Ancient Qi, Body Resources, and the Flow of Creativity
In clinic lately, I’ve been noticing something remarkable: symptoms often shift not through analysis, but through felt, somatic awareness.
Tightness, bloating, heat, tension, anxiety, these are not just problems to solve; they are signals that the body is asking to be noticed, acknowledged, and moved.
From a Chinese medicine perspective, Qi and Blood are more than physiological substances, they are our resources, the energy and vitality the body draws on to meet life’s demands.
When we carry old emotions, unspoken words, or unresolved grief, these resources become tied up. The body is still performing, still functioning, but it is working with less energy than it could have.
This is where the wisdom of Daniel Keown’s The Spark in the Machine becomes illuminating. He describes how, before the nervous system even exists, the embryo is already communicating through a bio-electric, fascial intelligence.
Meridians, the channels of Chinese medicine, trace the same embryological pathways. In essence, the Qi our medicine works with is an ancient, original intelligence, a resource that predates thought and reasoning.
When we bring attention to the body in this way, we create a space for those resources to be returned to circulation.
In a recent session, a client presented with anxiety and digestive tension. Bloating, heat, and chest tightness would arise in social situations, even without food. Certain thoughts triggered a lump in the throat, and the jaw was locked in tension.
I invited her to gently release her jaw. Almost immediately, I noticed colour return to her cheeks, the chest and throat softened, and the gripping dissolved. The stored Qi and Blood that had been called on to hold the old tension began to flow again. As the body let go, some long-held, unspoken emotion surfaced.
Spontaneously she expressed words toward a family member she had never voiced.
As the tears faded, something remarkable happened: a spark of creativity. She had been struggling with a work project, and suddenly the solution appeared effortlessly.
In twenty minutes, what was previously bound up in the body’s resources had returned to circulation, available to fuel insight, inspiration, and life rather than being tied up in protective holding.
This is the profound lesson of working with Qi as both resource and intelligence.
When emotions are allowed to move through the body, when attention is given with kindness and presence, the deeper layers of Qi, the original, embryological, body-intelligence are freed. What was once locked in tension becomes vitality, creativity, and life.
In our bodies, health is not binary.
It’s a continuum. Sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, often intensified during perimenopause, relationship transitions, or major life changes.
And at every stage, the same principle applies:
When we attend to ourselves, allow emotions to move, and meet the body with gentle presence, the ancient resources of Qi are returned to us.
This is how the body heals itself, how creativity is restored, and how vitality flows again.
Sometimes the most profound work doesn’t happen in thought or analysis, it happens in the body, in the felt experience of release and return, guided by the oldest intelligence we carry.
With love,
Anny
