After I gave up on another return ticket, I finally stayed an extra eight days at Master Fu’s Yangshuo Taichi and Kungfu School. It was not reasonable, but the calling was too strong. I just had to stay. Thank you, Intuition, my best friend, for being once again so much right about everything.

Those eight days were crucial. Totally intense. That’s the least I can say about them.

In these eight days, I finally managed to get ’un-stuck’ and find my taichi back. Of course the path and process of learning are still endless, but I’m definitely back on track now. Not only did I go back to feeling and loving taichi, but this time, my stay at the taichi school was a real awakening in many aspects of my life.

For the past four months, I had been stuck in a kind of limbo, not being able to practice any taichi, feeling miserable about my job, becoming bitter, starting to lose faith in humanity and even having the fantasy of smashing some people’s heads against the wall… Not a good sign.

Being back at the taichi school, I was reminded that originally, I’m not full of hatred, but rather the opposite. I don’t know how the magic works over there, but somehow, Yangshuo, the school, its people – coaches and students – create an atmosphere in which I feel so much at peace that I can allow myself to just be. And when I return to the core of my inner self, I reconnect with my spirituality and this is when I manage to help people by just being myself. Whether through the use of energy healing techniques that I learnt, or the inspiration of my story and experience… or my writing.

I almost died of surprise and disbelief when, chitchatting with my new schoolmates, we randomly discovered  that they actually came to Yangshuo because they read my blog. Three of my new Taichi Brothers were looking for a school in China to learn martial arts and decided to pick Master Fu’s one because they either saw a video of me doing taichi, or were thrilled by my live testimonials, or were touched by my words when I talked about Master Fu, the man. I believe what convinced all three of them was the authenticity of the material presented in my blog.

My schoolmates were as amazed to meet me for real as I was struck by emotion to realize that my writing could actually impact the others, that there are now people who make the decision to come to the school because of my words… that maybe they are giving a new turn to their lives the same way taichi did to me.

Another lesson I learnt this time: when you are true to yourself and care for the others, with sincerity and compassion, they give it back to you a hundredfold by showering you with love.

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Special thanks to the Taichi Brothers and Sisters who accompanied me in my journey this time: Laetitia, Phounkeo, Emilie, Tina, Lorraine, James and Yuval. Thank you for giving me the space to be myself and for making me want to be a better person.