How a Garden in Salerno Got Me Thinking

Stone pathways, the sound of running water, the scent of sage and lavender in the midday heat. That is how I experienced the Giardino della Minerva in Salerno – a garden created in the 14th century so that students of the Scuola Medica could learn about medicinal plants and their uses.

The Scuola Medica Salernitana was one of medieval Europe’s most important medical centres. Its medicine combined Greco-Roman knowledge with insights from the Arab and Jewish worlds, with a strong emphasis on practical experience and prevention.

Just how much importance they placed on prevention can be seen in a line from the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, the school’s famous guide to health:

“Should you need physicians, these three doctors will suffice: a joyful mind, rest and a moderate diet.”

Health: A Question of Balance

The physicians of the Scuola worked with the theory of the four humours: blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile. Each humour was associated with an element, and each element with a quality – hot, cold, moist or dry. From this resulted the four temperaments: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic.

They considered illness as a disturbance in the balance of these humours. Treatment followed a simple principle: contraria contrariis curantur – opposites are cured by opposites. If someone was too dry, they were given something moist. If someone was too hot-tempered or overheated, they were given a cooling remedy.

Qi – What Is It Exactly ?

As I wandered through the garden, I inevitably found myself thinking about Chinese medicine, about Qi and the Asian view of nature as a living, interconnected whole – one in which humans are not rulers, but just part of the universe, striving for harmony with everything around them.

A different culture. A different time. A different language.

And yet, a similar idea: the human being as a system in which something flows, accumulates, changes – and sometimes might get out of balance.

And when something is out of balance, the body often shows it first – long before you can put it into words.

Qi – sometimes written as Chi or Ki, as in the Korean martial art Kimoodo – is a central concept in many Asian traditions and martial arts.

Very simply put, Qi describes a life force or vital energy that permeates everything and keeps it moving.

Different Traditions, a Similar Observation

Energy that does not flow, get stuck. When something remains unresolved, tension tends to build and over time, this costs you energy, clarity and presence.

Once we stop thinking of Qi as something mystical and instead see it as a way of describing vitality, strength, movement and inner balance, we quickly arrive at a very practical question: How do we actually manage our energy?

What Does Qi Have to Do with Everyday Life?

Forget the term “energy work” for a moment. Instead, think of something very concrete: tension you pick up in the morning and are still carrying around at night.

A conversation that unsettled you, whose tension you can still feel in your jaw three hours later.

A day spent in front of screens, at the end of which your head is full, but your body has barely moved.

That is stagnation – in muscle tension, breathing patterns and your ability to concentrate.

5 Practical Ways to Get Things Moving Again

With small, regular and conscious impulses and movement, you can help restore that flow. Here are five practices that can help.

1. Deliberately seek resistance instead of avoiding it

Most advice recommends relaxation, which is ok. But sometimes your system needs the opposite: brief, conscious resistance.

Press both palms firmly against each other for 20 seconds. Push yourself against a wall. Hold a plank until you feel the effort.

Then let go.

This shift from tension to sudden release can help discharge built-up physical tension.

2. Close an open loop

A lot of energy is tied up in things we have not finished: the unanswered message, the postponed phone call, the uncomfortable conversation, the decision you keep putting off, the bill, the rejection.

Ask yourself:

What is one thing that is quietly following me around in the background?

Then take a first small step towards resolving and dealing with it: write the message, schedule the appointment, make the call, make the decision.

Sometimes energy is not created by starting something new. Sometimes it is released by finishing something and clearing space in your head.

3. Make transitions intentional instead of filling them

Most of us fill every gap immediately with our phones.

But these little spaces are exactly where your energy can reorganise itself.

Leave the transition between two appointments, between getting out of the car and walking through your front door, between work and the end of your day deliberately empty. A few conscious breaths are enough.

4. Use your voice

In martial arts training, we know the kiai – the conscious use of the voice at the moment of exertion. Stagnation and tension can sometimes be released more easily through sound than through silence.

A voiced exhale as you climb the stairs. A conscious “Ha!” as you put down a heavy bag. A loud sigh instead of suppressing it.

Sound and vocalisation can influence breathing, muscle tension and autonomic regulation.

5. Don’t ask, “What do I have to do now?” Ask, “How do I want to feel afterwards?”

That changes a lot.

Perhaps you have a difficult conversation ahead of you. Maybe you don’t actually want to “win”. Maybe you want to feel clear afterwards. Or calm. Or respected. Or grounded.

Then the question becomes concrete:

What posture do I need? How am I standing? How am I breathing? How slowly am I responding? Where do I draw my boundary?

That is connecting your energy with your body: We cannot always choose our state. But we can learn to influence it.

We Are More Than the Sum of Our Parts

The four humours, Qi, nervous-system regulation – the vocabulary changes, but the underlying question remains remarkably similar: What throws us out of balance – and what helps us find our way back?

The physicians of Salerno focused on lifestyle, nutrition, hygiene and prevention. Taoist traditions developed ideas about how Qi flows through the body and how inner balance can be maintained or restored.

Today, we talk about metabolism, hormones, stress responses, sleep, the nervous system and psychological strain.

Different language. Different frameworks. Same underlying question.

Practices such as Tai Chi or Kimoodo ( Kimoodo means “the way of life energy” ) start with something very simple: the body, developing movement, breath and awareness.

And that is perhaps the most practical way to approach the ancient idea of Qi: Notice when something feels stuck and learn how to get it flowing again. And then we may realise:

I don’t necessarily need more energy. I may simply need to stop holding on to it where it no longer serves me.

Want to explore this further?
In our coaching, we work with the connection between body, mind and behaviour – helping you recognise what holds you back, build self-trust and turn awareness into action. Sometimes, change starts with simply noticing what your body is already telling you.