Everyday practice
Reclaim Your Attention
We open a message, read the first sentence, then check something else. A few minutes later, we return to the same sentence. Across the room, someone we love is speaking, but part of us is already preparing a reply. The body has arrived. Our attention is still travelling.
Perhaps the unsettling part is not simply how much we miss. It is how easily a day can become something we pass through without quite inhabiting it.
When I invite you to reclaim your attention, I am not asking you to become perfectly focused. I am inviting you to rediscover the experience you are already having. In Tai Chi and Qigong, that return has something tangible to meet: the ground beneath us, the movement of our hands, the breath that continues while our thoughts wander.
The important question is not, “Can I stop every distraction?” It is: Can body, breath and attention begin to move in the same direction?
The moment we notice is a beginning
We often judge concentration by how long we can hold it. Yet noticing that we have drifted is also meaningful. Before that moment, we were elsewhere without knowing it. Now there is a choice.
Movement makes this process easier to explore because it gives attention a living reference point. We can feel weight shifting, hands gathering and shoulders doing more work than they need to. Instead of trying to think ourselves into presence, we have an experience to return to.
Research offers encouragement, with important boundaries. A 2025 randomised trial studied eight weeks of 24-form Tai Chi in Chinese college students who heavily used short videos. Training involved three hour-long sessions each week. Reaction times improved on tasks involving response inhibition and interference control, but memory and selective attention did not show significant benefits. The gains were not maintained two months after training stopped. This supports investigating sustained practice, not promising the same results from a few movements today. Li and colleagues, 2025.
I see a useful teaching question here: rather than seeking one extraordinary moment of concentration, what might we learn through returning regularly?
When attention becomes participation
Presence and flow are related, but they are not identical. We can notice the present moment while feeling distracted or uncomfortable. Flow describes a more absorbed involvement, when attention and action seem to belong to the same unfolding activity.
It is not simply another name for relaxation. Research using video games found greater reported flow when the challenge was appropriately matched to participants’ abilities than when it was too easy or too difficult. De Sampaio Barros and colleagues, 2018.
My practical interpretation for Tai Chi is to offer a clear intention, a manageable movement and feedback we can feel immediately. The hands tell us where they are. The feet tell us how we are supported. The task is neither to perform impressively nor to disappear into vagueness, but to participate.
Learning the form provides a familiar structure. As it becomes more familiar, we can explore softening the constant commentary: Is this right? Am I doing enough? What comes next? There remains room for correction, but also for listening to the movement itself.
This is what I mean by letting go into motion: easing unnecessary effort while staying supported, aware and involved. It is an invitation to explore, not a scientifically established recipe for producing flow.
Less divided, not switched off
We may describe a moment when thinking, feeling, intention and bodily experience become less divided as mind and heart coming into coherence. Here, I mean a felt quality of participation, rather than a laboratory measurement.
Breathing and the heartbeat do interact. A systematic review of deliberately slow breathing studies reported changes in heart-rate variability, the variation in time between heartbeats, alongside other physiological and psychological measures. Those studies used controlled breathing methods, not simply the natural breath we will explore here. Their measurements do not prove mind-heart coherence or measure Qi. Zaccaro and colleagues, 2018.
Nor is maximum relaxation necessarily the goal. An exploratory study in 48 healthy men used breathing and muscle-contraction conditions, heart-rate variability and a cognitive task to investigate arousal and flow. Its findings suggested a relationship involving intermediate rather than extreme autonomic states, not a universal formula for engagement. Chin and Kales, 2019.
We can be at ease and still be attentive. Quiet does not have to mean absent.
A small journey back
I invite you to explore this briefly, standing with comfortable support or seated securely. Keep your breathing natural. Make movements small enough to feel easy, and stop if anything feels uncomfortable.
Wuji: Before moving, feel your feet meeting the ground. Notice the breath without changing it. Soften unnecessary tension and recognise where your attention has gone. There is nothing to fix before beginning.
Open & Gather: Allow the arms to open within a comfortable range, keeping elbows soft and shoulders easy. Gather the hands towards the lower abdomen. Explore opening and gathering as one continuous action. When the hands return, notice whether attention accompanies them. Wandering and returning belong to the practice.
Return to the Lower Dantian: Rest the hands near the lower abdomen. The lower dantian is a traditional practice centre, and here an accessible place to rest attention, not an anatomical organ or a sensation you must produce. Notice feet, breath, centre and the presence of the whole body.
Can body, breath and attention begin to move in the same direction?
Take the return into your day
The movement ends, but the enquiry can continue.
At work, after repeatedly checking messages, we might feel the feet, release the grip in the shoulders and notice one natural breath. Then choose the next sentence of an email, rather than the whole unfinished day.
With someone we care about, the impulse to reach for a phone or prepare our reply can become a cue to return. Feel support beneath the feet, soften unnecessary effort, notice the breath and choose to hear the end of their sentence.
While cooking, reading or finishing a small job, the same pause can help us recognise what we are actually doing. Feet, breath, less effort, then one deliberate next action. These are everyday applications to explore, not outcomes directly demonstrated by the studies above.
If concentration is difficult, including if you have ADHD, distraction is not a moral failure. I invite you to begin with short periods, small movements and one sensory anchor, perhaps the hands. Understanding the process matters alongside learning the form: notice, ease, reconnect, return.
A non-randomised study found improved self-reported inattention after Tai Chi training in healthy young adults, but did not establish effectiveness for diagnosed ADHD. Evidence for Tai Chi as an ADHD treatment remains limited; this is something to explore alongside your existing support. Converse and colleagues, 2014.
Reclaiming attention need not mean shutting the world out. It can mean meeting more of the life already here.
If you would like to explore this with me, discover our live online Tai Chi and Qigong sessions. Together, we can give the return a familiar place to begin.
If you have any questions, or would like help finding a practice that suits you, please get in touch. It would be my pleasure to help.
References & Further Reading
- Li, Y.-f., Xiao, C.-y. and Cai, R.-x. (2025). An 8-week 24-form Tai Chi intervention on cognition in Chinese college students overusing short videos: a randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1517827. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1517827.
- De Sampaio Barros, M. F., Araújo-Moreira, F. M., Trevelin, L. C. and Radel, R. (2018). Flow experience and the mobilization of attentional resources. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 18, 810-823. DOI: 10.3758/s13415-018-0606-4.
- Chin, M. S. and Kales, S. N. (2019). Is There an Optimal Autonomic State for Enhanced Flow and Executive Task Performance? Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1716. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01716.
- Converse, A. K., Ahlers, E. O., Travers, B. G. and Davidson, R. J. (2014). Tai chi training reduces self-report of inattention in healthy young adults. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 13. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00013.
- Zaccaro, A., Piarulli, A., Laurino, M., Garbella, E., Menicucci, D., Neri, B. and Gemignani, A. (2018). How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 353. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353.
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