It’s been more than a week now that we start training for the Gong Fu course. Everything begin with the ascension of the White Horse Mountain, with a backpack under a foggy rain. Immediately our motivation is tested. Countless stairs, burning legs who try to follow the move, a few breaks to rest and here we are.

First night in the temple, it’s really cold, but such a warm welcome from the family there. I am at home and the view is amazing!

Winter is just over, but the weather is still cold and humidity is hard at the beginning, we all have been a little sick, hopefully we have natural Chinese medicine brewed over a fire to keep us warm. It’s a nice fire place to share with each others, laugh, drink medicine and rest our body.

We discover little by little the way of living in the temple. Every day, Daoists women cook and meal times are really appreciated. Good vegetarian food, so healthy, with a mantra to recite before each meal.

We started to get into the rhythm of this life with training and theory classes. Wake up early, run up the mountain and practice Qi Gong to wake up your body and your Qi. I especially love this time of practice with the sunrise, a deep quietness and the songs of birds. We are really in immersion in a beautiful wild nature. The perfect place to learn and connect with your Qi and the Dao.

After breakfast, we do chores to help maintain the temple as clean as possible and then we go train for gong fu. Days after days we practice between 4 and 5 hours.

It’s hard, the body is not used to it, the mind neither, but slowly we feel that the muscles can handle more and more. Legs get stronger, movements become more fluid, thoughts more clear. We learn basics gong bu, ma bu, kicks, fists and we combine them with jumps and steps. We are now able to execute them properly. The master really has a good way to teach us the essence of the movements. While training, “lower” is one of the word we hear the most. And our posture becomes better and better.

We will normally start soon a new form of gong fu and regularly the master give us new content to increase our Qi Gong.

The evening meditation is also a part of our daily routine. After dinner, we all go in the main temple or in Guan Yin temple to sit and cultivate, to try to slow down our thoughts. In the deep silence of the mountain, once again there is no better place to look for inner peace.

We also start to plant medicinal herbs and vegetables together with the master, and we brewed medicinal alcohol according to an ancient natural method.

I am so glad to be here and to learn how to transform my body and its old habits into something higher. This place is far away from society and I have this feeling of living like in the old times, when stress and speed were not part of the daily life. Here we take care about what we are doing, putting more consciousness in every act. I am lucky to be here and to share this experience with good hearten people.

Cheng Yu