Wudangshan is traditionally known as the Ming dynasty center of Daoist learning. Since then it has grown a lot from being a periferical center of worship to the 6th of the 5 holy Daoist mountains, by empirical edict no less.
Daoism in the earlier epochs was united also by empirical edict in the zhenwu pai and the quanzhen pai. The quanzhen pai follow some chan Buddhist ideas and take the heart sutra as an extension of the daodejing. Also by empirical edict initially but also independently they absorbed the Buddhist pantheon into its worship and alchemy too. Quanzhen also accepted immortality as a spiritual idea and not as an actual physical ever lasting life, as was considered by other daoist schools.
The zhengyi pai are born out of wizardry and precede quanzhen a few centuries. They marry and have kids and their leadership is dynastic. In fact they are a family of popes and his children, grandchildren, nephews etc. they were created by Zhang Daoling and his descendents, and the recognition that original Chinese Buddhism was mostly tantrism wich is in actual use just witchcraft. Like later lamaist Buddhism did in Tibet, Daoism was a state format emulating organization trying to bind gods and demons under one rule as to control the harm done by them. It was successful because since that time Daoism can be called a judeical religion, meaning that in fact a daoist temple is a court of justice.
At wudangshan quickly three brands of Daoism nested: zhengyi pai, quangzhen pai and wudang pai. Wudangpai can be quanzhen and can be zhengyi too, it depends on the person. Some live like monks and some live like priests and marry. They believe that alchemical self cultivation is the way to achieve understanding of Dao.  They also hold ‘san jiao wei ji’ at their core as a teaching. It means that the three religions in fact are one religion. Zhang Sanfeng, the patriarch of the Wudang pai described in his taiji neidan jing how the tree teachings of Fo (Buddha), Dao (Laozi) and Ru (kongzi) each have a particular angle on the truth. This vision doesn’t preach religions tolerance only, but it suggests that all religions are in fact of the same value, but teac h different things. A good thought to spread as a teaching in modern times too, where people, in power or without, still seem to think their religion is better then someone else’s.
The Wudang pai is the ultimate underdog in Chinese religion. It sees itself as part of the religious upper class but is also branded as a folk religion, such as the many Maitreia movements in China, Taiwan and Hongkong.
Currently the Wudang pai is lead by You Xuande, also known as the Shifu, the master teacher.  Many thousands of followers from all ranks of life come to visit the wudang mountains frequently to burn incense, worship, prey or confess. Also many people come there to reconnect with ancestors using the priests and monks and statues as an intermediate. The Wudang pai so to say the topnotch of that folk movement in local religion. They are a dedicated group of followers and seekers of Dao, sometimes originating in other religions before they converted, sometimes holders of several religious memberships at the same time. Some are not religious at all.
Many members seek close affiliation with the public leader of the movement. The current increase of wealth of many business people gives a flow of currency that is available for religious reconstruction and construction. One of the major constructions so far is Yingshan temple, also known as Nan Wudang (southern wudang), south east of Wuhan. Wudangshan itself is in the northwest of Hubei province. Several attempts to construct new temples and learning places around Wudang Jinding (Golden peak) are underway, but the one at Beima mountain just has been torpedoed because the local government dedicated that mountain craig area for garbage dump.
The main diciples in the wudang pai are all dedicating themselves to being available to anyone wanting to learn about Dao. Their main learning instrument is Wudang Taijiquan gongfu. Some specialize further and take neidan alchemy as their root, medicine or religion. Few get the opportunity to study at one of the five Chinese Daoist universities. F.i. My brother Chen Lisheng had the luck to study both at Wudang university and Beijing Baiyunguan university (country central university for Daoism) so his knowledge is very wide. My brother Yuan Liming is more dedicated to gongfu practice and is a treasure house of forms. My own arts include both, but verge more towards medicine and health development. We all study something of all, but our priority is somewhere else.The general Wudang pai aim is to help people become independent healthy social beings.
 

It has been a few years now since I started investigating the Spa phenomenon. The Spa phenomenon is what we might call the first Holliday Resort type of business in western culture. In fact it is a start of the flourishing tourism industry, that ofcourse, and sending your kid on a reconnaissance mission to get to know the capitals in Europe… both were cultural habits of the wealthy. Now they are accessible for anyone, good for us.

The root thought of the Spa phenomenon is health based. Most Spa’s were centered around Spa’s, springs with mineral rich waters which since ancient times were popular due to claims of healing properties. Now ofcourse the Spa is disengaged from wells, although water pools or baths are still quite common in a spa.  In recent years we see Spa owners have embraced New Age thinking, spirituality and practices to provide new interesting services to their customers. They also developed in sync a new Spa language in appearances and advertisement that seems to work, well … to a degree. There is after all a need for innovation, which means it is only partially successful.

In China things are different. The art of pampering is a specialty of the many courts China has known over its vast area of land and history. We still recognize this in the success or lack of it of many companies active in China. Shopping malls are in fact shopping courts. Visitors are representing themselves as courtisans that require to be pampered.  When you enter a Chinese shop usually there will be someone in attendance of you immediately.  When you enter a western shop there is not. A main company like C&A, Dutch by origin, like myself, typically shows only a few costumers because it requires a typical small section of interested people in Chinese society, that isolate themselves more from the common.  Chinese costumers miss someone standing by their side to help them. They feel unwelcome. Westerners in the same situation feel their privacy is secured. Chinese warehouses usually are more full of customers, not only because of their style of articles, but also due to the style of service.

The art of Pampering and medicine are also deeply intertwined.  Chinese health ideology knows several branches:

• Self cultivation and (xiusheng and neidan)
• Healthsports  (yangsheng)
• Care and Beauty ( Meirong, Anmo and Yangsheng)
• Medicine ( zhongyao, waidan)
• Education and professionalism (xuexi)

It is usually left up to the person how serious they take the trajectory, but it is not uncommon to just want to be pampered and if you pick up some skills or knowledge along the way then that is a boon.

This formula has several aspects that can be very instructive and attractive to modern Spa’s. The model I developed myself and am now offering to a variety of interested parties tries to bridge the gap between the two, but on the side also offers to bridge the gap between Spa and medicine and sports in the west, not just recreational, but also educational.

The Chinese formula ideology is to support people in functioning independently within the wide arena of health, sports and beauty practices. The goal is to make them experts in themselves, in oppostion what modern Spa, Medicine and Sports ideologies propose.

Traditionally that concept is only weakly enforced in the offer to the Chinese customer. A mixed Western/Chinese formula is what allows the customer to more pro-actively engage with the program. It allows for more value for their money, typical western needs for efficiency. That is what the program I developed does. It is suitable to Sport centers, Health centers, Spa’s and even Spiritual centers. All these enterprises border on Chinese Health Ideology in so far that they easily implement it with proper guidance. It is not only holistic in nature, it aims also to be all inclusive in its service to the costumer. The customer should come out more ready to engage with life, not just relaxed.
 

I get sometimes asked advice about how to best run a business. Can Daoist, or Buddhist thought can help one to do so? It seems to most that both Daoism and Buddhism are averse of doing business. In fact they are not. What they say is that wealth is a distracter from meaningful things. It takes a good person to be able to deal with money and wealth, that is, to use it for helpful ends. 
Well, there you go, the problem proposed in the question is solved.

The question following then for everyone in business is first and foremost: 'am I a good person?' This question is not a fashionable one. Often i get reprimanded for asking that question, while recent events in world politics and envronmental disasters show that the question in fact is a most relevant one, and it isn't asked often enough. Asking this question brings forward to our attention the question to ‘what is goodness?’  in your thoughts very quickly. Ofcourse, that one is not easily answered, and often is part of the quest of life.

Besides these questions, people invite me to come talk about their business, explain them what Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism do or want and how it could help them. Satisfying curiousity is what i do. Good business people ofcourse are curious, and since China is aiming to be such a big player in the world it is a good idea to understand some aspects of Chinese cultural ways of handling things. We talk organization, personality development, planning, decoration, behavioural models, staff selection, product development and do generally fun things to get to serious answers. Sometimes we talk about self-experience as a foundation for developing leadership qualities, and some I coach for many years in that process. Others I just connect with others in the hope to further their business.

If Daoism they often say:  ‘in reversal we find Dao’, so in reversing the question ‘what is the Dao of business?’ we can reverse and say ‘what is the business of Dao?’ It is a common logic to do so in many issues. Try it, it works. For instance people wonder often if other people like them, but they could also ask themselves if they like these other people. Not rarely the answer is shocking, and leads to behavioural changes, which cause others to like them better. 

The business of Dao is to bring things/people in harmony with the greater order of things. So if your business helps that, you are in the Business of Dao too. The Business of Dao is therefore Moral business. Reversed we see that the Dao of business is about ethics too. So are you a good person? Am I a good person? Does your or my business dedicate itself to moral things? In a morally beneficial way? These questions are also not easily answered. But at least we may assume or should assume everyone tries to be a good person. So in doing moral business you actually proof you are a good person and in making concessions that go at the expense of goodness, you can wonder… what happens to your goodness… Well, ask the people you work with, ask your costumers, ask about their expectations of you.  Do they believe you have their best interest in mind when you serve them? Do they even dare to tell you?

In general we find we as persons are ill defined, instead of being something fixed, we are more like trends: we are becoming better or successively worse. In either way we can find a way to be successful. It is up to our choises. In the end we are just what we see in the world when we wake up in the morning.
 

In my work I see many people are attracted to Chinese medicine and spirituality because of their curiosity to the art the art of the bedchamber, Fangzhongshu捧场纹. Some authors even became famous because of that curiosity. I get loads of questions and requests to explain or even show or demonstrate every year, although the last few years peopke seem to understand that practices like these are private, and are not freely shared.

The Art of the Bedchamber is in China as old as the description of medicine theory. In fact medicine theory from early on focused on the wellbeing of women and men in society, the body and the bedchamber. Modern popular literature from van Gulik till Mantak Chia focusses mostly on the spectacle of extreme sexual pleasure, multiple orgasms or long lasting orgasms. In fact that is not part of the art the bedchamber. Within that skill the pleasure principle seems all but absent. plessure is lifted to a whole new level of clarity, that excludes th ecstacy people so often crave for.

The early books are technical manuals on medical sex. Later on because of the influx of Indian Tantra new arts were invented with or without the experience of ecstasy. It became ingrained in neidan practice, as single cultivation… you know, masturbation techniques for male and female… and dual cultivation, which also included sex between men and women. Same sex practices some Daoists made jokes about as belonging to certain Buddhist schools. At the Daoist mount Qingchen in China there is a small fenced street with sculptures of Buddhist monks in a diverse set of copulations with each other and animals. That is a humorous jest, but i guess it doesn't represent the truth.

The art of the bedchamber was redesigned in Tibetan Tantra to help lock the mind inside a particular frame of mental reference. The conscious force of this has to become embodied inside oneself through repetitive practice of the three kaya/states of mental experience.  In Taoist practice Zhengyi schools incorporated sexuality in certain rituals which were also redeveloped inside wizardry and immortality development.

Most people focus on the concept of semen retention for men. The books/manuals speak of that, but without explanation. The semen (jingye精液), (called perfect liquid in Chinese, and not essence/jing as most translations suggest), is seen as a substance that needs to be collected and refined. The thing that is refined though is not the Jingye itself, but its 德 (De), its quality. De is the De of Daode, from Daodejing, the weft of morality. it helps to produce a particular kind of yang阳 (steam). This steam is circulated first through the yang and yin channels and mixed with the weft of the body-jing. For this process ejaculation is not a problem, it is the neidan preparatory practice that is the point. 清修qingxiu is single cultivation or Jing cultivation. It means learning to recognize the De of Jing. If you know the De of Jing, you can discover that qi produces Dao and if there is Dao you see that heaven (tian天) and awareness (shen神) then are the same.
For women the cultivation is on the De of Blood. Once per month she bleeds and takes the De of her own blood, which ofcourse containing her ovum. She does not keep her blood in, although the practice when effective reduces the frequency of menstruation until it eventually stops completely.
In the process of dual cultivation (双修shuangxiu)  the frequency of intercourse is set on the single cultivation. So the men’s cultivation is following the woman’s rhythm. It also means that the man and the women eventually have no more intercourse when the cultivation is constant without the need of intercourse or single cultivation. Ofcourse that is the function of cultivation: to set up permanent awareness, so that all the physiological processes can be monitored. The cultivation then is just a stepping stone. The goal is to understand Dao, because Dao-knowledge is prerequisite to divinize oneself.  Ofcourse in the process you also get to understand the world at large, so it helps to become successful there too. Maybe that is the temptation. It helps to practice to understand this.
 

In my study of Chinese culture I came to understand a lot of things about my own culture too. My ancestors from my father’s side were sinti Gypsies, and on my mother’s side they were simple Dutch laborers. i also learned that mass migrations in the last 3000 years or so caused that as a rule all Europeans are of mixed origins if we take scientific theories and hsitory serious (so that the idea of nation and race is a silly abberation), and and that there was only one war in the last 1500 years, namely the crusades, that were initiated by an insecure Europe inventing itself based on the Roman Empire. it is still going on. It is still raging because people are afraid to see others are the same as themselves. Islam and Chritianity and other more minor Semitic cultures are all of the same stem, so they together are one 5000 year old culture with a half forgotten history when other players were dominant. The crusades are a civil war. The EU is only half of the west, it should include the region all the way including IRAN and Saudi Arabia. It should be called the Western Union, because these Eastern states are still the West.

A few years ago I was investigating what was the influence of Laozi on the West and discovered people study him all the way back to the 17th century and his influence, like that of the Yijing, is inmense. Capitalism for instance is founded on the Islamic Sharia law on making profits, but it was Laozi’s Wuwei that created the concept of Laissez Faire in Capitalism indicating the measure of government influence. It freed the middle class from the constraints the state puts on it and caused modern consumerist societies from China and Russia to Europe and the America’s, from Iceland to Eastern Island, from the soil into the genes. The crusades also created Romanticism and the idea of personal freedom, and the abandonment of forced marriage.

Philosophers, social scientists and politicians usually talk about rational motivations to appeal to the masses, but they lard them with irrealist aspects that appeal to the underbelly of the people that motivate these to give them mandate to rule. This also reveals who really created modern society. Were this Kant, Hegel or Marx? I don’t think so. The real history is not in the motivations of our leaders, they just follow social trends. The real history is being made by the people who shape society’s trends. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Nihilism, Aleister Crowley’s theatrical experience and Carl Gustav Jung’s surreal internalization of values in the mind are of bigger importance then Industrialization and the invention of the Heisenberg principle and Schrödingers Uncertainty Principle. Modern history is the history of exploitation of personal weaknesses, the history of the need to be addicted to some stimulant, the need to alter our physique by practice, chemicals or operations.

It is in this world that society produces people who are developing understanding and wisdom, like a cock in the field of poisonous plants that help us forward as individuals, and offer people actually happiness. Laozi calls them Sages: they travel up and down between the divine and the people, invisible and unknown.  And that was his critique on the social heroes of his time. Maybe today I am too philosophical, too radical. It would be nice to personally know such a person and to learn from such a one what to do with life.
 

Cave life is an essential aspect of Daoist culture. Cave life was to help achieve enlightenment. What is enlightenment? It is just understanding how this life works. It doesn't change the quality of it, just the experience of the quality.

The Daoist Wang Chongyang suggested that to reach enlightenment everyone should disentangle themselves from common daily cultural values. He asked his followers to live in poor thatched huts, not to wear too many or colourful clothes, not to eat too much or drink intoxicating stuffs, to sleep short times only and to break with the family and retreat in isolation. it was to not get distracted from holding our attention to that what makes us happy, not to get confused and not te get weak or sick. if you tell this people , they look at you with a weary smile. to have attention to the meaningful is not that important, but to feel distracted too often is. Ofcourse you also cannot manage a movement with only hermits, so the movement very quickly developed a monastic obligation including regular retreats where the disciple lived in ditches, caves and along the road. they became quite succesful.

Next to the cave life, which helps you to see the things for how they take place due to the break with the daily rat-races of work, party, holiday and relationships that can’t seem to give what they promise. Since old times the Five Peck of Rice movement had established another core practice: being poor is a noble stage when you choose for it. It also said that if you had money you had to support the poor and the traveler. In fact it asked anyone who had something to give to become a patron to the willing and talented. We see this even repeated at the courts, such as the court of Huainan, where duke Liu retained scientists, alchemist, medicine people, scholars etc to help him devise an encyclopedia incorporating knowledge of things as well as knowledge on how to improve oneself as a person as an undividable unity. Some people nowadays are patron by their own volition, there is no spiritual obligation to do so.

Before that Confucius said you are only truly civilized when you never think of yourself and use your gifts, your behaviour as a tool for instructing those less fortunate and civilized then you. people don't really like being given a lesson, but they like copying. So copying isn't as bad as many court rulings make us believe.

Ofcourse thinking you are civilized is a form of arrogance, and so is the idea that someone else is less fortunate then you. But what he means is that we live by example. We do to others too often what we do not understand that happened to us and so we invite the things over and over to happen to us. The worst is though when things happen to us that we really didn’t deserve. For this the answer ofcourse is yuanfen, karma, things coming to us from the past. Well, too often we loose connection with what feeds us only because we are reacting on old pains and insecurities. Only rarely we are practical, considerate and caring, let alone really thinking things trough.

In fact often things just happen to us because they happen to us. It is hard to realize that all meaning to life is given to it by ourselves, through what we believe and through what others make us believe.Nobody wanted to hurt us, but it only feels like that. The hardest in life is to keep our hearts open, young and playful and not live a life out of spite and vengeance. Togetherness ofcourse requires our biggest dedication but is hardest to complete. It is always easyer to walk away, to forget why we got involved in our ideals.

The thing Laozi asked is to never give up on anyone and never break our promises. That request is what makes us all living cave lives. We always try to keep on looking for the quality of the situation, to see the things for how they take place, at least, if we don't get distracted...
 

Recent Messages

1: Hi, so have a nice trip
2: Yes i guess it will be ok. How are you?
1: I hope everything 's fine, considering the vulcano's new airfield closings ...I m good thank you...
2: Nice to hear, don't work too hard
1: I wont ,  will have a short holiday  too  this month
2: That is good news. It is to late though to come visit me
1: y. in that case, I think it is better to keep life as mysterious as it always has been. You know how it is with far friends…
2: i don't know about that. Meeting with known and unknown friends can be such an enriching experience
1: Yes, maybe. But sometimes I prefer imagination, like the difference between reading a novel or seeing a movie. And to be honest, I am not sure what will we talk about if we meet. It has been such a long time since last time…
2: Just let nature take over. We will find things to talk about. All first meetings are a bit complicated
1: I dont think you have that problem too. But I am shy, even though we know each other many years
2: I have, I too am a very shy person in reality. Maintaining contacts through internet is not real, so is easy.
1: y, I am kind of shy too. But if you re shy , how do you work with so many people. I mean, your work is teaching people, dealing with their problems
2: Work is different. If you work you are your work. We are defined by our actions, so engaging in our actions prevents shyness to take over. A working person is not a person, but is work. Like how the Chinese thinker Yangzi said in Warring States China: a White Horse is not a horse. Whiteness is of higher class then Horse so a white horse is primarily white and secondarily horse. Likewise a working person is primarily work and secondarily person. Because we forget these things we think we should pay more attention to being a person, but we are not persons, we are what we do. What we think or feel is not so relevant. We are not judged by our fellow feelings on what we think and feel, it is invisible to them and therefore highly irrelevant. So when we have to be a person in normal interpersonal communication, we are the communication between us. And in that field we cannot know or understand much, thus it is causing shyness. Work is predetermining us, so it is easy as a tool in communication. Both can know what is keeping us busy inside. In commerce being a person is emphasized because the uncertainty of feeling it is important to be a person makes us unhappy, and unhappy people are cood consumers. Look at the current Greek case: it is the outrage of persons. they are unhappy and want to consume, but communal mismanagement disrupted that. So they fight the governement. But they forget, like in any other country, they are the government, you can't leave government in the hands of a few, all people are responsiblew for good government in their country, every day. Governing is one of the things we every day do. just thinking something is wrong is never enough. we need to actively engage in anything. we are our actions. Our actions make the world better, not our thoughts and intentions.
 

I have become involved in the national Dutch program to set ISO standardized values for Chinese medicine. The guiding organization is called NEN. The job of setting standards in Chinese medicine seems a contradiction of terms, since the nature of Chinese medicine is to abhor standardization.

To be sure, Chinese governments have since old tried to standardize medicine to make learning and practice more convenient. In fact the mindset of anyone collating or writing Chinese medicine texts throughout history are attempts to standardize terminology and practice. The Nanjing难经 is the first major example of that, but also a complex contradicting medicine work as that of the Daoists Hua Tuo or Sun Simiao are so. in fact these are commentaries on a standard that is hard to understand.

The Huangdi Neijing 黄帝内经( Huangdi’s Fabric of the Internal) is the most authoritive texts on Chinese medicine so far. All other texts are mere commentaries on it, which means they are personal visions from great masters in medicine trying to help fellow students to comprehend more of the art, skill and science of Chinese medicine. This text, Huangdi Neijing in itself is a standardization and often contradicts itself only to show that medicine learning and practice is an art of finding other angles to the apparently identical problems that cannot be solved by using the same method of treatment...

The Huangdi Neijing standard combines thoughts we see in alchemy, Laozi’s Daodejing, legalist thinking from Han Feizi and the Guanzi, the yinyang and Wuxing school of thought from Zou Yan and ofcourse the Ru style of thinking of Confucius. For most people the Huangdi neijing remains an enigma because they do not study the sources of the book and thus cannot comprehend its content.

What do we do with what we do not comprehend? We compare it with what we do know or think to know. This method of understanding is called “Concept Matching”, but in fact it mostly means free interpretation of concepts. History shows over and over again that conept matching is a falsifying method. it is a laymens venture in the unknown, what the Yijing (another standardizing text) calls: "travelling the forrest without a forrester to show the way." That error is what happens to most modern students of Chinese medicine: because of not understanding we seek comprehension by using western medicine or science terminology. It is often guised with the term “integration of medicine sciences”. It is a natural process since most of us keep relatively unknowledgably about anything happening outside our own immediate environment. We are usually opiniated without the proper knowledge to have an opinion. We tend to call this opiniatedness “common sense” and being “down to earth” or “realistic”. I am the last to say “I am not like that”. Ofcourse I do not know enough too. I get involved in the standardisation proces but it is far certain I am suitable to it.

It is the natural task of education to help solve this problem. Main study of Chinese medicine should  be how different cultures each have their own science, and how to recognize the difference and assume first that we are wrong in whatever we think. This comes close to what is asked from old from Chinese medicine students. The theory is the standard, and since the theory is first proposed in the Huangdi Neijing, the Huangdi Neijing is the standard.

The Huangdi Neijing theory in fact is a generalization, it is not very precise, it is ambiguous and open to alteration of meanings because that is what Chinese culture values best. One has to wear the standard and develop a unique personal approach to understanding. It also makes Chinese medicine the most complex and difficult issue to study and comprehend. On the theoretical level and practical resists translation and integration beyond the general. Standardisation is a need of commerce, of industry and of govenrment. any one person practicing science will know that nature is not standardized on the meso level, that is between us people and nature. 

It will be difficult to respect this in a standardization procedure that is grounded in essential non-Chinese culture values, where the universal validity of its own science is not questioned. The risk of ISO standardization is that it kills the natural growth and development of a flowering Chinese medicine theory and practice. I am not sure how it can be avoided. It will probably take many meetings. It will be interesting, but I do not believe there can be an outcome suitable for Chinese Medicine. I think Western science and related legal issues are too alien to it. But maybe someone will show me wrong… that will bee cool!
 

The modern fitness craze manages to get about 10% of the population to go exercise frequently. That isn’t much, considering the damaging effect of lack of excercise on physical and mental wellbeing and health. Already in ancient time it was recognized that physical inactivity was associated with certain diseases and distractions that were preventable with regular fitness exercise.

Modern exercise culture originates in 19th century mechanized body thinking and developed gradually into a particular body ideal based on ancient European beauty ideals. In this changing world we see more people looking outward, and seeing that other cultures followed other ideals and emphasized different things in practice. The success of yoga is a wonderful example of this. The popularity of east Asian martial arts is another one.

So far most learning of these movement styles and their purposes is based on a partial understand ding. But with the development of our global village, more and more information comes to us, showing us that other cultures have more to offer then just excercises, but also another vision on beauty and how our body works. China alone already delivers us two different models of how the body can be applied in physical exercise. We call these the Shaolin and the Wudang Model. The Wudang Model is the wholistic model for which I have gradually become a promoter. Where Shaolin focuses itself on the mind as source for result in exercise, Wudang shows understanding the rules of naturalness are the source of results.

Wudang Taiji boxing founding father Zhang Sanfeng showed that Physical education is a tool to spread the value and benefits of fitness throughout society.  In ancient China, like in Greece there was already recognition of the necessity for curriculums involving physical education for people. The renewed appreciation for human life, which evolved during the 11th century, created an environment which was ready for the widespread development of Wudang physical education throughout World as is happening now.

The Wudang style model contains a large variation in exercises that focus or flexibility, strength and development of muscular and skeletal structure. The intense movement and the recreational experience relieve depression and helps the body itself at micro, meso and macro level. The main power of the Wudang Fitness is in the regulation of matabolic functions which allow you to quickly retrieve more results. The skills of the Wudang Fitness can be adopted in other sports such as athletics, running and teamsports, which because of it also show better results!
The exercise program is due to its flexibility applicable to many personal needs in health maintenance and development. One can easily grow from practicing “this” aspect for a while and then move to the next “this”  part and thus gradually develop a whole body fitness and health.
Moreover, the program allows both for group practice as well as individualized practice. It aims to develop independence in health maintenance, and therefore also offers tools to understand the why and how of health and discomfort.

And better then that: it is both entertaining, stimulating and educational. I always think like this: if it makes me stronger, healthier and happier, it will also do to others!
 

Travelling has some benefits and some disadvantages. If you travel a lot you tend to become more isolated from your fellow beings, but many people live isolated lives all their existence.
In Europe I don’t get to travel by means of public transport a lot. The times I do I realize what a privileged life I lead, being able to isolate from society by means of car travel, plane travel etc.. In public transport you simply see more people and the raw experiences on their faces and in their body postures for the ewealthy in society there are many tools to cosmetically remove suffering. This experience is the main drive I think for people to try to develop their career and make money enough to isolate their families from society as much as possible. Myself I am often all too happy having to work long days for my clients and classes and book materials. Maybe that long working time is a substitute wealth too: a means to isolate from society. Volunteered isolation...
Here in China I get to see a lot of public transport. It is something of a sport to orient yourself through shanghai when you have to travel to previous unknown destinations. in some areas of shanghai you can still feel laowai in Shanghai too. But most faces you see are drawn and sagging, half asleep and tired. Incidental younger and older couples smile with each other, isolating themselves from their environment through their enthusiasm for each other. It is the unrelenting toughness of workerslives here. There is not too much choice for many of them, some hope maybe. The isolation is involuntary...
In conversation and relationships, be they love or political or business relationship, we often get entangled in our differences. The different opinions are partlyn to help us maintain our differences. One way or the other we cannot feel safe when not isolated. Sometimes we stubborny choose for a conflict making life harder, just to feel safe. What a complex economy of safety we live!
On the other hand we easily acknowledge that all grand ways of thinking were attempts to bring people together, to create real safety. When Gautama the Buddha came to see poverty and its pains he devised his meditational system of life to overcome and stop suffering. When Christ walked the earth as son of God he was overtaken by the suffering and gave of his natural powers to heal the sick. When Confucius was teaching he saw that suffering was caused because people have difficulty restraining themselves in their relationship with outers. Laozi when leaving over the western rim dictated the Weft of Moralities (Daodejing) to teach about the nature of reality and how people are to realize they are small and that only through cooperation they can overcome their difficulties. Ghandi, Martin Luther King and other great minds and personalities of modern times have shown how our more complex societies still know suffering because of people feeling isolated. Overcoming our differences will achieve more.
Ofcourse commercialism's succes implicitly dictates that people should feel attracted to earn money so they can realize isolation voluntarily. Much of the hurt people experience is because they do not have a choice. Education is therefore very important. Not only to teach practical skills, but most important to learn to live consciously. It is the reason why medicine and sports and art exists: they are tools through which people learn to cope with isolation and teach each other to be together. In togetherness the trend to isolate can be overcome.
 

It is easy to talk about such lofty ideas. But I find it myself difficult to express these things through my actions as well. Being different is essential in life, cooperation can only happen when we decide to co-operate. This decision has to be genuine and we have to devise ways to maintain that cooperation. Laozi says that Dao is easy to understand but hard to practice. This sums up quite well the dilemma we all face. The Dao word is much like the “smurf” word for these little blue cartoon figures. It can be replaced by any other meaningful word and make the Daodejing meaningful.
We live in a small world with many people and few resources. If you come to think how much impact two percent use of the planet’s surface for maintaining our cities has, we can see what the impact of not forgiving ourselves and others for our mistakes and building on what is good in our relations is. People’s mistakes cannot be overcome in isolation, they can be overcome in togetherness. Being together is a choice.