Advanced seminar – a student’s report

Day 1

Meeting at 6am on the front of the Inner Alchemy building, the new dormitories in the temple. Soon after we started a march on the road and reached a nearby lake with an invigorating speed. Three laps of the lake then back to the temple consumed little over one hour. Quite tiring… a nice shower and little rest filled up the time until breakfast.

In the dining hall the temple priests chanted some song then rang a high pitch bell for 3 times to mark the begining of the breakfast. Eat quickly then the breakfast closing ceremony has repeated similar to the opening one, all must cease eating then. Back to rest, it seems we will need plenty of it…

9:30 and our class began, after some introduction of the people and the place we dove into a short meditation, about 75 minutes long. The meditation hall (dubbed as lecturing room) is quite big, perhaps it can fit more than 200 people at the same time. However, like the rooms, a little cold which required the use of short blankets to cover our legs.

We learned about the nearby caves, part of the 36 magical (celestial) caves of China, where some ancestors of the school flew towards their immortal life in the past. Today the caves is guarded by a female taoist priest, also part of the temple staff. The temple has mixed priests, women and men alike.

11:30 back to the room for a quick rest, then 12:00pm the lunch started with the same opening and closing ceremony…

12:30 is the nap time, actually a full 2 hours sleep would be required in order to maintain the energy and strenght to cover the rest of the day.

14:52 I barely can get out of sleep, so I need to run to the class… I feel like there is not enough time for sleep… However at class my mind became clear and the body became easy. I am sure the European jet lag got in sync and helped a little. Meditation took the same 75 minutes but this time master and all old students (about 4 plus local ones) increased the qi pressure so the legs started to hurt a bit. Perhaps a lot more for the new students.

18:00 the dinner is ready, now we make sure to eat fast enough, between the bells 🙂

17:30 first class about the moving arts starts, we learned about ping heng gong – the balance practice with the trees. In fact we learned then practiced the first two forms of it.

20:30 marks the end of the practice day, time to get off more of the jet lag. Master allows us to sleep more for the first two days, then he will push us more and more. I do not know if I need to be afraid of that or not since today was a tough enough day for many of us…