Instead of wearing him down, activity regenerates him...
We tend to assume that the body is made to act and that we have to recruit its strength to make it ready for further action. From the Chinese point of view, and from the Taoist point of view in particular, the body is there not to serve but to be perfected, to be brought by the necessary self-improvement to full possession.
When the energy thus set free spreads through the body, it creates a new sense of happiness, an increased lightness, an exuberance which kindles playfulness.
... The more closely we are in touch with our deeper resources, the more our sense of life is enhanced. We project this keener sense of reality into things and we thereby invest the world with a degree of prescence, a brightness and freshness, that it did not have before.
Jean Francois Billeter, The Chinese Art of Writing, Skira Rizzoli, 1989, p.272-3
