Meyer
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  • You are air

     

    Beijing – it’s overwhelming monuments, it’s arrogant cranes and it’s deafening traffic jams. In this Olympic year, Beijing still offers some monuments of grace. Each morning at dawn, in the serene wooded gardens of the temple of Heaven, qigong adepts come to take part in an enigmatic ritual. Each person is in his own circle of energy, his eyes fixed on an invisible object, taking deep breaths, their brow hardened by concentration. Some of them walk around in circles, flaying their arms and letting out hoarse heart rending cries that echo through the vast park. Others flatten the palm of their left hand on a tree trunk, then the right hand, in a continual infinite movement. Others still, open their arms and legs in circular movements at a hypnotically slow pace. Invariably, all these adepts have left behind for some time the world that surrounds them, light years away from the materialist frenzy of modern China. In touch with a universal Taoist inspiration that heals ailments and appeases the soul.