Fifth, sixth and seventh weeks in Wudang [ENG]

Summary

After the first month passed I didn’t feel too well - it was the last week of the tiger form, which kept being really heavy on my body - so I skipped some lessons towards the end of the fifth week, and took some time to rest and recover.

Once the tiger form was over, my group was assigned the 五行气功 wuxing qigong, the five animals qigong to learn. I expected it to be easier on the legs and on the body, being it is qigong (at least compared to the kung fu form I had been practicing), but it wasn't as easy as I thought it would have been. That said, after the first week of practice it became much easier to do, also probably because my body finally recovered from the first month and the tiger form. We spent all the seventh week practicing the five animals qigong, and my I could feel my body regaining strength every day. My right knee still hurts when I extend my leg abruptly, which I am of course trying to avoid doing, but it feels like it’s almost back to normal.

The weather has been nice these three weeks. After the heatwave of the second/third week, it seems to have chilled down a little.

The tiger form

With the fifth week I finally completed the 伏虎拳, the tiger form. I have to say that, despite all the trouble I had completing it (or maybe because of it as well), I like this form very much. It’s a quick, powerful form, that boasts kicks, punches, and a lot of different movements. Not only I find it perfect to warm my body up before training, but it’s also very nice to let some steam off every once in a while.
Actually, the correct translation for 伏虎拳 is “tiger taming form” (which everyone usually shortens in “tiger form”), and I think that name is a truly appropriate one for this form, in that you become the tiger.

Enter the tiger.

It’s difficult to put into words, but the movements that make up this form, if done at a certain speed and with energy, truly make you feel like a tiger..like a wild animal. Its energy rushes into you, and while it does leave you exhausted at the end, you also feel happy.

Five animals qigong 五行气功

After the tiger form, the sixth week I began studying the five animals qigong. This form, as the name suggests, is made up of 5 different forms, the turtle, the crane, the snake, the tiger and the dragon. As each individual form isn’t long, we could proceed pretty quickly, doing one every two days. Each has its own character, its own feeling. Since qigong isn’t a martial art, the forms don’t necessarily have to have any possible real-fight usage (contrary to taichi and kung fu). This allows for different movements to be used, which resemble the animals they are made after quite much. All of the forms are performed very slowly, and have some initial standing stances, followed by a walk to the left, the you turn and walk back. Each one has a different focus, and all together they make for a good practice.
The 龟 turtle’s walk focuses on balance, being that for half of it you are moving on a single leg, turning your body. The 鹤 crane’s focus is on one-leg stances, as you raise your leg first and then you lift your arms up like wings. The 蛇 snake’s would be body coordination, as it has a pretty complex walk, in which your arm and hand become respectively the body and the head of an imaginary snake, and the rest of your body turns and moves with them. The 虎 tiger’s main focus is again the 马步 horse stance, much like the kung fu form. The last one, the 龙 dragon, has a very complex movement compared to the others, in that you are always twisting your body. It was difficult to learn at first as it repeats itself all over, and while your focus is still taken by the movements it’s kinda hard to remember which point you’re at.
All in all, this set of five walks is a very good form for training, as the slow pace of it lets you focus on your stability, and really helps in getting used to more complex movements.

Swimming in the town’s river

One day between the morning and the afternoon classes me and some other students went to town, as there’s a small river that flows through it. We followed it out of town, where I was shown by the other students a place with deep and clean waters, enough for us to bathe in. It’s been years since the last time I had swum in a river, and it felt very relaxing. The nature surrounding that place was beautiful, and I think I’ll be going there again this summer.

A train would pass by every half an hour or so

The 轻功 qinggong

One of the reasons I chose this school is the 轻功 qinggong, or “light body techniques” as it’s usually translated. It’s a particular type of training that consists in strengthening your legs and improving your balance, so that you can jump higher and land safely. Recently at the school they placed some short poles in the ground, and they also made a hole (which is pretty deep, so it’s not that easy to jump out of it), aimed at this practice.
When I first checked the website for my school, I saw videos of this technique, and I got really interested. Of course, there’s plenty else to learn anyway, but it seems that the master here is pretty famous for his qinggong ability. I asked other schools before choosing this one, and they all told me it’s a forgotten skill that they don’t teach anymore.

Impressive stuff

When I arrived at the school I had a meeting with the master, and when I asked about this he nodded, answering that “I would accomplish what I came here for”. It was a pretty vague answer, but apparently he’s going to start teaching it this summer.

The tricks/qinggong lessons

During the sixth week there were some changes in the staff at the school, and a new coach came to teach here. I heard he’s from a wushu performance group, and he used to - maybe still does - perform in kung fu shows. One night my roommate told me this coach was teaching some students downstairs, and we went to ask him if we could join. We did join, but as of now we are the only foreigners , as the other students are some Chinese guys that sometimes teach us (apprentice coaches). It’s not an actual class, as it probably came to be as he offered to teach the Chinese guys some performance tricks. Being after the normal classes most of the time we are already tired from the three trainings we have every day, but it does feel good to sweat a little more before going to bed. And well, we certainly do sweat quite a lot. Truth to be told I still can’t do any of the tricks, but I can see the improvements and am constantly looking forward to the moment I’ll finally be able to do them.

Future of the blog

I’m glad I was able to keep up the one-post-per-week pace for the first month, but I realized I just can’t and won’t be able to write quite as much, as often. The simple reason is that having to write each post three times in different languages ends up taking a lot of time, and with extra evening classes, maybe extra early morning training in the future, and going out in the weekend (wed, thu), it just becomes tough to do. At the same time I don’t want to post like it’s twitter, with short frequent updates, as it would be tough and confusing to find them and read them on the blog.
As such, from now on the updates will be every other week, or every three weeks, eventually with some extra unscheduled ones in the future. I’ll try to pace them together with the forms I learn, so that I can always introduce a new one, and gather all the updates in a single post.


The next update will be about the Taiji sword form, which I just started.
See you the next time!