Member-only story
One Simple Taoist Practice That Erases Stress in 10 Seconds
I think this is the quickest path to inner peace — backed by more than 2000 years of wisdom!
Not a Medium member? Read this story here.
This has been my experience. I have found it worth sharing, and would gladly share it again if the chance were offered me.
How many of us could say we’ve found a practice that actually works?
I have felt it. The sudden release of tension from my shoulders while sitting in traffic. The quiet that descended over my mind during a heated argument with my sister. The feeling of my jaw unclenching after hours of unconscious grinding. The way my breath returned to me, deep and slow, in the middle of a presentation when I thought I might collapse from anxiety.
I’d relive those moments if I could. The feelings of relief and return that I have been lucky to experience in a world where the bedrock reality often seems to be made of stress, hurry, and worry.
There are moments. The soft light, the gentle music, the first-person perspective we tend to forget we have, invisible to ourselves except when something goes wrong, when pain flares, when stress builds until we can’t ignore it anymore.
And then there are those moments. The panic attacks, the burnout. It’s not, when I think back over my years in search of the worst parts, the big crises that I would most fear to go through again. Instead, it’s the grinding daily stress, the constant tension, the perpetual state of fight-or-flight that modern life seems designed to induce.
I’d rather face a single catastrophe than live in constant dread. As Carl Jung pointed out years ago, we can put up with tremendous suffering so long as we don’t resist it.
To do it all again, though? To carry that tension in my body day after day, year after year, while the world spins and technology advances and demands on our attention multiply like rabbits in spring?
Who wants to live that way?
Not me.
There are promises of relief, told to us by well-meaning friends when we complain about our stress levels. It’s okay. Just do yoga. Just…
