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Five-Animal Play

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  • Five-Animal Play

    Hi everyone,

    This Art deserves its own topic! For reference: Questions on Hua Tuo's Five-Animal Play answered by Sigung.

    Five-Animal Play is surprisingly deep and satisfying. Comparing it to classics like the 18 Lohan Hands is unfair in a sense though because the whole history of Chi Kung and Sigung's experience with internal arts have been distilled for these marvellous exercises.

    How could I react to it the same way as to the other Chi Kung exercises? "Oh, Lifting the Sky. A few repetitions of that and I shall be having a jolly good energy flow" has now become "Oh, it's that time of the day. Now I get to play around!"

    Personally, the most convincing part of it has been how effective it's in making the standing meditation more settled and deepening the peaceful mental silence in everyday life. Yesterday Sifu Markus taught us how to how to manifest the spirit of Monkey using curiosity and awareness of our surroundings. The physical form of Bird already arouses the freedom of spirit, and Bear and Tiger are done with eyes wide with awareness and attention. In my opinion, all these mentioned features are really emphasizing on the insight (vipassana) aspect of meditation and nourishing our spirit. Playfulness and zest are sure signs of successful building, and its chi flows are certainly meant to cleanse and harmonize our internal organs. Therefore the Five-Animal Play may self-consciously have the full cycle of cleansing, building, and nourishing integrated within it. Dare I claim that the Five-Animal Play is the most complete Chi Kung technique in our school? While we can elevate any technique with our skills to accomplish a variety of ends, the Five-Animal Play is very wholesome even without involving a lot of skills.

    It's Zen in playful motion. Making Chi Kung into a play helps to close the gap between meditation and everyday life in that it minimizes formal practice. Playing helps us to let go, and just enjoy having some fun. Life needn't be that serious all the time.

    Kungfu is a martial art and serious in its aims though, so I'm doubting that it could be enriched by the same type of playfulness without becoming dance or opium smoking. The closest we have here are Shaolin Five-Animal Set and Eight Drunken Immortals Set which respectively manifest select spiritual qualities and being slightly out of form. Of course, then there is free sparring which in itself is very fun, but not quite as innocent in spirit as the Five-Animal Play in our school.

    All playing needn't be similar, and we can have different types of fun. For that we can thank Sigung and our school's rich collection of wonderful Arts.

    With sincere gratitude,
    Olli
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