“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
Lao Tzu
One of the greatest lessons I have learned as a parent is that the best way to raise children is to raise yourself first.
Children rarely become what we tell them to be. More often, they become what they see. They watch how we respond to challenges, how we manage disappointment, how we treat ourselves, and how we move through the world.
If we want our children to be conscious, present, resilient, and compassionate, we must first cultivate those qualities within ourselves.
This sounds simple in theory. In practice, it can be one of life’s greatest challenges.
Showing Up When You Don’t Feel Like It
People often ask me what helped me continue moving forward through some of the most difficult years of my life.
The answer is not motivation.
Motivation comes and goes.
What carried me through was something deeper: willingness.
Willpower is perhaps one of the greatest generators of energy. Through willingness, we can access reserves of strength we never knew existed. Not because life becomes easier, but because we become stronger.
When I first discovered Tai Chi, I knew it had the potential to make me calmer, more balanced, more resilient, and more capable of handling stress. But simply knowing something is beneficial does not create change.
The transformation begins when we show up.
There were many mornings when I did not want to practise. My body felt exhausted. My mind supplied an endless list of excuses.
You’re too tired.
You can do it tomorrow.
One day won’t matter.
Some days, I listened to those voices. Most days, I practised anyway.
Over time, I realized something important: the excuses never completely disappear. But neither does the quieter voice that reminds us of our purpose.
Every day presents us with a choice about which voice we strengthen.
Becoming the Example
After my husband’s cancer diagnosis and throughout his illness, I became increasingly aware that my children were watching how I responded to adversity.
I wanted to accompany them into adulthood. I wanted them to grow into kind, conscious, emotionally intelligent young men.
But I also realized that I could not teach presence while living in distraction.
I could not teach resilience while neglecting my own well-being.
I could not teach awareness if I was not practising awareness myself.
I had to first be before I could teach them how to be.
Tai Chi became one of the tools that helped me cultivate those qualities. As I deepened my practice, I learned about what researchers at Harvard Medical School describe as the “eight active ingredients” of Tai Chi, a framework developed by Dr. Peter Wayne to explain how Tai Chi supports health and well-being. These ingredients are awareness, intention, structural integration, active relaxation, strengthening and flexibility, natural breathing, social support, and embodied spirituality. [health.harvard.edu]
What fascinated me was that these principles were not just things I practised during class. They gradually became tools for everyday living.
- Awareness
Awareness is the foundation of all growth.
Tai Chi teaches us to pay attention: to our breath, our posture, our emotions, and the present moment. Harvard identifies awareness as the first active ingredient because it underpins all the others.
When my husband became seriously ill, my mind constantly wanted to jump into the future.
What will happen next?
How much time do we have?
How will the children cope?
Tai Chi repeatedly brought me back to the only place where life actually happens: here and now.
- Intention
Where attention goes, energy flows.
Tai Chi teaches practitioners to move with clear intention. Visualisation, imagery, and purposeful movement help shape both mind and body.
During difficult times, my intention became simple:
To stay present.
To remain openhearted.
To become stronger than the circumstances.
Some days, that intention was enough to carry me through.
- Structural Integration
Tai Chi teaches alignment.
Not only physical alignment, but alignment between our thoughts, actions, and values.
Grief has a way of pulling us apart. Tai Chi helped me reconnect. Every time I stood upright, rooted through my feet, I was reminded that stability begins from within.
- Active Relaxation
One of the most misunderstood qualities of strength is relaxation.
Many of us spend our lives carrying unnecessary tension in our shoulders, jaws, thoughts, and emotions.
Tai Chi teaches active relaxation: remaining soft without becoming weak, relaxed without becoming passive.
In grief, this lesson became invaluable. Instead of fighting every emotion, I learned to breathe with it, acknowledge it, and allow it to move through me.
- Strengthening and Flexibility
Strength and flexibility are often viewed as physical qualities, but they are equally emotional and spiritual.
Tai Chi improves muscular strength, mobility, and flexibility.
Life requires these same qualities internally.
Some situations require us to stand firm.
Others require us to bend without breaking.
Tai Chi teaches both.
- Natural, Freer Breathing
Breath is the bridge between body and mind.
When we are anxious, our breathing becomes shallow. When we relax, the breath deepens naturally.
Tai Chi encourages natural, freer breathing as an essential component of health and emotional regulation.
Many times during my husband’s illness and after his passing, returning to my breath was the simplest and most powerful thing I could do. Often the only thing I could do.
One breath.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Sometimes healing begins there.
- Social Support
Although Tai Chi can be an individual practice as well as a deeply communal practice.
The groups I practised with became more than teachers and fellow students. They became a source of encouragement, belonging, and human connection.
During periods of grief, community reminds us that we are not meant to carry life’s burdens alone.
- Embodied Spirituality
For me, this does not mean adhering to a particular religion. Rather, it is the experience of feeling connected to something larger than oneself.
It is standing beneath a tree and feeling part of nature.
It is sensing gratitude despite loss.
It is recognising that even in pain, life continues to offer beauty, meaning, and opportunities for growth.
Through Tai Chi, spirituality moved from being an idea to something tangible, experienced through movement, breath, and presence.
The Real Secret
People sometimes ask what the secret is to becoming stronger, calmer, or more resilient.
I believe the answer is surprisingly simple.
Keep showing up.
Not perfectly.
Not every day without fail.
Just consistently enough that when life asks more of you, you are ready.
The eight active ingredients of Tai Chi are not merely concepts to study. They are qualities to cultivate through practice, one breath and one movement at a time.
Looking back, I can see that Tai Chi did not take away my grief.
It helped me carry it.
It taught me how to remain present when life was uncertain, how to find strength when I felt weak, and how to continue growing even through loss.
And perhaps that is what the practice is really about.
Not escaping life’s storms, but becoming steady enough to dance gracefully in the rain.