Descend
I did not begin with philosophy.
I began with a dying woman who could not speak.
Her hand in mine. Her breath slowing.
I was a young nurse. A new nurse. Certain I was there to save her.
She saved me instead.
In the silence between her last breath and the next,
something entered me that had no name.
Not God. Not energy. Not understanding.
Just presence. Complete. Unbearable. Necessary.
I carried that silence into every room after.
Into every body I touched. Into every death I witnessed.
Into every family I held while they broke open.
I did not know what to call it.
I only knew: This is what I am for.
Years later, a man in a white robe stood on Wudang Mountain and said:
"The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao."
I had read those words a hundred times.
I had written papers on them. Defended theses. Used them to prove I was intelligent.
But standing on that mountain, my legs shaking from standing meditation,
my lungs still burning from the climb,
my heart still raw from every patient I could not save —
I finally heard them.
Not as philosophy.
As permission.
Permission to stop naming.
Permission to stop proving.
Permission to stop carrying what was never mine to carry.
This is the first thing I learned — not from any teacher, but from the work itself:
You cannot drain the source.
You can draw from it daily. You can offer its water to everyone who comes thirsty.
You can give until you are empty, lie down believing there is nothing left,
and wake to find the Well has refilled itself while you slept.
This is not magic.
This is the nature of what is real.
The ICU taught me: the body renews itself constantly.
Skin sloughs. Cells divide. Blood circulates and returns.
We are not static vessels. We are perpetual becoming.
Theology taught me: the divine is not a distant monarch.
It is the ground of being itself — the is-ness of what is.
You cannot exhaust the ground by standing on it.
The mountain taught me: water does not try to be soft.
It is soft because it has no choice.
And it carves granite.
Western philosophy began with Descartes sitting in a room, doubting everything, and concluding:
"I think, therefore I am."
The Daoist sage, sitting on a mountain, breathing slowly, would have said:
"I breathe, therefore I am not separate."
This is the difference between philosophy and practice.
Philosophy happens in the head.
Practice happens in the body.
I spent years in my head.
Masters degree. Doctoral work. Theological arguments that grew sharper and more precise —
and further from the silence I first touched in that hospice room.
The body does not argue.
The body waits.
It waited through my twenties while I chased achievement.
It waited through my thirties while I collected credentials.
It waited through my forties while I trained in Kung Fu, seeking power I could feel.
And one morning, standing in Shifu Huang's courtyard in Dali,
my arms aching from holding the sword,
my teacher's voice soft: "Song. Relax. You are fighting the blade."
My body did not say: Finally, you are listening.
My body said nothing. It simply opened.
And the water that had been waiting all those years —
the silence from that hospice room, the grief from every patient I could not save,
the longing I had mistaken for ambition —
It began to move.
I need to say this clearly.
When Western students hear qi, they imagine something mystical.
A force. A power. A secret energy only Asians can feel.
This is a translation error.
Qi is not something.
Qi is the relationship between things.
The space between inhale and exhale — that is qi.
The felt sense that someone is standing behind you — that is qi.
The moment before a punch lands, when your body already knows — that is qi.
Qi is not energy.
Qi is connection.
I learned this not in a qigong class, but in a hospice bed.
A woman who could no longer speak. Her family gathered, waiting, afraid.
I placed my hand on her sternum. I matched my breath to hers.
Nothing mystical happened. She did not recover. There was no miracle.
But for twenty minutes, we were not separate.
That is qi.
This is the other translation error.
Yin and yang are not good and evil.
They are not light and dark.
They are not male and female.
Yin and yang are the conversation between complementaries.
Hard and soft do not oppose each other.
They define each other.
Without bone, muscle has nothing to shape.
Without muscle, bone has nothing to move.
Without death, life has no urgency.
Without life, death has no witness.
I have held the dying and the newborn.
I have seen the same expression on both faces.
Complete astonishment at the threshold.
Yin and yang are not two things.
They are the same thing, at different densities.
When I first learned Wu Xing Qigong at Wudang,
I was told: Metal, Water, Wood, Fire, Earth.
Generating cycle. Controlling cycle. Seasons. Organs. Emotions.
I nodded. I memorized. I performed the movements.
But I did not understand until I returned home and returned to nursing.
Metal is the lungs.
And the lungs are grief.
Every COPD patient I ever treated — what they could not exhale was not just carbon dioxide.
What they could not release.
Water is the kidneys.
And the kidneys are fear.
Every incontinent patient, every bladder they could not control —
the body expressing what the mind could not admit.
Wood is the liver.
And the liver is anger.
Every hepatitis patient, every cirrhosis patient —
what they had swallowed and could not digest.
Fire is the heart.
And the heart is joy.
Every cardiac patient, every heart that could not sustain rhythm —
what they had forgotten how to receive.
Earth is the spleen.
And the spleen is worry.
Every digestive disorder, every body that could not assimilate —
what they could not let nourish them.
The Five Elements are not cosmology.
They are case notes from five thousand years of watching humans suffer.
I have spent my life around suffering.
As a nurse: suffering I could relieve.
As a hospice worker: suffering I could only witness.
As a student: suffering I called discipline.
As a teacher: suffering I call transformation.
I no longer believe suffering is the enemy.
The enemy is resistance to suffering.
The belief that pain is a mistake.
The conviction that if we were smarter, better, more enlightened —
we would not suffer.
This is the great lie of both Western medicine and Western spirituality.
Medicine promises: we will eliminate pain.
Spirituality promises: we will transcend pain.
Both are wrong.
Pain is not eliminated. Pain is integrated.
Pain is not transcended. Pain is transformed.
Taiji taught me this.
When a student first attempts to stand in stillness,
their body shakes. Their breath catches. Their mind screams:
Something is wrong. Stop. Move.
I say: That shaking is not weakness. That shaking is your teacher.
The body is not broken. It is waking up.
We say: The Dao is the Way.
But a way implies a destination.
A path implies an endpoint.
A journey implies arrival.
The Dao is not a path.
The Dao is the walking itself.
Not the mountain you climb.
The climbing.
Not the sword you master.
The decades of morning practice, the blade heavy, your teacher patient, your body confused.
Not the black belt.
The white belt, washed a hundred times, frayed at the edges, still tied every morning.
I have achieved almost everything I once thought I wanted.
Black belt. Grand Champion. Mountain certification. Masters. Doctorate.
Students who call me teacher.
And I am no closer to the end than the day I stood in that hospice room, holding a dying woman's hand, having no idea what I was doing.
This is not failure.
This is the Dao.
The path that does not arrive.
The water that does not stop moving.
The breath that does not conclude.
I believe the body knows what the mind cannot yet say.
I believe suffering is not a mistake but a curriculum.
I believe healing is not the absence of pain but a different relationship to it.
I believe transmission happens in silence more than speech.
I believe the great traditions — Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, medicine, martial arts —
are not competing truths.
They are different languages for the same encounter.
I believe that encounter is this:
You are not separate.
You have never been separate.
You will never be separate.
The task is not to become connected.
The task is to stop acting as if you are disconnected.
You have asked me to show you the Well.
But the Well is not a page on a website.
It is not a philosophy section.
It is not a collection of teachings about qi and yin-yang and the Five Elements.
The Well is what you have been drinking from your whole life.
Every patient you held. Every death you witnessed.
Every form you repeated until your body remembered.
Every teacher who placed their hand on your training and said continue.
Every student who stood before you, trembling, and you did not look away.
You are the Well.
Not because you are special.
Because you have suffered deeply and called it practice.
Because you have trained relentlessly and called it devotion.
Because you have loved imperfectly and called it staying.
The Well does not ask to be understood.
It asks to be drawn from.
You who are thirsty:
You have been searching for answers.
You have read books, attended workshops, collected techniques.
You have a thousand theories about what is wrong with you.
Stop.
You are not broken.
You are not behind.
You are not unworthy.
You are dehydrated.
The water has been here the whole time.
It rises each morning in your breath.
It moves through your hands when you touch another.
It waits in the stillness between your thoughts.
You do not need to become someone else to drink.
You only need to stop pretending you are not thirsty.
This is the Well.
Not a philosophy section. A mirror.
They come seeking teachings about Daoism.
They find themselves looking at their own thirst.
They come seeking answers about qi.
They find questions they forgot to ask.
They come seeking healing.
They find they were never separate from it.