What If You’re Not Meant to Keep Up? By Leisa Blanch 

A few weeks ago, Daryl and I were talking about how fast life moves now.

A message arrives and we answer it. A notification appears and we look. One thing finishes and we’re already on to the next.

Even when nothing stressful is happening, there’s a strange sense of being behind.

Daryl is a Qigong master with five decades of experience, who works with us in the clinic. He is also the co-founder of ZEN KI Energy. He asked me a simple question.

“What would happen if you didn’t keep up?”

He wasn’t talking about abandoning our responsibilities. He was talking about pace. In his words, “We’ve become very good at jumping from one fast train to the next, without ever feeling our feet on the platform or remembering to take the garbage out”.

From Artificial Intelligence to Innate Intelligence

Now AI is speeding things up even further. 

The more powerful it becomes, the more we need to stay connected to our own innate intelligence.

Daryl has spent decades exploring this through Qigong, meditation, and energy work. For him, it begins with awareness.

Not thinking about being aware. Actually noticing where you are. Noticing when you’re caught in an old reaction, or already living in the future. Noticing the state you’re in before you respond.

We carry our experiences with us. Daryl calls it the backpack of the past. An old hurt, a fear, a conversation, a way of seeing ourselves. It keeps shaping how we respond long after the moment has passed.

Then there’s the future. We spend so much time anticipating what might happen that we miss what is happening. The present gets whatever is left.

Presence isn’t another thing to achieve.

It isn’t becoming serene and perfectly centred while the world carries on around you.

It’s far more ordinary than that.

It’s driving home and actually driving home. It’s listening when someone is talking to you. It’s eating the meal in front of you instead of scrolling.

It’s noticing you’re irritated before you send the message. It’s feeling your feet on the floor before you walk into the next room.

Sometimes it’s catching yourself halfway through a thought and realising you’ve been somewhere else for ten minutes.

Then you come back.

That is the practice. Not getting it right. Coming back.

Being there for the life you’ve built

This has changed how I think about wellbeing.

We put enormous effort into creating the perfect conditions. The right food. The right routine. The right amount of sleep. All of it has its place.

But there’s another question. How are we actually inhabiting the life we’ve created? Are we there for it, or constantly preparing for the next thing?

Daryl says responsibility means the ability to respond. I like that, because it leaves room for being human.

We will react sometimes. We’ll lose patience, get distracted, worry, and replay the conversation. We’ll reach for the phone when we said we wouldn’t.

The point isn’t to eliminate any of it. It’s to notice. Once you notice where you are, you hold the controls for where you go next.

Later this month, we’re heading to the United States, where Daryl is being filmed for an upcoming documentary. We can’t say much yet, but it explores the questions that have shaped his life. Consciousness, energy, and human potential.

It feels fitting that this conversation is taking us there.

The question for the years ahead isn’t how much faster we can become. It’s whether, in the middle of all this acceleration, we can still be here for our own lives.

Maybe we don’t have to keep up with everything.

Maybe some things can simply pass us by.

That’s the conversation we’re exploring through ZEN KI Energy. Join us at zenkienergy.com.