Lately I accidentaly – and for the first time in my life – went into a chinese DOJO. How such things can happen to me accidentally is again a story like the one I shared already some weeks ago in the podcast with Sam the Sannyassin मंन्यासिन्. This is how things happen to me.
But thats not the story I wanna tell today or go into.
Its more about sharing my astonishment, revelations and insides.
First of all I really did not know that such places exist, especially not in Berlin, 50 min drive away from the place I live.
When I arrived there friday very early morning I expected one trial class for free. In the end it turned out to be like an Ashram but for Nei Gong, inner arts, Tai chi and sword fight.
It turned out that it was not one class but the whole day you spend there. Actually people of all gender live there, practicing inner arts every day, full time together. Also for me as visitor it became one whole day spending there. Cutting all my other appointments off and even having a warm fresh hot and healthy self made cooked dinner together with everyone during a break.
I did NEIGONG Standing Postures for 2 hours, sword fight and walking mediations.
I was especially looking forward to the challenge of standing there in a certain basic position I already knew for 15 minutes, holding my arms up, not moving. I love the physical challenge in it because you will (despite tons of other more subtle effects) face and meet all your tensed muscles in your body that tell you to stop (and leave :D). But when the trainer said to me: “A body CAN do that. We are just NOT used to it.”
I for some reason became super motivated. It might not be the most sublime or profound saying but it was excactly the sentence I needed to hear in that moment.
Also it was a super personal experience for me to bump into that place and for the first time in my life have an actual real life practice together with other human beings, not just Youtube or the Internet. And moreover it meant the world to me cause it brought me closer to a beloved one I lost.
I wished he could have seen that place-he was searching for such a place so long. He would have loved it so much.
After training in the DOJO itself we went in a park to put the movement into space as the Trainer put it.
Also I had no idea how much I would LOVE to do sword fight 😀
I thought I will feel like the next Jeanne d’Arc or a sexy Ninjya but in the end it much more felt, to my surprise, like dancing with a lover.
To me, at least doing it for the very first time, it felt like a dance not like fighting or attacking or using it for self-defense. Which I might have expected. Actually it had nothing to do with fighting at all. More like leading, listening, guiding and yeah…as I said… the dance. I can not claim that the sword felt like a part of me. More like a dance between the sword and me. Although I was holding, leading and guiding it, giving all the impulses, it more felt to me like an entity.
BTW I learned these type of places exist in china, they are not, like in Yoga Tradition, called Ashram but Temple.
One slogan that was written in this temple in Berlin was:
A temple is a place where trees blossom but there are no leaves on the ground.
