The Yin and Yang of Training

This weekend's training for me represented an exercise in night and day. I had slept very little both Thursday and Friday nights, so hauling my ass to class on Saturday was a challenge in itself. When I got there, it was a ghost town -- mostly due to the retreat. By the time class started, only 13 of us lined up, led by Xu. And boy, it was rough -- the group was mostly comprised of students less experienced than me, so I ended up second in line after Shen! When we settled into the latter half of class for forms, pretty much only me, Shen, Zheng and Mo were rotating through for the hour, taking our time in hopes of catching our breath. Yikes!

Sunday was a nice contrast -- first of all, I managed to get 8 hours of sleep, so that did my body good. And more people attended -- 20 or so, and I'd say at least 2/3s were more or less in the same boat as me, plugging away at erluquan. (Btw, congrats to Sucheela for finishing erluquan, and to Niederwelt for beginning!) With the larger group, we were better able to appreciate everyone's progress, like watching Leo improve his sweep kick dramatically. And, happily, Xu worked with just about everyone, so I pushed forth a little bit more in my march towards completion. Just ask the witnesses at the Bowling Green station who might have seen a sweaty chick with her iPod on acting spastically on the platform around 3pm yesterday afternoon!