A Day Off!!

This week so far has been totally awesome. We've been working our butts off but it's really paid off as far as I'm concerned. It seems that the days that we're fresh, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday they really push us hard, and then Monday and Tuesday we do a lot more Tai Qi and meditation. Wednesday(today), is normally our demonstration day but Master Yuan is filming a movie with Jackie Chan today so we get the day off. Well.. not exactly. We still got up and ran at 5am this morning and had our morning Qi Gong class. But it seems so much easier when in your mind you know that once it's over you get to rest.
Last night we had to demonstrate our basic form in front of the class, one at a time. Although I was pretty nervous, and I made some mistakes, it was a really positive experience. Training with the same group of people every day is sometimes frustrating. But last night we were all cheering each other on and encouraging one another. It felt like a sports team or something, not that I've ever been on a sports team. But it was a nice 'bonding' experience.
We've also been working a lot on flexibility training, We usually work in pairs and I find this very encouraging as well. There's so many people with different levels of flexibility but everyone's pushing one another and helping each other stretch past that comfort point. Sometimes it's painful but the results speak for themselves. Yesterday morning, after we had all finished our stretching exercises, Master Yuan gave us a flexibility demonstration. He wasn't warmed up at all, but can fold himself up into a pretzel. Pretty impressive. He did chin to toe with both feet. He says, "oh one side very easy, two sides very difficult." Crazy... Sometimes I don't even believe what I see. His muscles are so relaxed they are soft to the touch. Unless of course, he's using them to kick your ass. Bwahaha.
I'm really enjoying the training so far. Just trying to take it one day at a time. I'm just glad to have an extra day of rest to recover a bit. I am sore everywhere!

I never know how to start...

The first week of the program is over. I've been trying to keep it simple and take it one day at a time. It's pretty overwhelming thinking that I'm planning to spend the next 5 years of my life training like I've trained this week. We get up at 5am and run 6 days a week. I've never run so much in my life. On saturday we actually ended up running for something like 50minutes. If someone had asked me if I could run a half hour I would've said no. But I have no watch and once you reach a certain point of exhaustion, you just can't waste the energy trying to figure out. You just push yourself as hard as you can and hope for the best.