale before the next inhale naturally arises. You cannot force the inhale while the lungs are still full. You cannot hasten the exhale beyond its natural rhythm without creating tension and disruption. The breath teaches us that there are cycles of emptying and filling, releasing and receiving, letting go and gathering in—and that each phase must complete before the next can authentically begin.

Try it now: take a full inhale and hold it. Now try to inhale more without exhaling first. Impossible. Uncomfortable. The body simply cannot receive new breath until it releases the old. This is not metaphor—this is direct, visceral teaching about how transformation actually works.

Similarly, in practice, there are moments when we must release striving, let the mind settle, trust the process, and allow the next wave of progress to emerge organically rather than trying to manufacture it through will alone. The Daoist texts call this ziran (自然)—naturalness, spontaneity, self-so-ness. Things arising in their own time, through their own power, without forcing.

When we’re on a plateau, we’re often holding—holding a particular idea of what should be happening, holding expectation of progress, holding tension around the apparent lack of movement. And as long as we’re holding, nothing new can enter. The exhale cannot begin until we release the breath we’re gripping.

The Wisdom of Strategic Withdrawal

Sometimes the most intelligent response to a plateau is what military strategists call “strategic withdrawal”—not defeat, not giving up, but a conscious stepping back to gain perspective, to rest, to allow resources to replenish. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu teaches that the wise general knows when to advance and when to retreat, when to engage and when to withdraw. Both are necessary movements in the larger strategy of victory.

In practice, this might look like:

• Reducing practice time temporarily rather than forcing longer sessions
• Taking a day or even a week completely away from formal practice
• Shifting to gentler, more restorative practices instead of pushing for intensity
• Allowing the practice to become playful and exploratory rather than goal-oriented

This is not abandonment. This is wisdom. It’s the recognition that sometimes we need to step back from the canvas to see the whole painting, that sometimes we’re too close to perceive what’s actually happening.

Neuroscience supports this understanding. Research on learning and memory consolidation shows that rest periods and even sleep are not passive gaps between practice sessions but active periods during which the brain reorganizes and strengthens what was learned. Taking strategic breaks doesn’t interrupt the learning process—it facilitates it. The brain needs these periods of apparent non-doing to integrate and stabilize new patterns.

Moreover, when we’re pushing too hard, we activate the sympathetic nervous system—the fight-or-flight response. This state is useful for immediate action but counterproductive for the kind of deep integration and subtle awareness that advanced practice requires. Strategic withdrawal allows the nervous system to shift into parasympathetic dominance—the rest-and-digest mode where true healing and integration occur.

The Paradox of Non-Seeking

Perhaps the deepest teaching here is what Buddhist traditions call the “paradox of non-seeking.” We begin practice with goals—to reduce stress, to find peace, to become enlightened. These goals are not wrong; they provide initial motivation. But at a certain point, the very seeking becomes the obstacle. The grasping after results creates the tension that prevents results from arising.

The Heart Sutra, one of Buddhism’s most profound texts, contains the phrase avarana-nastitvad—”because there is no obstruction.” The commentary explains: when there’s no seeking mind, no grasping, no obstruction, realization is immediate. It’s not that we acquire something new but that we stop blocking what’s already present.

This is the art of letting go: releasing not the practice itself but the attachment to outcomes, the need for the practice to deliver what we think we want. When we can practice without needing to get anywhere, paradoxically, we often find ourselves arriving at places we couldn’t have reached through striving.

The Tao Te Ching expresses this beautifully: “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped” (Chapter 48). The path deepens not through accumulation but through release—dropping expectations, dropping assumptions, dropping the very notion that we can force awakening through effort of will.

Holding Space for Emergence

When we let go during a plateau, we’re not abandoning the path. We’re creating space—space for something we can’t yet imagine to emerge, space for the body’s wisdom to work without the interference of the controlling mind, space for grace to enter.

This space-holding is an art. It requires:

• Trust that the process continues even when invisible
• Patience to allow things to ripen in their own time
• Humility to acknowledge that we don’t control the timing of breakthroughs
• Courage to release the illusion of control

In Chinese aesthetics, there’s the principle of liubai (留白)—”leaving white,” the practice of leaving empty space in paintings, calligraphy, and design. This emptiness is not absence but potentiality. It’s the space that allows the elements to breathe, that gives the eye places to rest, that paradoxically makes the composition more complete precisely because it’s incomplete.

Our practice needs liubai—strategic emptiness, intentional space, room for the unexpected to enter. The plateau can be this space if we allow it, this emptiness that’s actually full of possibility.

The Moment of Letting Go

Practically, what does letting go look like? It might be as simple as:

• Taking a deep exhale and consciously releasing the shoulders, the jaw, the agenda
• Sitting in meditation and, for this one session, deciding not to try to get anywhere at all
• Standing in qigong posture and asking, “What if this is already perfect as it is?”
• Walking away from practice for a day with full permission, without guilt

Often, it’s in these moments of release—sometimes even in the moment we decide to stop trying so hard—that the breakthrough we’d been grasping for suddenly appears. Not because we made it happen, but because we finally got out of the way and allowed it to happen.

The ancient Daoist masters understood this deeply. They practiced wuwei not as passivity but as supreme skillfulness—acting without forcing, moving without grasping, achieving by allowing. They knew that the universe has its own momentum, its own intelligence, and that human wisdom lies not in controlling this flow but in aligning with it so completely that there’s no distinction between self and flow, between effort and ease, between doing and being done through.

This is the art of letting go to move forward: discovering that the way ahead opens not when we storm the gates but when we relax our grip on how we think it should be, trusting that what needs to unfold will unfold, if we can just step out of our own way.

Clenched fist holds nothing—
open palm, and suddenly
the whole sky rests there.

 

Plateaus as Mirrors for Life Itself

Finally, we arrive at perhaps the most profound recognition: plateaus in QigongDharma mirror the plateaus encountered throughout life—in personal growth, relationships, creative endeavors, career development, and the great spiritual journey of being human. They teach patience, trust, and the ability to stay present without immediate reward.

The lessons learned on the meditation cushion or in the qigong form are not confined to those practices. They permeate everything. How we meet the plateau in practice reveals—and shapes—how we meet all of life’s inevitable periods of apparent stagnation.

The Universal Pattern

Consider the trajectory of intimate relationships. The early days bring excitement, discovery, the intoxication of new love. Everything feels effortless, charged with meaning. But inevitably—and this is not failure but maturity—relationships enter plateaus. The excitement settles. The discovery phase gives way to familiarity. Partners may wonder, Is this all there is? Have we stopped growing together?

Yet these plateaus in relationship are precisely where depth develops. The early fireworks were necessary but not sufficient. Real intimacy, the kind that endures and nourishes across decades, emerges not from constant novelty but from the patient, persistent practice of showing up—through boring Tuesday evenings, through periods when conversation feels stale, through the thousand small disappointments and recalibrations that relationship requires.

The person who’s learned to meet plateaus in practice with curiosity and patience brings these same qualities to relationship. They understand that apparent stagnation is often integration in disguise, that the absence of drama doesn’t mean the absence of depth.

Similarly with creative work: every artist, writer, and musician knows the terror of the fallow period—those stretches when nothing seems to come, when the work feels mechanical, when inspiration has apparently abandoned them. Yet these creative plateaus, when met with continued presence rather than panic, often precede the most original work. The artist who can tolerate not producing, who can continue showing up to the blank canvas or the empty page without needing immediate results, develops a relationship with creativity that transcends the tyranny of inspiration.

The writer Julia Cameron speaks of this as “filling the well”—periods when we’re not producing but absorbing, when we’re letting impressions settle and percolate in the dark, composting into something that will eventually nourish new creation. The plateau is not a wasteland but a gestation period.

Professional and Personal Growth

In career development, we encounter the same pattern. Periods of rapid advancement—promotions, new opportunities, expanding responsibilities—alternate with what can feel like stagnation. The job that once challenged us becomes routine. The skills we worked so hard to develop now feel automatic, even boring. We wonder, Am I stuck? Should I be doing something else?

But often these professional plateaus are invitations to deepen rather than abandon. To master the subtle aspects of our work that weren’t visible during the dramatic growth phases. To develop the wisdom and patience that only come through sustained engagement over time. To discover meaning not in constant advancement but in excellence for its own sake.

The person who’s learned to navigate plateaus in practice brings a mature perspective to these career questions. They’re less likely to make reactive changes out of restlessness or ego’s need for validation. They can distinguish between genuine stagnation requiring change and necessary consolidation requiring patience.

In personal growth and psychological healing, the pattern repeats. Therapy or inner work often begins with rapid insights and emotional breakthroughs. Old patterns become visible. New understandings emerge. We feel ourselves changing, evolving, becoming. But inevitably, this gives way to periods when it seems nothing is moving. We might think, I’ve dealt with this issue already. Why is it still here? Why aren’t I healed yet?

Yet psychological integration, like physical and energetic integration, requires time. Insight is only the beginning; embodiment is the work. The plateau is where we live with our new understanding long enough for it to become who we are rather than just something we know. This is the difference between intellectual understanding and transformation—and the plateau is the crucible where one becomes the other.

The Spiritual Journey

Perhaps most significantly, the plateau appears repeatedly in the spiritual journey itself. All traditions map this territory. The Christian mystics speak of “spiritual dryness” and “the dark night.” Buddhist texts describe stages of progress where practitioners feel they’ve lost everything they’d gained. Hindu teachings outline periods of sadhana (practice) where the aspirant feels abandoned by grace.

These spiritual plateaus—or “dark nights”—are not signs of failure but essential passages. They represent the dissolving of the ego’s agenda for enlightenment, the release of spiritual materialism, the movement from seeking extraordinary states to recognizing the extraordinary nature of ordinary being. The plateau strips away our romantic notions about awakening and invites us to discover what remains when all the spiritual fireworks fade.

The person who’s learned to navigate plateaus in practice is being prepared for these deeper spiritual passages. They’ve developed the capacity to remain present without needing experience to validate them, to continue without knowing where the path leads, to trust when all evidence suggests trust is foolish.

The Transferable Wisdom

What makes these parallels so significant is that the skills we develop in navigating one plateau transfer to all others. The patience cultivated waiting for physical progress to resume becomes the patience that sustains relationship through difficult periods. The trust that integration is happening beneath the surface becomes the trust that allows creative work to gestate without panic. The capacity to remain present without immediate reward becomes the capacity to show up to life itself, day after day, without needing it to be spectacular.

This is why practice is called practice. It’s not separate from life—it’s a laboratory for developing the qualities life requires. Every plateau encountered in meditation or qigong is an opportunity to strengthen the inner muscles needed for living with grace: equanimity, patience, trust, presence, and the capacity to find meaning in the apparent absence of progress.

Just as in nature, seasons of rapid growth require seasons of stillness for sustainability. The tree that never rested would exhaust itself. The seed that never lay dormant would never develop the root system to support future growth. The soil that never lay fallow would lose its fertility. These are not metaphors but descriptions of how complex living systems actually work—and we are complex living systems.

Life’s Greatest Transformations

The deepest truth is this: life’s greatest transformations often happen in the spaces between visible change. The caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly through dramatic effort visible from outside the chrysalis. Most of the transformation happens in darkness, in apparent stillness, in what looks like nothing from the outside but is actually everything on the inside.

We are all in various chrysalises throughout our lives—some small, some large, some lasting days, some lasting years. The plateau is one form of chrysalis: a protected space where profound reorganization occurs away from the scrutinizing eyes of the measuring mind.

The person who’s learned to trust plateaus in practice has learned something essential about being human: that we are not machines that should show constant linear progress, but organisms that grow in spirals and cycles, that require periods of rest as much as periods of activity, that integrate in darkness as much as we expand in light.

The Wisdom That Ripens

By embracing plateaus with patience, awareness, and insight in our formal practice, we cultivate a depth of wisdom that goes beyond technique—entering into a state of harmony with the very essence of life itself. We learn to recognize the plateau not as an enemy but as a teacher, not as punishment but as preparation, not as the end of growth but as the space where growth consolidates into genuine transformation.

This wisdom becomes who we are. It shapes how we parent, how we love, how we work, how we age, how we meet difficulty and disappointment, how we respond to the inevitable periods when life itself feels like a plateau. And it reveals that what we call “plateaus” are not interruptions in the journey of life but are the journey itself—the essential passages through which we mature from seekers of experience into beings capable of genuine presence.

QigongDharma is a living practice, and its lessons extend far beyond the mat. How one navigates a plateau in practice reflects how one meets challenges everywhere. The practice becomes life; life becomes practice. And in this seamless integration, we discover that we’ve been whole all along—we just needed the patience to notice.

Seasons teach the soul:
growth and rest are not different—
both the tree rising.

From “Enduring” to “Embracing” Plateaus

We began this exploration by examining what plateaus are—those mysterious periods of apparent stagnation that punctuate every genuine practice. We’ve journeyed through their neurological underpinnings, their energetic dimensions, their psychological challenges, and their spiritual significance. We’ve seen how they mirror life itself and how the wisdom cultivated in navigating them ripples out into every domain of human experience.

Now, as we draw these threads together, we arrive at a fundamental shift in perspective: the movement from merely enduring plateaus to genuinely embracing them.

The Transformation of Understanding

To endure is to tolerate something difficult, to bear it, to wait for it to pass. There’s an element of resistance in endurance, a subtle “no” to what is, even as we continue moving through it. We endure winter, we endure pain, we endure necessary hardships—all with the implicit understanding that these are obstacles to be gotten through on the way to something better.

But to embrace is something altogether different. To embrace is to receive fully, to welcome, to recognize value in what’s being offered. When we embrace something, we soften around it, include it, allow it to teach us. There’s a “yes” in embrace, an opening rather than a bracing against.

This shift—from enduring to embracing—marks a profound maturation in practice. It’s the difference between white-knuckling our way through difficult periods and learning to meet them with curiosity, patience, and even gratitude. It transforms the plateau from an unwelcome interruption into a valued teacher.

What Embracing Requires

Embracing plateaus requires that we:

Recognize their inevitability and necessity: Plateaus are not aberrations or signs that something has gone wrong. They are intrinsic to any genuine developmental process, as natural and necessary as the seasons, as the space between breaths, as the rest between musical notes. When we understand this deeply—not just intellectually but somatically—we stop fighting what cannot and should not be avoided.

Trust the invisible work: By now, we’ve seen the extensive evidence—from neuroscience, from somatic research, from contemplative traditions—that profound transformation occurs during periods of apparent stagnation. The fascia remodels, the neurons rewire, the energetic body reorganizes, the spirit deepens. To embrace the plateau is to trust this invisible work, even when the ego demands visible proof.

Release attachment to linear progress: Our cultural conditioning insists that development should be constantly ascending, always improving, perpetually advancing. But nature knows no such linearity. Growth spirals, cycles, advances and consolidates, expands and integrates. To embrace plateaus is to align ourselves with nature’s rhythms rather than culture’s demands.

Cultivate patience as a spiritual practice: Not the grim patience of waiting for something to be over, but the spacious patience that allows things to unfold in their own time. This patience is not passive but supremely active—it’s the patience of the gardener who has planted seeds and now tends the soil, trusts the process, and doesn’t dig up the seeds to check on their progress.

Find meaning in the present moment: When we’re focused on getting somewhere else, the present becomes merely instrumental—a means to an end, something to get through. But when we embrace the plateau, we discover that the present moment, exactly as it is, contains everything we need. Not in some abstract spiritual sense, but concretely: this breath, this sensation, this quality of awareness—this is the practice, this is the path, this is the transformation occurring right now.

The Paradox of Mastery

Here we encounter one of practice’s deepest paradoxes: true mastery emerges not from the accumulation of peak experiences and breakthrough moments, but from the profound capacity to remain present during the unremarkable stretches between them.

The master is not the one who has had the most dramatic openings, but the one who can practice on Tuesday morning with the same presence they bring on retreat. Not the one who flies highest during peak moments, but the one who remains grounded during the long plateaus. Not the one who knows the most techniques, but the one who has returned to the fundamentals so many times that simplicity has revealed its infinite depth.

This is what the Chinese call gongfu (功夫)—often translated as “kung fu” and associated with martial arts, but actually meaning “skill achieved through sustained effort over time.” True gongfu in any domain comes not from talent or dramatic breakthroughs but from the patient, persistent practice that continues through all the unremarkable days when nothing special seems to be happening.

The plateau, then, is where gongfu is actually cultivated. It’s the crucible where ego’s agenda for spectacular achievement is burned away, revealing what remains: simple presence, quiet dedication, the willingness to show up without needing reward.

The Intelligence of the Practice Itself

As we deepen our relationship with plateaus, something remarkable occurs: we begin to recognize an intelligence operating through the practice that exceeds our conscious understanding. The practice itself seems to know what we need, when we need it, and orchestrates experiences—including plateaus—with uncanny precision.

This is not magical thinking but empirical observation. After enough cycles of expansion and consolidation, breakthrough and plateau, we notice a pattern: the plateaus arrive exactly when we need to integrate what we’ve just learned. They last exactly as long as integration requires. And they release exactly when the foundation is solid enough to support the next expansion.

This intelligence is not separate from us—it is us, the deeper wisdom of the body-mind system that operates beneath the surface chatter of the thinking mind. When we embrace plateaus, we’re essentially learning to trust our own deepest intelligence, the part of us that knows how to heal, how to grow, how to transform.

This trust deepens into something the traditions call “faith”—not belief in dogma, but experiential confidence in the process itself. We’ve seen enough times that what looked like stagnation was actually preparation. We’ve felt enough times that letting go led to breakthrough. We’ve experienced enough times that patience was rewarded not with what we thought we wanted but with something deeper and more real.

This faith becomes unshakeable—not because we’re certain about outcomes, but because we’re confident in the process. We don’t know when the next breakthrough will come or what form it will take, but we know that showing up with presence, patience, and trust is all we need to do. The rest will take care of itself.

Plateaus as Gateways

When fully understood—not just conceptually but experientially, viscerally, in the marrow of our bones—plateaus transform from obstacles into gateways.

They become:

• Gateways to patience in a world that worships speed
• Gateways to trust in a culture that demands proof
• Gateways to presence in an age of constant distraction
• Gateways to depth in a society addicted to surface
• Gateways to wisdom that transcends technique
• Gateways to the profound intelligence embedded within both the practice and the practitioner

Every plateau we embrace opens these doors a little wider. Every time we choose presence over pushing, trust over forcing, patience over panic—we strengthen the very qualities that genuine transformation requires.

And gradually, almost imperceptibly, something shifts. The distinction between plateau and breakthrough begins to dissolve. We realize that they were never really separate—breakthrough is simply what we call the moment when consolidated learning becomes visible, and plateau is what we call the period when that consolidation is occurring. They’re two faces of the same process, two phases of the same cycle, equally necessary, equally valuable.

The Practice of a Lifetime

Ultimately, embracing plateaus is not a technique but a way of being. It’s how we meet not just our formal practice but all of life—with patience for the slow seasons, trust in the invisible work, presence with what is rather than grasping for what might be.

This is the fruition of genuine practice: not spectacular attainments or extraordinary states, but the capacity to be fully present with ordinary reality, to find the sacred in the mundane, to recognize that every moment—including this one, this apparently unremarkable moment of reading these words—is complete and perfect exactly as it is.

Plateaus are not interruptions in the journey of QigongDharma practice; they are the journey itself. They are where growth is quietly solidified, where wisdom deepens, where practitioners learn the art of being present without attachment. They are the essential passages through which we mature from seekers constantly reaching for more into beings capable of resting in what is.

When fully understood, embraced, and integrated, plateaus reveal the profound intelligence embedded within both practice and practitioner—an intelligence that knows exactly what we need, exactly when we need it, and guides us home to ourselves with infinite patience and perfect timing.

This is the way of QigongDharma. This is the way of life itself.

Winter’s silent teaching:
that growth and stillness are one,
both the way returning.

The seed knows secrets
the flower will never learn—
how to wait in dark.

Ten thousand plateaus,
ten thousand breakthroughs—just this:
breath entering, leaving.

Dedication

May all beings recognize the wisdom hidden within their plateaus.
May all practitioners find patience with their own unfolding.
May we all remember: the path is not somewhere else
it is here, now, in this very moment.

Research References

Neuroscience of Motor Learning & Skill Consolidation

Motor Memory Consolidation:

• Shadmehr, R., & Holcomb, H. H. (1997). Neural correlates of motor memory consolidation. Science, 277(5327), 821-825.
• Karni, A., et al. (1998). The acquisition of skilled motor performance: Fast and slow experience-driven changes in primary motor cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95(3), 861-868.
• Robertson, E. M., Pascual-Leone, A., & Press, D. Z. (2004). Awareness modifies the skill-learning benefits of sleep. Current Biology, 14(3), 208-212.

Consolidation Processes & Time Scales:

• Walker, M. P., Brakefield, T., Morgan, A., Hobson, J. A., & Stickgold, R. (2002). Practice with sleep makes perfect: Sleep-dependent motor skill learning. Neuron, 35(1), 205-211.
• Korman, M., et al. (2007). Daytime sleep condenses the time course of motor memory consolidation. Nature Neuroscience, 10(9), 1206-1213.
• Doyon, J., & Benali, H. (2005). Reorganization and plasticity in the adult brain during learning of motor skills. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15(2), 161-167.

Rapid Consolidation & Neural Replay:

• Bönstrup, M., et al. (2019). A rapid form of offline consolidation in skill learning. Current Biology, 29(8), 1346-1351.
• Buch, E. R., et al. (2021). Consolidation of human skill linked to waking hippocampo-neocortical replay. Cell Reports, 35(10), 109193.

Working Memory & Cognitive Processes in Motor Learning:

• Anguera, J. A., Reuter-Lorenz, P. A., Willingham, D. T., & Seidler, R. D. (2010). Contributions of spatial working memory to visuomotor learning. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(9), 1917-1930.
• Seidler, R. D., et al. (2013). Neurocognitive contributions to motor skill learning: The role of working memory. Journal of Motor Behavior, 45(6), 445-453.

Neuroplasticity & Structural Changes:

• Doyon, J., et al. (2009). Contributions of the basal ganglia and functionally related brain structures to motor learning. Behavioural Brain Research, 199(1), 61-75.
• Floyer-Lea, A., & Matthews, P. M. (2004). Changing brain networks for visuomotor control with increased movement automaticity. Journal of Neurophysiology, 92(4), 2405-2412.

Fascia, Interoception & Somatic Awareness

Fascia as Sensory Organ:

• Schleip, R., et al. (2012). Fascia is able to contract in a smooth muscle-like manner and thereby influence musculoskeletal mechanics. Manual Therapy, 17(4), 291-296.
• Stecco, C., et al. (2008). Histological study of the deep fasciae of the limbs. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 12(3), 225-230.

Interoception & Body Awareness:

• Craig, A. D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(8), 655-666.
• Craig, A. D. (2009). How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 59-70.
• Critchley, H. D., et al. (2004). Neural systems supporting interoceptive awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 7(2), 189-195.

Interoception in Mental Health & Practice:

• Khalsa, S. S., et al. (2018). Interoception and mental health: A roadmap. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 3(6), 501-513.
• Farb, N. A., Segal, Z. V., & Anderson, A. K. (2013). Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(1), 15-26.

Somatic Experiencing & Trauma:

• Payne, P., Levine, P. A., & Crane-Godreau, M. A. (2015). Somatic experiencing: Using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 93.

Contemplative Neuroscience & Meditation

Default Mode Network & Meditation:

• Brewer, J. A., et al. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20254-20259.
• Garrison, K. A., et al. (2015). Meditation leads to reduced default mode network activity beyond an active task. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 15(3), 712-720.

Brain Network Changes:

• Hasenkamp, W., & Barsalou, L. W. (2012). Effects of meditation experience on functional connectivity of distributed brain networks. Wellcome Open Research, 6, 80.
• Mooneyham, B. W., et al. (2017). States of mind: Characterizing the neural bases of focus and mind-wandering through dynamic functional connectivity. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(3), 495-506.

Meditation & Neural Plasticity:

• Hölzel, B. K., et al. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191(1), 36-43.
• Fox, K. C., et al. (2014). Is meditation associated with altered brain structure? A systematic review and meta-analysis of morphometric neuroimaging in meditation practitioners. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 43, 48-73.

DMN as Therapeutic Target:

• Ramirez-Barrantes, R., et al. (2019). Default mode network, meditation, and age-associated brain changes: What can we learn from the impact of mental training on well-being as a psychotherapeutic approach? Neural Plasticity, 2019, 7067592.
• Simon, R., & Engström, M. (2015). The default mode network as a biomarker for monitoring the therapeutic effects of meditation. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 776.

Classical & Philosophical Sources

Buddhist Texts:

• Satipatthana Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 10) – The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
• Anapanasati Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 118) – Mindfulness of Breathing
• The Five Hindrances (nivarana) – Pali Canon, Samyutta Nikaya 46.37
• The Seven Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhanga) – Pali Canon
• Buddhaghosa. (5th century CE). Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification)

Daoist Texts:

• Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching), attributed to Laozi (4th-6th century BCE)
  • Especially Chapters 37, 48, 81 on Wu Wei
• Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) (4th-3rd century BCE)
  • Chapter 3: “The Secret of Caring for Life” (Butcher Ding story)
  • Chapter 13: “The Way of Heaven” (Tiandao)
• Neiye (Inward Training) – 4th century BCE text on breath cultivation and qi
• I Ching (Yi Jing) – Book of Changes

Secondary Scholarly Sources:

• Slingerland, E. (2003). Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. Oxford University Press.
• Ames, R. T., & Hall, D. L. (2003). Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation. Ballantine Books.

Additional Relevant Research

Developmental Psychology:

• Piaget, J. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. Basic Books.
• Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (2006). Dynamic development of action and thought. In Handbook of Child Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 313-399).

Polyvagal Theory & Nervous System:

• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W.W. Norton & Company.

Creative Process:

• Cameron, J. (1992). The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

Additional Reading

For those interested in exploring these topics further:

On Practice & Plateaus:

• Gallwey, W. T. (1974). The Inner Game of Tennis. Random House.
• Leonard, G. (1991). Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment. Dutton.

On Embodiment & Somatic Practice:

• Johnson, D. H. (Ed.). (1995). Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment. North Atlantic Books.
• Fogel, A. (2009). The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense. W.W. Norton & Company.

On Contemplative Traditions:

• Goleman, D., & Davidson, R. J. (2017). Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. Avery.
• Cousins, L. S. (2022). Meditations of the Pali Tradition (edited by Sarah Shaw). Wisdom Publications.

May this work serve all beings on their path of practice and awakening.

What the Research Shows:

1. Neuroscience of Motor Learning & Consolidation:

1. • Motor skills consolidate through distinct phases: fast learning (within-session), consolidation (requiring hours), and slow learning (delayed gains over time)
   • Newly formed motor skills exist in a fragile state initially, requiring a consolidation period of several hours to become stable
   • Memory consolidation can occur within seconds during short rest periods, with neural replay of practiced memory traces happening during breaks
   • Working memory and cognitive processes play crucial roles in early motor learning stages

1. Fascia & Somatic Intelligence:

1. • Fascia contains up to seven times more interoceptors than proprioceptors, making it crucial for emotional and physical awareness
   • Interoception—internal body awareness—is linked to the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, affecting sense of self and emotional regulation
   • Fascia is now recognized as the body’s largest sensory organ, involved in movement, pain, interoception, and emotional processing

1. Contemplative Neuroscience:

1. • Experienced meditators show reduced default mode network (DMN) activity—the network associated with mind-wandering and self-referential processing
   • Mindfulness meditation increases functional connectivity between default mode, salience, and central executive networks
   • DMN alterations participate in cognitive decline, while meditation may regulate the DMN as a neuroprotective strategy

1. Classical Wisdom Traditions:

1. • Buddhist: The Five Hindrances and Seven Factors of Enlightenment; jhana stages; the importance of patience and equanimity
   • Daoist Wu Wei: effortless action arising from alignment with Dao, not from cultivated skill but as a gift of oneness
   • Wu Wei as both the manner in which the Way generates the cosmos and the method of effective governance—doing nothing yet nothing left undone.

I am considering adding:

1. Temporal Neuroscience: How different timescales of learning (seconds, hours, days, months) map onto your understanding of plateaus  Livia Kohn’s work on Time
2. Polyvagal Theory: The vagus nerve’s role in regulation and how it connects to fascia and practice states  – a ton of stuff out there, and some good
3. Embodied Cognition: How bodily states shape consciousness and learning.  I have written and practice for years now
4. Adding Classical Poetry: Tang Dynasty poets on practice, Zen koans on breakthrough moments, Buddhist verses on patience, etc