How wudang fitness contributes to improved health

Wudang fitness I came to know in a variety of ways. When I entered my monastic life I had already learned a varity of health promoting qigongs that were quite agile in their expression. Usually I called them medical qigong’s, just not knowing better and taking the series of practices apart.

Medical qigong is a late 20th century invention following the invention of medical yoga from the same age. These thoughts are attempts to qualify and quantify old school practices within the framework of modern industrial medicine needs and commerce. Their interpretation is often devoid of understanding of original use. And that is what I found out talking with different old masters at the wudang mountains.

Technically the range of movements people can make is limited, but there is a wide range of approaches on how to make these movements. We call them daoyin. Daoyin is the old school name for exercise. The exercise has to guide body fluids, blood, ying, jin, and many other substances through the body. Erroneously these are often called qi. More erroneously the concept of qi as something indicating activity done perfectly, is often translated as energy, a concept of physics, where it is understood that if something is matter it has a potential of energy. But that energy when it comes out is going at the expense of the something. Complicated right?

It is the lack of nuance in our modern time why so much of Chinese medicine is getting lost for commercial or political reasons. Wudang fitness then is a part of Chinese medicine, in the Daoist way. It is what Zhang Sanfeng in the Song dynasty explained. Zhang Sanfeng is the creator of Daoland practices. It is meant as a way of practicing the body towards freedom and health.

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