My name is Julia Chi…
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run.
In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression.
I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running.
I have lived from a belief that all that is required is that I know myself, and that I am true to myself, and seek to become the master of my body and my mind… That from this place I allow my true nature to shine and reflect in my creative endeavours and within my relationships.
An ongoing journey…!
I knew from when I was young that all I needed to do was to ‘run free’. To let the running take me where it wanted to. To stay in the step. To be in the moment and so to experience running as a meditation on the move.
I ran for England and GB for some years. My first international was in 1979, a three mile cross country race; and I continued to run at international level until 1993. Two of my best results were first place in the Dublin City Marathon in 1985 and 7th place woman, 3rd British woman in the 1986 London Marathon in a time of 2.36.31, which gained me selection for the Commonwealth Games.
ByJulia Chi
I was born a Christian… By this I mean I was born into a Christian family, and therefore grew up with the stories from the bible in the Old Testament, and the ones in the New Testament about the life of Jesus Christ… I belonged to a lively church group from the age of thirteen…
ByJulia Chi
When you point a finger three point back… I remember first hearing this when I was doing some professional development training and it really resonated…. It’s not them… It’s me… Or it’s something to do with me… If I am pointing my finger at someone in a way that is judgemental in any way, then…
ByJulia Chi
I was a teenager when I first internalised that my body held the negative emotions, the self hatred, the fear within me and that this showed up physically… I started to run with intent when I was fifteen, and by intent I mean I started to compete and win… My first ‘big’ cross country race…
ByJulia Chi
All my life I have wanted to run and write, preferably in the sun… I was born in West Africa and the first few years of my life were spent running free, mainly naked… We returned to England when I was four years old, and in effect it has taken me fifty years to return…
ByJulia Chi
When I was in my very early twenties I can remember a longing, a yearning, to withdraw from society… To be a nun maybe..? Those who know me well will laugh at this thought…! But it was more the withdrawal from the world that I was attracted to – the spiritual contemplation and stillness that…
ByJulia Chi
I was driving yesterday over the Ashdown forest… The forest where Pooh bear, Piglet and all their friends live. It was a forest I almost lived in too for many years… Most days I would run there, loving its expansive wildness and it’s freedom. It reflected my yearning, for wildness and freedom; no restraints within…
ByJulia Chi
When I swim far out into the Ionian Sea, here in Corfu it flashes through my being that I could drown. My vulnerability rises up… My body could be consumed by the deep blue lake that feels to heal with every immersion I take… This place of healing could also be my grave… I didn’t…
ByJulia Chi
A year ago, my husband Anadi and I headed out of the town I had lived in for twelve years. We carried a bag each weighing no more than the 20 kilos flying allowance – our computers went in our hand baggage…. All we owned we carried with us… We called ourselves nomads… It was…
ByJulia Chi
Running in circles sometimes appears to me to be rather strange way to have lived my life… Training runs that have circled around a loop – one step in front of another – to simply return to the beginning again, the same starting point from whence I left… Circles of a running track, many many…
ByJulia Chi
‘The Zone’ is a term often used in sport… ‘Being in the zone’, refers to a feeling of flow, of being so completely absorbed in what one is doing as to become the activity or expression… So much so that self disappears and the experience of flow is total and there is no thought. It…
ByJulia Chi
The moment I could walk in this incarnation, I am told that I ran… I was nine months old and the story goes that I would lean forward and run along on my tippy toes… And fifty six years on I am still opening the front door each morning, leaning forward to see the sight…
ByJulia Chi
My name is Julia Chi… I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running…
