The River Running Through You
Marc Engel | Issue 003: The Hidden Cost of Success | June 30th, 2025
Why the most alive leaders have learned to flow, not force
There I was on my Bangkok balcony this morning, feeling something extraordinary flowing through me—like a gentle river of aliveness moving from my feet to the crown of my head.
Not energy.
Vitality.
After five years of morning practice, I've learned to recognize this subtle current. It's what happens when I finish QiGong, this moving meditation that synchronizes breath, intention, and body. The city below pulses with its familiar chaos, but inside me, everything flows.
When Leadership Becomes a River
Most leaders I work with are familiar with energy—that sharp, focused force that gets things done. It's caffeine and adrenaline, sprints and deadlines. It burns bright and burns out.
Vitality is different. It's the difference between forcing water through a pipe and letting it follow its natural course. One creates pressure; the other creates flow.
When you lead from vitality, something magical happens. Your presence changes the room. Decisions emerge from clarity rather than force. Your team starts to move with the same fluid intelligence, like a school of fish turning as one.
I see it with co-founders who've learned to tap into this current. They stop pushing so hard and start flowing more intentionally. Paradoxically, everything accelerates.
The Circulation of Presence
High performance is not only about generating more energy. It's about becoming a better conductor of the energy that's already flowing through everything.
Think of vitality as circulation—not just blood and breath, but life force itself. When it flows freely through you, it flows freely through your organization. When it gets blocked by stress, hurry, and disconnection, everything stagnates.
I have friends going through tough times right now. Brilliant leaders, psychologically safe teams, but the vitality has been dammed up by life's pressures. The trust is there, but the current isn't flowing. And without that flow, even the best intentions feel like pushing uphill.
Plugging Back Into the Source
The restoration is simpler than we make it. Five practices that reconnect you to the current:
Walk barefoot on earth. Feel the circulation extend down through your feet into the ground itself.
Take a forest walk. Let the trees remind your nervous system how to breathe with the rhythm of life.
Connect with water. Rivers know something about flow that we've forgotten in our cubicles.
Watch sunrise or sunset. Sync your internal rhythms with the larger circulation of light and dark.
Gaze at stars. Remember you're part of something vast and flowing.
These aren't productivity hacks. They're invitations to remember what it feels like when life flows through you instead of around you.
A Question for the Current
When I work with entrepreneurial teams, I watch for the moment when someone shifts from forcing to flowing. Their voices change. Their shoulders drop. They start speaking from a deeper place.
That's when the real leadership begins—not the kind that pushes against resistance, but the kind that finds the natural current and follows it with precision and grace.
The most alive leaders I know have learned to distinguish between the two. They know when to step back and let vitality restore itself. They understand that sustainable high performance isn't about generating more force—it's about removing the blocks to the flow that's always there.
What would your leadership look like if you trusted the river running through you?
What if the solution to your team's challenges isn't another strategy, but simply clearing the channels so vitality can circulate freely again?
The current is always flowing. The question is: are you swimming with it, or against it?
This essay was featured in Issue 003: The Hidden Cost of Success. Read the Full Publication
Marc Engel is a contributing writer for The Sacred Business Writer’s Collective focused on helping creative professionals overcome barriers to authentic self-expression. You can follow him on Substack here.
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