I just got back from another two weeks in Penang, where once again I spent my time hanging about at Sifu Yap’s centre. (See last year’s report here)

As before, most of the time is unstructured. There are practice groups for locals on Monday and Friday evenings, and there were maybe three afternoon classes arranged for beginners. Both of these we (myself and three Canadians who were out there for a bit) were allowed and encouraged to join.

We also had five or six hours of tai chi instruction, which has allowed me to complete, in a laughably poor but thoroughly enjoyable fashion, a certain nine step form.

And the rest was, as before, a matter of trying not to be a nuisance, practicing movements and meditation out the back when it was cooler, hitchhiking on treatments (i.e meditating as close as possible to the wall of the treatment room), going for lavish lunches and durian feasts, and, when Sifu had a moment, asking all the daft questions I’d saved up since I last saw him.

The result? Well, within the framework of an extremely gradual practice (Sifu expects that most of his students can do no more than “get on the right track” in this lifetime) it was quite impressive. The first week produced a degree of softening, such that my movements while standing became more fluid and whole-body and generally bizarre. I also started to be able to notice physical hardness in the brain as a result of various thought patterns, such as waiting eagerly for the chance to add to a conversation.

The second week was more about giving up various stupidities that had crept into my meditation. I got some reassurance that, firstly, everything one does in CFQ is wrong, and progress is merely a matter of decreasing one’s wrongness, so that you truly don’t have to worry about whether you’re doing it right – you’re not! – and, secondly, that a degree of forcefulness, in pursuit of the “effort of no effort” is fine, providing it’s not of the wrong sort. (After ten minutes trying to work out how to make that point usefully clear I can get no closer!)

I was careful to watch a bunch of crap telly each evening back at the hotel, to make sure there was some continuity between this period of 6-10 hours a day of practice and my ordinary “work and girlfriend and minor social life” existence.

On the way back to the airport, I talked to the taxi driver about his memories of the island. Apparently, as recently as twenty years ago, the north of Penang, now a landscape of enormously tall hotels and apartment buildings, with more coming all the time, was no more than the odd tribal hut served by a single lane road. It was truly startling, as we cruised down the normally teeming coastal dual carriageway at 5am, to be told that twenty years ago a bicycle was a symbol of serious wealth. The taxi driver was of the opinion that people were significantly happier before all the rushing around began. In such a warm and fertile place, where food is incredibly cheap, and any possessions above a mosquito net could be seen as luxury, it’s easy to see his point.

Am coming up to a year of standing, will post a separate report soon. Sifu Yap comes to the UK in March: Brits, catch him if you can.