Appendix – Notes from Personal Practice¶
This section provides background for the preceding material.
It describes how standing practice evolved for me (Simon Dilhas) personally and how it led to the development of a secular, observation-based framework.
It is not instruction or doctrine — only documentation of experience.
Background and Motivation¶
I first encountered Qi Gong and Tai Chi in my twenties, during recovery from an illness that western medicine could not clearly explain and therfore treat.
The combination of simple movement, attention, and breathing helped me regain stability and health.It triggered a curiosity about how the body organizes itself. Later, training under Martin Bödicker in Düsseldorf taught me that practice can stay analytical and playful at the same time — complexity can be broken down, tested, and refined.
After moving to Switzerland, my focus shifted to work and family responsibilities. Practice became irregular. From time to time I returned to it, usually when fatigue, pain, or stress accumulated.
Each time I noticed that practice — even for short sessions — had a clear stabilizing effect. But after some time I
In 2025, after my father's death and a long period of overwork, I restarted consistently.
This period of illness and exhaustion made it obvious that I needed a method without performance, belief, or comparison — something that could reset the system directly through experience.
Standing practice became that baseline.
I realized that adding more activity on top of a stressed body does not work and that this was the mistake I constantly did before.
Therefore I started to focus on release, listening, and non-action.
Following the tradition that puts Yin over Yang — or in western terms, shifting from fight-and-flight to recovery mode.
Process¶
The first sessions were short and mainly physical — shaking, trembling, and releasing stored tension.
Gradually, the focus shifted from endurance to precision: sensing how weight, breath, and attention interact.
Periods of strong relaxation often followed practice, sometimes more significant than the session itself.
Over time I began to see patterns:
- Relaxation appears when I stop trying to force it.
- Breathing adjusts posture automatically if given time.
- Physical condition, mood, and clarity of thought are inseparable.
- Consistency matters more than intensity.
- A written log makes these relationships visible.
These observations form the basis of the interpretations in the Taoist, Buddhist, Yogic, Sufi, and Stoic appendices.
Each framework describes aspects I could verify directly through sensation: structure, perception, integration, connection, and judgment.
Function of the Practice¶
Standing practice became a diagnostic and regulatory tool — a way to study how body, attention, and emotion organize under different conditions.
It requires no belief, only repetition and honesty.
Each session is an experiment: what happens if I do less, if I breathe differently, if I change the weight on my feet?
The goal is not progress but observation.
Results accumulate through pattern recognition, not ideology.
Standing functions as a mirror.
What appears there is information, not achievement.
Context¶
These personal notes are included to make the project transparent.
They show how the theoretical re-interpretations emerged from direct testing over time.
This is not a spiritual story, but a record of a long-term experiment in self-regulation — an attempt to understand traditional language through measurable experience.
The work continues.
Each session adds data, and each observation reshapes understanding.
No final model is expected, only refinement.