I travelled 5,000 miles to live as a monk for a year

George Thompson was alone in a monastery in China when he finally felt the existential dread lift.

The cold had disabled his fingers and his injured knees were in agony, aggravated by hours of tai chi, kung fu and scaling the steep slopes. He’d never experienced temperatures so low and the mountain winds blustered through the wire gauze windows.

But despite the bone-deep chill, it was the most peaceful of the filmmaker’s life.

‘I’d get into bed after lunch to try and warm up with my little electric heater, which would do nothing, and then I would just be shivering in bed all day with as many layers as I could put on,’ George tells Metro. 

‘The beds were just wooden planks with one blanket on top – I would try and find as many blankets as I could to stay warm. And I had so many injuries; to my wrists, ankles, knees and bum from doing four hours of tai chi a day.  

‘But then there was a moment when I was meditating on rock on the side of a mountain, about three months into my first stay in China, where for the first time I really got it – that it’s not about escaping myself, it’s about embracing myself…’

George, then 21, had spent months struggling with anxiety, ever since he’d left university back in the UK.

He’d graduated and entered the real working world, but admits he felt ‘confusedand anxious’, unsure of what he was doing with his life.

‘I was working for Deliveroo, cycling up steep hills facing wage instability and making YouTube videos about resilience and self development,’ the 29-year-old filmmaker from Bristol explains. ‘I thought were good but they weren’t getting any likes. For me, that meant I wasn’t a likeable or valuable human being.’

George soon fell into a three-month anxiety pit where he struggled to motivate himself and was plagued by negative thoughts from an internal dialogue he came to name ‘the Underminer’. 

‘I thought I was uniquely messed up, weak for struggling with this voice in my head. There was clenching, rolling tension in my stomach that didn’t ever seem to go away and a lack of energy where I would just lie in bed.’

Despite being in deep mental health crisis, George admits he had no confidence to visit his GP and instead would endure sleepless nights plagued by a strong sense of meaninglessness.

So, George explains, the obvious choice was for him to run away and join a monastery to become a Kung Fu master. 

‘It was an arbitrary decision that came from watching a video when I was at uni,’ he remembers. ‘Shaolin monks were doing back flips and smashing stuff up and I’d written in my diary at the time: “Go join a monastery”. And that was it. I thought kung fu might make me a stronger man… whatever that means’. 

Staying in a backpackers hostel at the bottom of the mountain, he began his trip with a three-day bout of food poisoning. Once recovered, George crawled out of his bed and started knocking on monastery doors – but was roundly ignored.

A local man eventually took pity on a crestfallen and out of luck George, and took him to a Tai Chi school, led by English-speaking Master Gu, where the pair immediately hit it off. 

With the help of his new mentor, George began to feel his anxiety melt away in the mountains and be replaced by a profound sense of peace, healing and self-compassion. By studying taoism and tai chi, which George eventually began to teach, he gained the tools that helped him understand his breakdown.

‘The ancient Chinese struggled as well, and humans all around the world have always struggled, which is why all around the world, over history, all cultures, have come up with forms of practices to help us ground ourselves, to find a bit more peace,’ explains George.

‘Enlightenment is not a big mystical thing; it’s just a series of experiences of total acceptance of ourselves, including the challenge and the beauty. And then that energy of total compassion and acceptance can then radiate out into our lives.’

But it wasn’t an easy trip. Master Gu’s school at the time was a small farm shack of two buildings, and George arrived in the depth of winter where there was no heating to help him adjust to the minus 15 degree conditions. Yet George believes the comfort and distraction we are afforded in the 21st century comes at a cost to our relationship with ourselves and the world around us. 

He says: ‘For most people in the West, the body is seen simply as a vehicle to move the brain between meetings. And that was me. Tai Chi taught me that, wow, my body’s not just the vehicle. I can rest in my body, even with all the aches and the pains and the stiffness. I found that actually the body can be a friend, a refuge.’

George would contact his family once a week to check in, but the rest of the time his phone was off. He didn’t even remember his own birthday until he switched on his phone and realised he’d turned 21 two days before. 

After a spell with Master Gu, and a stay at a Kung Fu monastery, George returned to the UK having used up all his savings, but returned to the mountains in 2020 for a year and in 2024 for another three months.

It’s hard to imagine life in a monastery when you’ve spent a secular life in the UK. Did George take a vow of celibacy? ‘Not explicitly,’ he says. ‘But there wasn’t any action going on, no. That wasn’t much of a change from uni anyway’. 

What about drinking and going out? ‘I grew up in Bristol where drum and bass comes out of the water supply. So I did miss that,’ George admits. ‘But my time in China really cleansed me. Modern society does fill us with toxins and pollution, but then once you get used to eating healthily – raw foods and vegetables – as opposed to toxic processed modern food – it’s no longer a chore. It’s the same thing with alcohol. Drinking however, is literally a poison. I hardly drink at all now, and I guess my journey did help me transform that.’

And among his teachers in China, he credits the wildlife he befriended with helping him understand himself. On long walks he would marvel at monkeys, snakes, deer and other creatures. 

‘One day I came across a huge bullfrog toad, and the defence mechanism of a toad is to freeze. We know about the three levels of the brain; the reptilian, the mammalian brain, and the prefrontal cortex, the human brain. So we understand fight or flight, but we don’t think about where we come from as human beings. 

‘The response from that toad was similar to the responses I had. So I’m in the pouring rain and I’ve got my face up to this toad who was dead still and pretending to be invisible, and I’m saying, “Hi, look mate, I know you can see me.” But the toad just stayed frozen. I thought about my own life, how I’m a freezer, not a fighter. And that was quite a powerful lesson for me of just how similar we are and how we act.’ 

Each time George returned to the airport in China, or the chaos of the London tube network, he saw with fresh eyes the mayhem we live; ‘the speed at which we live, the constant agitation and struggle’.  

After his return from China, George started to post YouTube videos exploring how ancient Chinese teachings could be applied in a modern, often chaotic world, and he now has more than 250,000 subscribers. He then set up a 19-person organisation called Balance is Possible, which produces films and holds events to help people transform their lives and contribute to the planet.

He has also produced film The Subtle Art of Losing Yourself in conjunction with Executive Producer Louie Schwartzberg which will premiere this month at the London film festival.

Back in the chaos of city living, George’s days are markedly different to those spent on the mountain but his experience of life’s demands has transformed. 

‘I feel so much more grounded, so much more resilient. Sometimes I still get stressed, but less and less. I can show up in the world with more clarity.

‘The peace is not to never experience pain, to never be stressed, but instead to experience what is here with a balanced mind, with compassion and openness, and that’s the real peace that is accessible to all of us. I know live with one foot in the east and one in the west. As a tai chi teacher I synthesis the gifts of science and modernity while grounding myself in the wisdom of the east.

Now I am throwing everything into building my organisation. I have a bank loan and live with my parents, managing teams who work remotely. Yes, its good to go away and retreat, but the real practise is to stay grounded and joyful and embrace the challenge.’

And besides these ancient Taoist truths, there is always tree-climbing to help deal with the difficult days. It’s one of his many habits that – ironically – keeps him grounded. 

Whether in the city centre of London or Bristol, he occasionally takes a break in between meetings and deadlines to scale an oak or a sycamore as a means to bring him back to nature. Sometimes the tiny wizard will join him.

‘It’s one of my silly practices. I have some favourite trees in Clifton and in London. I snuck up one in Bedford Square recently, which is a private gated community. I didn’t get caught. 

‘The Underminer is still with me,’ adds George. ‘But I’ve made friends with him now.’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk 

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