I’ve started taking qigong (气功) classes at the Centro Cultural de la Amistad China Peruana (中秘友谊馆).
My experience with martial arts is limited to “Energy Time,” which was a required aikido class for kindergartens taught by Janet Daijogo at my very San Francisco K-8 school. I was excited to find out about these (free!) classes and now look forward to seeing the teacher Dante every Tuesday and Thursday evening. The classes with Dante are an enjoyable 90 minute break from the hubbub of urban life in Lima. He teaches in the dance studio at the cultural center, which has a banner of Machu Picchu morphing into the Great Wall on top the one row of mirrors.
To be honest, I had never heard of qigong before. As Dante explained at the start of the class about 70% Spanish, 30% Mandarin, qigong is particularly concerned with the breath as the Chinese characters suggest. The physical movements were important too, but without purposeful breathing, the kinesthetic portion of qigong would lose most of its meaning.
Keeping this theory in mind, we started. In my first 90 minute session, I learned about myself; namely, how inflexible my hands and fingers are. I consider myself reasonably flexible; when seated, I feel most comfortable sitting cross-legged. We spent a lot of time on this one sequence of movement reminiscent of holding a bow and arrow. Dante patiently, but persistently, urged me to keep my index finger extended up while my arms were completely extended.
Dante was also very quick to correct the way I was breathing, reminding me to not raise my shoulders, but instead breath in and out of my diaphragm. Having played saxophone for many years, in theory at least, have some exposure to breathing that way. But every few minutes, Dante would walk over to me and show me how to breathe.
Dante and I are built differently. Dante is pretty stocky, quite flexible and has got a big belly. When he breathes in and out, his whole stomach visibly inflates and deflates. I don’t have much of a gut (yet) and even when trying my best to breathe as Dante instructed me to, I had little visual proof. A couple times, he asked me to put my hand on my belly, so he could watch me hand be moved by my breathing. I appreciated Dante’s patience and commitment to making sure his students were doing things correctly. His classes have become a highlight of my week.
The Chinese Peruvian cultural center is located La Avenida de la Peruanidad (Avenue of Peruvianness). Perhaps I’m reading too much into this and it’s just a coincidence, but I felt good knowing that a cultural center focused largely on helping expose people to Chinese culture was located on a street of Peruvianness. Peru’s rich mixed demography is beautiful but also tangled with its colonial past. While living in a society with so many people identifying as some sort of mix presents many challenges, it is also a society in which Dante can find students interested in learning about qigong.