The long course of practice begins in what feels like a solid world. One enters tai chi or qigong within the coordinates of matter, space, and time, even if the accompanying philosophy speaks in more elusive terms. At first there is no attempt to escape the solidity of things. The ground is underfoot, the body is weight and extension, the mind interprets through rational habits. Skepticism is natural. One may think of qi as something electrical, or magnetic, and such comparisons are tempting, yet always unsatisfying. They cling to the physical too tightly, measuring what resists being measured.

Still, the benefits are undeniable. Tangible shifts in perception appear, even if the instruments of science register nothing proportional. The rational mind, faced with experiences that cannot be dismissed, extends its scaffolding in search of a way to account for them. It resists, but eventually allows that something beyond matter might be at play. This loosens a knot. Where once the mind blocked itself with disbelief, now it opens a path for experience to deepen.

For a time, the mind only trades one set of symbols for another. Where once it clung to solidity, it now clings to non-time, non-space, non-matter. The forms change, the thinking remains. This stage is not without value. It gives coherence and momentum to practice, but it is not the destination. The aim is not to think in new terms, but to cease imposing terms altogether.

Within practice, certain recurring modes reveal themselves. In one, attention gathers in the head with almost obsessive force. Every motion is monitored, as if an inner eye insisted on correcting each detail. This brings a kind of precision, yet it also reinforces the very faculty of control that the practice seeks to quiet. The body moves, but the effort is concentrated in the watcher behind the eyes. In another, attention is absent altogether. Movements are carried out while the mind sits elsewhere, distracted, drifting toward the sofa, the television, the noise of ordinary life. The body goes through motions, but there is no one present to inhabit them. This mode looks careless from the outside, yet it has the small virtue of not feeding the knot of control lodged in the head. A third mode is different. Here there is no forced observer. Attention withdraws from its habitual place, and once that plug is pulled, coordination seems to settle by itself in a lower field, close to the navel. It is not that one chooses to focus there. Rather, once the grip of the cerebral eye is released, balance finds its own point. Movements arise from this ground with a coherence that does not need correction, as if the body were discovering its natural center without effort.

This shift changes the quality of movement itself. Externally it may resemble ordinary biomechanics, but inwardly it is governed by other springs. Each gesture carries a compensatory echo elsewhere, not in a linear symmetry but through a web of counterbalances. It is as if the body were a figure held together by elastic bands, every stretch answered by a subtle pull in return. The sense of a fixed body dissolves into a stream of sensation, coordinated not by will but by an underlying order that feels more fundamental than choice.

The result is a kind of gravitational balance. The sense of weight gathers as a unified pull downward, as if every line of the body were drawn toward the ground at once. If the movement rushes forward, one lives a fraction ahead, in the future. If it drags, one lingers in the past. But when each posture fills exactly the space given to it in that instant, time loosens its hold. What fades is not the external clock but the appearance of time as something binding. The flow continues, yet the perceptual knot that made it seem like an independent force is gone.

Psychedelic states highlight the contrast. Their entry is abrupt, and the world presents itself in profusion, ornamental and saturated with color. In those moments, one understands intuitively why Renaissance frescoes overflow with detail or why Indian iconography multiplies divinities and ornaments. Each burst of perception seeks a form rich enough to contain it, and culture supplies the imagery, yet the link feels almost automatic, as effortless as recognizing the red of a fruit without debate. By contrast, the experience of alignment is less ornate, quieter in its phenomenology. It is not necessarily less profound, for what is revealed lies beneath vision and touch, in the very structure of perception itself.

In that state, matter and spirit alike lose their separate weight. Spirituality is only a name for the harmony felt when touching what does not emerge because it already is. Even the aura of emotion that so often colors the notion of “the spiritual” subsides. What remains is a direct sense of participation in the ground from which all phenomena rise.

Rooting is often described in ways that capture the imagination of beginners. Manuals speak of roots growing from the soles, or of a grip upon the ground as if the earth itself were holding the body in place. Such images have their usefulness, but they remain representations. What is encountered is not a new organ sprouting from the body but a tuning of perception. The body feels heavier near the ground, as if its density were drawn into the few centimeters above the floor. It is not that the feet grow roots, but that one discovers a capacity always present, normally veiled by distraction. Most of the time we experience ourselves as less stable than we actually are. The practice exposes the opposite.

This is why metaphors of magnets or weighted shoes often arise. They convey the sense that stability is not an addition but a potential revealed. The body, when left to its own balance, no longer scatters its weight upward into the head but settles downward, becoming compact and steady. Animals show this without effort. A goat poised on a near-vertical cliff, or a cat walking a narrow railing, does not debate its balance. There is no narrative of fear or calculation, only a system attuned so closely to its environment that imbalance barely appears. What seems miraculous is in fact the natural expression of rooting at work.

It is possible to rationalize such feats in neurological terms, to speak of brains fine-tuned for micro-adjustments, and such explanations are not false. Yet they are only one abstraction among others. In the deeper current of practice, all such models are themselves phenomena, ways in which awareness renders its own operations visible to itself. To root is not to acquire a new faculty but to allow the ground to act through us, the world and the body becoming avatars of the same field. With other living beings, the resonance is often immediate. Push hands with another practitioner illustrates this perfectly, a dialogue where balance and imbalance are shared rather than opposed. With inert matter, the dialogue is less apparent, yet the principle remains. Even a falling piano belongs to the same field. One who is attuned may not defy its weight, but stands at an advantage by inhabiting more of the situation than reflex or panic would normally allow.