A Few More Words … Eighth Month

The following is the concluding talk I gave during our Tracing the Wall workshop on August 22, 2026. The workshop has since been developed into Tracing the Wall: The Complete Internal Cultivation Method, now available as a self-study program through the Sanctuary of Tao. I’m sharing the talk here because its discussion of practice, refinement, and cultivation applies far beyond Tracing the Wall itself.

Why Tracing the Wall Is a Complete Internal Cultivation Practice

I hope by now you can see that Tracing the Wall is a very good exercise. It has a lot of health benefits, and there are a lot of things we can develop through it.

But I want to come back to something that’s actually in the title of this workshop/program.

Tracing the Wall is a complete internal cultivation practice.

What does that mean?

I’ve been talking about this a lot lately because there is a difference between simply doing an exercise and actually cultivating through an exercise.

Cultivation means that you take a method and keep working with it. You keep returning to it, paying attention to it, refining it. And over time, something begins to change in you.

In Taoist practice, we often talk about cultivating the Three Treasures: Jing, Qi, and Shen.

Jing is our physical and vital foundation.

Qi is our breath, our energy, our vitality.

Shen is our spirit, our awareness, our conscious mind. And with that, we have Yi—mind-intention—the ability to direct that awareness.

So, in very simple terms, we’re working with the body, the breath and energy, and the mind.

Tracing the Wall gives us a way to work with all three.

Refining the Body

Physically, we’ve worked with a number of stances that exercise the tendons and help pump blood through the action of the calves. We’ve worked with how we distribute weight through the legs so we can distinguish between being substantial, or rooted, and insubstantial, or empty. And we’ve experienced how those Yin and Yang qualities continually shift as we sway from one leg to the other.

But one of the most important qualities we’ve worked with is what the Chinese call Sung.

Stuart described Sung as being relaxed but alert.

A cat is a good example.

A cat can be lying there looking completely relaxed, almost like it’s asleep. But it’s still aware of everything around it. A little movement, a sound, and in an instant it’s ready to respond.

That’s the quality we’re looking for.

Relaxed, but alert.

Not collapsed or limp. Not holding unnecessary tension. The body is soft, but the awareness is there.

And Sung isn’t just about feeling relaxed. That softness is part of what allows us to develop Jin, or what Stuart called intrinsic energy.

Intrinsic energy is different from ordinary muscular strength.

Stuart sometimes compared the body to a whip. A whip is soft. It isn’t rigid. But when it’s used properly, tremendous energy can move through it and come out at the tip.

That’s what we’re trying to develop in the body.

We’re learning to become softer and more relaxed while at the same time becoming more connected and more capable of expressing energy.

And that gives us something we can refine for years.

Maybe today you noticed tension in your shoulders. With more practice, you may notice that you’re gripping with your toes.

Then you may notice some hitch in your hips, or realize that you’re forcing the breath, or using much more muscular effort than you actually need.

Every time we discover and release unnecessary tension, we make it easier for the body to work as one unit and for intrinsic energy to express itself.

As the body becomes more yielding and relaxed, we can begin to rely less on external muscular force and more on intrinsic energy.

So even something as simple as standing gives us something to work with for a very long time.

Refining the Breath and Qi

The same thing is true with the breath.

Today we’ve coordinated the breathing with the movement. In the beginning, that takes some conscious attention.

We have to remember when to inhale and exhale. We have to coordinate the movement with the breath.

But with practice, we don’t want to have to think about every breath.

The movement and breathing begin to synchronize more naturally.

Then we can begin to refine the breath itself—to make it smoother, gentler, and finer.

We’re not trying to force the breath into some particular state.

We’re gradually practicing in a way that allows the breath to become more subtle on its own.

That’s an important distinction.

We’re not trying to make something happen. We’re creating the conditions in which something can happen.

And that is really what cultivation is.

Refining the Mind

Then there’s the mind.

When you first learned these movements today, your mind had plenty to do.

You’re thinking about the position of your feet, where to settle your weight, trying to remember the different stances, and keeping track of all the variations.

That’s completely normal. You’re learning the method.

But after you’ve practiced enough, you won’t have to focus on remembering what to do.

And that’s when something internal can begin to happen.

Instead of using all your attention to perform the exercise, you can begin to notice what is actually happening while you’re doing it.

This is something we’ve been working with in my weekly Sunday classes, and I think three words explain it well:

Returning. Following. Observing.

Returning is simply recognizing that you’ve left the practice and coming back.

This includes all the ways your mind wanders away from what you’re doing, and it isn’t a failure on your part.

It’s an opportunity to return to the method.

Returning is your practice at that moment. You keep training the body and mind to come back and stay on track.

Following means staying with the method.

You’re following the movement.

You’re following the breathing.

You’re following the weight transfer.

You’re not constantly starting over. You’re remaining with it.

And then there’s observing.

You’re noticing what’s happening without immediately trying to change it.

Observing helps you realize when you’ve gone astray so you can return. Or, when you’re in a groove and following the method, observing helps you notice where you’re still holding too much tension or how the breath is subtly changing as you continue the exercise.

Returning, following, and observing are all part of refining the practice.

And over time, they begin to change the nature of the practice.

At first, we’re mostly concerned with doing the exercise correctly.

Then we begin to pay more attention to what is happening through the exercise.

And eventually, we become more interested in what is happening within us.

That is where an exercise starts becoming a cultivation practice.

One Practice, Over Time

This is why I think the story of Mr. Gao is so important.

He practiced Tracing the Wall for about forty-five minutes every morning and evening for decades.

Stuart described his extraordinary rooting, health, vitality, balance, and internal power. He said he couldn’t push Mr. Gao over. He couldn’t even budge him.

But Mr. Gao hadn’t simply been doing the same beginner’s exercise for decades.

He had cultivated Tracing the Wall for decades.

He kept returning to the same foundation and finding more in it.

And I think that’s one of the important lessons Stuart took from his experience with him.

We sometimes think progress means continually learning more and more.

And sometimes that’s appropriate.

But cultivation can also mean taking one very good exercise and discovering how deep it actually goes.

You don’t necessarily need more.

You can go deeper into what you already have.

That’s What Makes It Cultivation

So when I call Tracing the Wall a complete internal cultivation practice, this is what I mean.

Through this one practice, we can work with the Three Treasures—Jing, Qi, and Shen.

We can develop Sung.

We can refine the body and learn to release unnecessary tension.

We can coordinate movement and breathing and gradually refine the breath.

We can cultivate Qi and intrinsic energy.

And we can refine our attention through returning, following, and observing.

All of these things begin to affect one another.

As we release unnecessary tension, the body becomes more connected, and our movement becomes more efficient and natural.

The breath can become more subtle.

The mind can begin to settle.

And as the mind settles, we become more sensitive to what’s actually happening internally.

That’s cultivation.

The practice starts with something external, but gradually it becomes more internal.

The movements may look almost exactly the same from the outside.

But what’s happening inside can become quieter, subtler, more integrated, and more natural.

And that’s why something as seemingly simple as Tracing the Wall can become a lifelong practice.

You can keep coming back to it. You can keep finding something in it. You can keep going deeper.

And ultimately, that’s what I mean when I say: Tracing the Wall is a complete method of internal cultivation.

—Patrick