Master Gu

Master Gu Shining — his Chinese name is Gu Shiyi, Shining being his Taoist name — heads the Wudang Taoist Wellness Academy, hidden in forest near the Purple Heaven Palace on Mount Wudang. He belongs to the fifteenth generation of the Wudang Sanfeng sect, and his shīfu is Grandmaster Zhong Yunlong.

Two things make him unusual on that mountain. He was born there, which few of the martial artists working in the Wudangshan area were, and he teaches in fluent English, which almost none of them do.

The other difference is what he teaches. Most schools on Wudang concentrate on movement — the forms of Tai Chi Chuan and Qi Gong. He runs his academy on the whole Taoist Way instead: the movement, but also the philosophy and culture it grew out of, tea, the guqin, and the daily discipline that holds it together. His retreats are built on repetition rather than variety, on the reasoning that a practice only settles into a body that meets it the same way each morning.

He teaches mainly at the academy near the Purple Heaven Palace and at a second site by the Jade Terrace Temple, and runs his Taoist Retreat twice a year. He also travels: recent years have taken him to Singapore, Malaysia and Romania.