This is the most coherent post you have made on OGS. So, I would say it’s working.
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It’s working wonders (against Prozac/Fluoxetine & the like!).
While I’ve only been playing Go for 3.5 months compared to your 35 years, I’ve already seen a profound effect. For the first two months, my mind was racing and my body was exhausted.
But six weeks after we launched our offline club, something amazing happened: A member came in last Friday and said,
‘Let’s not play today. Let’s talk. I am in deep stress.’
WeiQi + Disciple + Support Community (Online/offline) beats Prozac (fluoxetine) and the like
Ref: Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development
Credits:
Ideas originated by EL EL EN EN, generated into table/text by ChatGPT, images by Google Gemini 2.5 Flash
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Credit: Picture by & PanPan of EL EL EN EN
Preface: A Blank Board and a Fractured Mind
This book did not begin as a book.
It began as a question, whispered in the fog of recovery:
Can something ancient teach me how to live again?
After a severe head injury in mid 2023, I found myself floating — memories scattered, emotions drifting without directions, daily routines impossible to hold. Therapy helped. But something remained out of reach: a structure that felt alive, not cold or empty, a challenge that wasn’t threatening, a space that held both discipline and grace.
Enter: WeiQi — the game of surrounding, balancing, choosing when to fight and when to yield.
I came to the board with no knowledge. I couldn’t remember joseki or fuseki. I played like a child: curious, clumsy, inconsistent. I lost over a hundred games before I won anything that felt real. But in those losses, I began to notice something miraculous.
The game was teaching me how to think again.
How to slow down.
How to listen — not just to others, but to myself.
How to hold a mistake without collapsing.
How to breathe through chaos.
How to decide when everything felt uncertain.
What started as a self-directed training log became something much larger. This book began to carry voices — of strangers who became mentors, like my “Grumpy Sensei.” Of imaginary companions, like Pan Pan the panda. Of Knox Knowise, my AI partner in reflection. And ultimately, the voice I had lost: my own.
This is not a technical guide to playing Go. It’s a human guide to staying present in complexity. It’s about discipline without violence. Focus without force. Growth that doesn’t bypass grief.
And yes — it’s about joy. The quiet, steady kind. The kind you earn not from victory, but from showing up fully, one move at a time.
To the neurodiverse, the recovering, the curious, the quiet warriors —
This is for you.
Let’s begin with a blank board.
— EL EL EN EN
March 25, 2025
The First Move | OGS
Excerpt from
WeiQi and The Beast
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““The world speaks to me in colors, my soul answers in music”
~ Rabindranath Tagore
Afterword Post Afterword – WeiQi and the Beast
28 August 2025
I stood still for a long while at the bridge, 3:00 in the afternoon, a banana crêpe in my hand. Bite by bite, joy returned to me.
At my feet lay fruits gathered from the afternoon’s farmers’ market, simple tokens of abundance. Above me, the sky stretched crystal blue, clouds soft and white, while flags of many nations lifted gently in the wind.
After ten days of boardroom marathons and twenty-four relentless hours of meetings, I finally paused long enough to taste what freedom might feel like.
Three months earlier, on 28 May 2025, I had begun my third 19×19 match with a very special player. A few days later, guided by their candid advice, I chose to resign: quietly, with grace. That act, so small at first, planted a seed. Today, by noon at the office, it revealed its meaning: sometimes, to lose is to win.
84 years ago, on this same date, a heroine of our nation faced the firing squad. Her final act was one of loss. Yet through her sacrifice, generations after her inherited the freedom she herself was denied.
Standing at the bridge, I felt her presence like a steady echo across time. My own small realization at the office mirrored, in the faintest way, her eternal lesson: that defeat can be another name for victory.
Day by day, I now follow a steady rhythm: seventy-seven online games in practice, one fifth of them played in Rengo, alongside a team. Offline, a tiny Go club with three committed members gathers three days a week, for thirty minutes each.
Stone upon stone, pattern upon pattern.
Slowly, I feel WeiQi weaving into me, strengthening my nerves, wrapping memory in myelin, infusing my world with patience, clarity, and wisdom.
What began as a game has become a bridge: between past and present, between sacrifice and freedom, between the losses we carry and the victories we live.
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I fully agree.
Please keep the good work @EL_EL_EN_EN. This thread is delighting me.
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To wrap it up after 3 months of Go Club, and 5 months of OGS participation, here’s the fusion of my concept and texts, Gemini PRO feedbacks and Mureka musical notes FYR:
DRAGONS GO
[Intro]
[verse]
A garden tended, calm and slow
where shapes and lines begin to growA mirror of the self, it seems
a silent test of wit and dreamsDragon minds upon a silent stage
a cosmic dance, an ancient page
No hurried clash, no brute-force might
just stones to claim the day and nightA simple board, a world to shape
from empty space, a grand escapeEach black and white a whispered plea
to build and grow for all to seeThe goal’s not war, but to surround
to make your influence abound…