I live in London, where I practise yoga every day and read the Huangdi Neijing, the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic.
These two activities have gradually become part of the same enquiry. I take words from the text into my practice, then return to the book with something I have felt or noticed. My writing, teaching, and developing work on educational material begin here.
The practice my body enjoys
I have explored different approaches, including traditional Chinese practices such as standing meditation. Over time, I have found that my body particularly enjoys the movement and postures of yoga.
Ashtanga has given me a foundation of regular self-practice. I enjoy transitions, a broad range of movement, and attempts that ask my whole body to coordinate in unfamiliar ways. Yin yoga offers another kind of practice: finding an edge, then giving it time.
Sometimes I work with more demanding postures. How does my body bear weight, turn, and move through? Where is effort needed, and where could I do a little less? These questions become very tangible in practice.
How I make sense of it
I also read the Yoga Sutras. But my familiarity with Chinese medicine while growing up, together with my continuing study of its classical texts, makes the language of the Huangdi Neijing particularly accessible to my own experience.
Reading the phrase bu xiong xie—“to spread across the chest and the sides of the ribs”—I paused at bu: to spread. In side bends and weight-bearing postures, I began to notice how this area opens and participates in movement.
The area around Huantiao, an acupuncture point towards the outer back of the hip, often helps me recognise the relationship between my leg, hip, and pelvis in Warrior poses. The name gives me somewhere to place my attention, and from there I can feel the movement more broadly.
Acupuncture points, channel pathways, and the verbs used to describe the body in these texts offer many such starting points. They make the reading tangible and give me something new to notice in familiar postures.
Breathing is another example. In my own explorations, I have found myself responding particularly well to the traditional Chinese practice of reverse abdominal breathing. This is something I want to continue observing and understanding.
Learning between teachers and texts
Each week, I attend two or three classes with Austin Ince, including Yin and dynamic yoga. His teaching helps me understand the body through anatomy, movement, the nervous system, and connective tissue.
These studies help me ask more precise questions. How are the bones positioned? Where is weight being supported? How are the muscles participating? Has my breathing changed? Knowing a little more gives me an opportunity to notice more closely.
Alongside this, I keep returning to the classics.
I’m particularly interested in learning through a sustained relationship with a teacher. An instruction may take many attempts to become something I can recognise for myself. The same can happen with an old text: I may have read the words long before I begin to understand them.
Work that grows from practice
I collaborate with Austin in his yoga teacher training, teaching Chinese medicine-related content. I also work with transcripts of his classes, preserving the cues, questions, adjustments, and responses that arise in teaching. I share these records with him as material for further discussion and development.
I use recordings and AI tools to help organise this work, checking against the original records. Technology makes it easier to find an instruction again, compare how it appears in different classes, and preserve details worth thinking about.
I’m interested in modern science and willing to work with new technologies. I would like more yoga teachers to explore these tools, so that knowledge accumulated through years of teaching can be preserved, revisited, and discussed.
The starting point remains my daily reading and practice. For me, the body is where this learning takes place. It changes from day to day and keeps changing how I understand words I have already read.
Learning about the body through present-day knowledge, while encountering ancient texts through practice, is work I want to continue for a long time.
Why much of my writing is in Chinese
I currently do much of my thinking in Chinese, and I read the Huangdi Neijing in Chinese. It is therefore the most natural language for my writing.
My everyday life and my teaching within teacher training take place in English. A Chinese term that feels familiar in practice may require considerable thought before I can explain it in an English-speaking classroom. Sometimes translation reveals something I have not yet fully understood myself.
I’m exploring how these two languages can work together. I don’t yet have a fixed approach. There will be Chinese essays here, alongside a growing body of English writing. They may not always be direct translations of one another.
If you read primarily in English, you are very welcome to contact me. English is the language of my daily conversations and teaching; Chinese is where much of this thinking begins.
Why I’m publishing here
This Substack is my main place for sharing my work. I also have an Instagram account, weidingpractice, with a small number of posts and infrequent updates.
I want the pace of publishing to follow the reading, practice, and writing. Some things become clear quickly; others need time. I’m not currently organising this work around trending topics or follower numbers.
I do, however, want the writing to travel. These platforms make it possible to meet people I would otherwise never encounter.
Perhaps you teach yoga in another country and are working on your own educational material. Perhaps you’re interested in classical Chinese medicine and are looking for ways to discuss it in your teaching. We can begin by exchanging something of the work we are already doing.
I trust in time, and in the possibilities of connection. Some understanding takes years of practice to develop. Some work finds a new direction through a letter or a conversation.
Get in touch
My work centres on writing, teaching materials, and course development.
I welcome correspondence from yoga teachers, studios, and teacher training programmes around the world. I’m especially interested in conversations about classical Chinese medicine and yoga practice, learning from teachers, classroom documentation, teaching across Chinese and English, and the development of educational material.
We can begin with a question, an essay, or a conversation.
Email: felinowei@qq.com
Instagram: @weidingpractice
You are also welcome to reply directly to this Substack post. I’d love to hear where you teach or practise, and what questions you are currently working with.