Week 8

We had a demonstration on Friday at an annual farmers market in Garberville this week. It was a really good time introducing ourselves and the Retreat Center project to the local community. I performed 2 forms for my part of the demonstration, a Long Fist form Lien Bu Chuan and a Hung Gar form Ir Liu. This was actually the first time that I performed in front of a crowd of people I didn’t know. Also I hadn’t been able to do any forms for about 6 months because of my ACL injury. So stepping up to the performance area I was both excited and a little nervous. Lien Bu Chuan went well until I left out a small section…I was determined to make my Hung Gar form the best I could. Ir Liu starts out with a short hard Qigong set which surprisingly focused my mind and gave an outlet for the nervous tension within myself. After that I was very comfortable and the form went very well. Other than conditioning purposes I never realized before why most Hung Gar forms begin with hard qigong…I now understand that they help to energize and focus the mind in prepartion for fighting (or in my case performing).

Something else very important happened on this day. On the way to the demonstration I was sitting in the front seat next to shifu and we were talking about animals. Actually I brought it up because I think it would be nice to have a pet. I love pug dogs so I brought that up to shifu but apparently he thinks there ugly so they’re out of the question. But then I remembered something my mom said. Pugs come from China so what better way to preserve the Chinese arts than to get a Chinese dog? I got a short and sarcastic “ha ha” from Shifu followed by a “you’re sneaky.” Still the answer was no.

Well when we arrived in Garberville I noticed a truck that had a “free puppy” sign hanging off the back. “Shifu look” I said “free puppies!” And surprisingly the unexpected happened. He said “lets go over and look”.

When I went over there, there was about 5 puppies huddled together in the corner in the bed of the truck. I reached in to pet them and they all stayed in the corner except for one…which came up to me immediately and was very friendly and playful. There was no question in my mind this dog was awesome. I looked at Shifu and he looked at me… “You want that one huh”…I guess we both new this dog was awesome. After the demo we took our new friend home with us. Welcome Xiao Hu (Little Tiger) the 6th Disciple.