The normal activities at our school range from meditation to throwing an opponent or taking an opponent down using Hsing Yi, Ba Kua, or Tai Chi combined with the Pre-Heaven energy.  The victor in any confrontation will be the one with the most sensitivity and the greatest relaxation.  Staying calm and centered allows you to conserve your breath.  Most confrontations bring up emotion and anxiety which leads to increased adrenaline levels and rapid, shallow breathing.  By necessity, the conflict will be brief.  Any degree of endurance is impossible when you are struggling to breathe.  Each discipline, each form that is taught, the transitions between the forms, the thousand tiny steps between each specified form is to be performed with correct structure and a calm, centered mind.  The emphasis is on performing every move with complete relaxation.  This doesn't happen the first time each new form is learned.  It comes through repetition, focus, and the intent to relax more and more each time the the physical movement is performed.

We stepped outside the normal school routine one Sunday when a group of twenty-five students headed for Valley of the Kings in Sharon, Wisconsin.  Valley of the Kings is a Lion and Tiger sanctuary.  They accept Tigers, Lions, Panthers, Bears, Wolves, and other animals that were rejected by zoos or by other facilities ill equipped to care for these magnificent creatures.  This sanctuary is even home to a camel and an alpaca.  We were given a list of rules and cautions to abide by for our own protection

and for the peace-of-mind of the big cats.  When the humans are nervous and anxious, they transmit this to the cats and the cats become anxious and grumpy and cannot have visitors.  Because we teach and practice relaxation and calmness, the tigers and lions welcomed us with the same frame of mind.  The compounds have chain-link fence around them and walkways spaced away from the compounds by guard rails, but essentially the animals were little more than an arm's length away from us at an given time. 

The animals have been given a home for their entire lives after being abused, starved or rejected by their owners.  Some have been neutered and therefore are considered unsuitable for display in a zoo, because zoos are breeding program advocates.  Some were potential Hollywood performers but had their claws and teeth removed for the safety of their human co-stars.  When they lost their ferocity after having all their weapons removed, they were rejected as being useless for Hollywood purposes.  We watched these beautiful felines nap and play and bath and growl and purr.  We were allowed to feed them chicken legs through the fence with a vinyl covered steel bar.  Their caretakers can interact with them just as you would with a domesticated cat.  There is a grey tabby in the center area of the santuary that runs with the goats.  He either thinks he is the herder or one of the goats and he runs confidently past all his much larger relatives. 

Visit these magnificent exotics and read their heartbreaking and uplifting stories at www.votk.com.  The sanctuary exists by the generosity of all.