We started practicing hard qigong or iron body training. It consists of making little bundles of bamboo sticks and beating each other's torso's with them to first kill the nerves in the skin. It's pretty painful because the bamboo really stings and gives you little red bruises that can be itchy and uncomfortable. We have also got bigger bundles (about the size of a baseball bat) that we use to train the deeper tissues. There are very specific breathing exercises and you have to really flex all your muscles very hard. We will eventually be hitting each other with bags of sand and rocks but not for another few months and then maybe we'll be able to break wooden sticks on our bodies. The point of it is to learn to protect your organs from impact like a body shot in a fight, you learn to isolate an area to absorb the strike with your muscles instead of allowing it to to penetrate too deeply and cause internal damage. Eventually we will also be able to isolate our muscles to the point of actually being able to move the organs around a little inside. That's really advanced though but a big part of why I am excited to be doing this training. You basically have to go through this 'hard qigong' in order to do the higher level internal cultivation that comes much later. Well anyways, here is a picture of my back after about 4 days of practice. Pretty cool, huh? Actually this doesn't look too bad. Some people's skin marks much more easily and as a result they look way worse than I do. It's funny how many of the guys look worse than the females. You just never know how each person's body will react I guess.