By Master Mingtong Gu · Based on a Path Live teaching from August 20, 2026
We have all said it, probably more than once:
Easier said than done.
You know what you want to change. Perhaps you have made the same commitment many times—in January, during a moment of clarity, or after something in your life became too painful to ignore. And yet, the habit remains: comfortable, familiar, woven into your life like a second skin.
During a recent Path Live session, I explored why changing a habit can be so difficult. The problem is not simply a lack of willpower. Often, there are deeper patterns within the body, mind, and energy that must also be met.
Why Habits Can Be So Difficult to Change
One layer is attachment. Even when you do not like a habit, some part of you has become comfortable inside it. Your body knows the pattern. Without it, you may feel unsettled or unsure of what to do with the feelings that arise.
Another layer is the absence of a method. Wanting to change is not the same as knowing how to create a different experience in the body.
There may also be a belief that change is no longer possible. A diagnosis, a painful experience, the passing of many years, or the opinion of someone in authority can become a ceiling you stop looking beyond.
And then there is something even more honest: one part of you may sincerely want to change while another part does not feel ready. This does not mean you are broken or weak. It may mean that the habit has been helping you avoid, manage, or soothe something you have not yet learned how to feel directly.
This is where practice begins.
A Foundational Skill for Lasting Change
In the session, I shared that one of the most powerful capacities we can develop is the ability to meet physical discomfort in the body.
Not to analyze it. Not to push it away or cover it with a more positive story. Simply to feel it—with honesty, curiosity, and compassion.
You may experience tightness, heat, restlessness, constriction, or a strong impulse to reach for a familiar distraction. When you remain present with the sensation, without immediately escaping it, the body is given an opportunity to respond differently. Energy that has been held inside the pattern may begin to move.
Over time, this practice can build resilience: the embodied understanding that you can remain present with what arises.
Many habits serve, at least in part, as ways of managing discomfort. When our relationship with discomfort begins to change, our relationship with the habit can also change.
What Qigong Practice Can Offer
During the teaching, I used smoking as an example because the pattern is easy to recognize. A craving may include physical dependency, but it can also carry an emotional or energetic need—the desire for relief, connection, comfort, or a moment of release.
When you pause and practice Qigong, even briefly, you are not simply trying to suppress the craving. You are offering your body another way to experience breath, movement, presence, and connection.
At first, this may be uncomfortable. The hands still want to perform the familiar movement. The nervous system expects the familiar experience. But with consistent practice, the body can begin learning a new pattern.
One member of our community shared how she had begun meeting anxiety in this way. Rather than fighting or analyzing it, she practiced turning toward the sensations in her body with compassion. As she stayed present, she experienced her body beginning to soften.
Another participant reflected on using Qigong consistently while preparing for a medical procedure. After the procedure was behind her and she received reassuring results, she stopped practicing.
I understood immediately. How many of us have done the same thing? We practice when we are in pain or facing a crisis, and then stop as soon as we feel better.
There is no judgment in recognizing this pattern. But there is an invitation to go deeper.
What becomes possible when practice is no longer something you do only to fix a problem? What changes when practice becomes part of how you live?
Two Containers, One Path
If this teaching resonates with you, there are two ways to continue exploring it.
The Sacred Rebirth Retreat offers an immersive container: 16 days of online morning practice, 16 days in person, or 30 days in person at the Southwest Sanctuary. This extended time allows you to step beyond the momentum of daily life and experience what can emerge through consistent practice, community, and the healing field we create together.
The Path offers an ongoing rhythm of practice. Path Live meets on Thursdays, allowing us to return to the same foundational practices week after week and continue deepening together. The capacity to meet discomfort is not learned once. It develops through practice until a new response becomes available within the body.
If you would like support deciding which experience may be right for you, you can schedule a conversation with Linda and The Chi Center team.
The habit you have named may still be there. But so is your capacity to meet it differently.
Start where you are. Continue from what you can feel.
