I believe it all started during spring. My teacher Pamela Hiley got an invitation to teach at a Qigong course at the Il Convento monastery in Italy in May. She and those of my friends at the Taiji center who went there immediately fell in love with the place. As a result Pamela almost instantly started planning a second trip in late September. We arrived in the afternoon Sunday 28th of September. This is some of my impressions from Il Convento, but I’ll publish at least one more post with more focus on the Taiji and Qigong practice later. I’ll also post some pics from our day trip to Assissi later. For more pictures from the trip to Italy, check out my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjensvoll .
We were welcomed by Live Mørstad the absolutely charming manager at Il Convento.
Here are a couple of my first impressions of the monastery shot the first day:
Every morning started in the inner garden at 7:30 with one hour of Qigong practice before breakfast. We practiced Taiji before lunch and Qigong between lunch and dinner (19:00). In other words; our days were filled …
We did not stay inside Il Convento the entire week though. On the fifth day we went to Assissi. I’ll post some pictures from that trip in my next post. We also went for walks in the area around the monastery. An old church is located all by itself in the hillside surrounded by olive trees. When we came up there we practiced Taiji ….
Here’s a shot showing Il Convento taken from the hillside church. Most of the village of Bovara is visible in front of the monastery.
When the week suddenly was over I was almost surprised. Even with the relatively slow living inside the monastery the time flew by very quickly. I’d gladly stay a week or two more …
For even more pictures from the trip to Italy, check out my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjensvoll
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