Tai Chi and high-level executives
How can Tai Chi and Qi Gong help with high-level executives?
I have been a CEO of my own company. I founded it myself with no prior experience in logistics. We helped Chinese e-commercie sellers with the customs clearance in Belgium, storage and last-mile deliveries. My husband joined me and he was responsible for customers' relations.
Our company grew in one year from 1 employee to 20 employees. It was hands-on and the first couple of years, I worked 7 days a week. From Monday till Friday, I worked from 6am till 10-11pm.
At the beginning, I loved it, it was all new, all exciting and rewarding to see our business was growing so rapidly. We had major ups and downs (in 2022, we had a loss of 500.000 EUR, mainly because of some toxic people in our company), but I kept the boat afloat. I could always steer the company and felt I could handle most difficulties. I was always on top of everything.
Come 2024, another difficult year, where customs in Liege changed the rules for e-commerce. Chinese customers left Liege and I had to cut down on personnel. I had to let go of half of our team and I had a hard time. E-commerce is quite new in Europe and there are not many laws yet, so the laws and regulations seemed to change every year. Being a young company with its own problems and growing pains, it was just too much to keep on doing business in such a volatile market.
In October 2024, I went to a temple to do Ba Gua Zhang, a kungfu form I have been wanting to learn for years. It would be my first real holiday. I went away before, but found myself each day behind the computer for hours. I wanted to deconnect for 10 days and fully immerse in kungfu. That is not what happened... I had to work 2 to 3 hours every evening anyway.
My husband was still doing his hobbies and could deconnect for a few days, but I seemed not to be able to do it. All those years of living solely for my business, I became tired and I found myself resenting my business. Every day, I started to hate to go to the office. I didn't want any of it anymore.
Come 2025... I took the decision to step down and let my husband lead the company.
I wanted to help other executives before they too would resent their business or were totally burned out.
I learned a lot from my business and I see that I should have done things differently from the beginning. It is important to create balance from the beginning, to keep some hobbies and down-time for yourself!
How can Tai Chi anhd Qi gong help you with finding this balance?
1. Embodied Leadership & Decision-Making
In Daoism, power comes from alignment with natural forces. Tai Chi trains:
Awareness of timing, energy and balance
A felt-sense of internal clarity
The ability to "feel into" a situation before acting (wu wei)
This enhances strategic patience, long-term vision, and intuitive decision-making - rare traits in today's hustle-based culture.
2. Energy Efficiency & Burnout Prevention
Unlike high-adrenaline workouts, Tai Chi:
Builds stamina by preserving, not depleting energy
Encourages body awareness and flow-based motion, energy efficiency & burnout-prevention
Helps leaders recognize and remove inner tension (the root of many inefficiencies)
For burned-out executives, Tai Chi isn't just exercise - it's recovery and optimization wrapped in one.
If you feel ready to be on your journey of self-discovery, send me a message and start life at your own terms.
