Tedious Tectonic Tautology

Or: Did the Earth move for you, darling?

Starting Over for the Seventh Time: A June Practice Log (Weeks 1–2)

When I started this process several weeks ago, I thought it would be a fairly straightforward approach to getting myself back into a state of fitness that would be able to take on the mountains once more. I wanted to check out what's actually going on inside my body. And this has made me reassess things quite dramatically.

At the beginning, I decided that I was going to start off using purely Qi Gong and Tai Chi to affect my recovery. I've discovered that I actually need to use other modalities to kick-start that process. It's like learning any new skill: you throw as much as possible into the mix, you try all sorts of different things, and then you refine it down into the final process.

Bruce Lee said: "I do not fear the man who knows a thousand punches. I fear the man who has practiced one punch a thousand times." That fits with my thinking: you start with something large, then by taking away you reduce it to its essential parts — the things that do the most.

This is what drew me to the 37-step form of Chen Man Ching. He took a much longer form (104 steps or whatever) and because of his own illnesses and difficulties, he refined it down to 37 essential steps that cover everything one needs to know. He was able to keep practicing his style of Tai Chi right through into old age. Many practitioners have to adapt as they get older; they can't do what they used to. Chen Man Ching started from that point — from what he couldn't do — and asked how to refine the process.

I'm not Chen Man Ching, but this is the process I'm undergoing. And it will be the same when I come to get back on the mountain again. I need to do a lot of broad work. I need to walk across rough ground. I need to practice scrambling skills on little blocks and little places, building everything up bit by bit, just as I did when I first started.

It's the same progression you go through when you're learning to walk. That transition from being a vegetable sitting in the corner of the room to a functional, moving human being has to go through different progressions.

This is actually the seventh time I have been through this process since 2018. And each time has been slightly different, because each time I discover I'm not operating in the same way as before that particular occurrence.

For instance: this time last year I was preparing to get fit for an ascent of Cader Idris in September. But medication indicated a deeper problem, so I went and sorted it out — and ended up having an angioplasty, which has really fixed out an awful lot of my cardio-vascular system. In the process, I wasn't allowed to do anything. The surgeons were very direct: "You mustn't carry anything heavier than a cup of tea." That really restricts you, especially when it goes on for months. Any fitness I had accrued before that is now entirely gone.

I think my fitness levels before the stroke carried me through for six or seven years. But this last medical process has taken me 01200o12ut completely.

And then came statins. I don't agree with them, not from a moral standpoint — they just don't agree with my body. They cause tension in my muscles — myopathy. In fact, this last time it nearly went to full-blown rhabdomyolysis. This adds a different flavour to what I'm doing right now.

I am trying to get myself back into a position where walking more than a few hundred metres is not extremely tight and difficult physically. One of the things that has occurred is that a lot of my old injuries have broken down and resurfaced — but in slightly different ways. My ankle is compromised. My knees are compromised. My hips are compromised. My lower back, my shoulders, my neck, my head.

To be able to glide across the landscape — which is my ultimate aim — I need to eradicate all of the blockages so that I can move freely and fluidly. The progression from walking to scrambling merely becomes an extension of the walking that starts everything.

So in order to start — or to continue — I have to go right back to the beginning. I have to think like a baby once more.

My wife said to me in 2018 after I had the stroke: "You've had a factory reset. You're back to being a baby again. Look at you — you're all soft, pliable, bendy. Use it."

The statins, of course, made everything go stiff. It's been six or eight weeks since I stopped taking them, and only now is it beginning to show.

One of the things I've bought recently is a vibrating massage plate. I'm standing on it right now as I dictate this. This is only my third go on it, but I'm already finding it helps enormously. It shakes me in a way I can't control. If I try standing shaking moves from Qigong, I'm always working with my restrictions — which means I'm working around them. That's great, because I need to do that. But I also need to break through what's holding me. And it's not just physical — there are also emotional things. A lot of emotion carried in my neck and my hips. Fear of falling over on the mountain again.

I said to my wife five years ago: "If ever I go on the mountains again and have one more fall, I shall never walk again." I believe that if I have one more bad fall, the chances of me walking properly ever again are very, very slim. I would probably put myself in a wheelchair.

That being said, I am nearly 67. I was 27 when I was told I would be in a wheelchair by the time I was 40 if I didn't listen to the consultant and have metal rods stuck up my back. So, naturally being me, I decided to go off and become an outdoor instructor in North Wales. And here I am today.

I'm going through this process not just for myself. I want to get back and do these things, but I'm taking the point of view that it's a project. We will make a film, write it up, create a roadmap for people who have had a stroke or are recovering from injury — specifically cardiovascular events, because that's my forte, that's where I'm coming from.

So this is where I am today. I've been doing a lot of standing practice. For the next month I shall continue a little bit of that standing practice, but I'm also going to bring into play an 8-step Wudang form. I was going to do teacups for 30 days, but I've decided that what I really need to do is to move. Standing in one place all the time is not conducive to that kind of therapy. The movement is the therapy.

Eight steps is not much. But it covers some of the essential basics of what I'm going to be doing. Each move builds on the last. As you have a body of moves you can perform, you add others and extend the dance — because that is what it is at the end of the day. A particular type of dance. A shamanic dance, a somatic dance, one that addresses your very core problems right at the bottom of your psyche. That's a wonderful thing to do.

That's enough for now. I will continue to, as I feel, make notes in the margin about my progress as we go on. I'm hoping to tie it all up into something at the end of this 28-day period.

Reading back through everything I went through in the first 28-day period, some of it is so personal that I don't wish to share it. Needless to say, I started those 28 days really unable to walk or move well in any way, shape or form. And now I am moving much more freely as I work deeper into this, getting to the point where I can do something every single day.

That's the other thing I've been fighting: sheer fatigue. By lunchtime some days I'm exhausted. I don't know why, but I think it's all to do with recovering from the statins. They affected me so physically and also mentally. The cognitive decline I experienced while on those drugs was terrible.

My ultimate aim — and it comes down to drugs — is to take myself off all of them in the end, and to look at other ways of looking after myself. I'm not going to talk about that now, because I don't want people just going off to the shops and doing this and doing that. I will treat it exactly as I have been treating everything else: a scientific experiment over time, logging what changes I feel.

Bear in mind that all the changes I am logging are only personal perspective. I'm not a scientist, not a doctor, not a physiotherapist. I'm just a bloke who has always enjoyed movement in all its different forms, always enjoyed learning new skills — especially movement-based ones. This is an extension of that. This is me teaching myself how to walk and how to move once more so that I can get back into the mountains. I think that is a legitimate thing to do.

I can use anything that helps me. So although my primary focus is on Qigong and Tai Chi, I can bring in other modalities because they address particular problems. As I go through the months, I will begin documenting this process and it will begin to speed up. The last month has been about trying to decide where my starting point is, and where I should be moving from.

Right now, I'm standing here waving my legs around, standing on one leg. In the past couple of days there's been a major breakthrough. I put that down to a couple of things: self-massage (two or three times a day, especially my toes, my big toes), and the vibrating plate.

The big toes are where all movement begins. When we're perambulating, that is the striking-off point. Once we have learned how to shift our energy from one foot to the other and push off through the toes, we're able to walk. That skill stays with us for the rest of our lives. When a toddler is stumbling, that's exactly what they're trying to do — integrate the sensations from their feet up into their body, through their vestibular network and into their mind, so they can match the movements of their eyes with the movements of their bodies and not fall over.

June 2026. Wudang 8-step form, self-massage, vibrating plate, and a seventh factory reset.