The following is an excerpt from the book The Shaolin Workout
by using Sifu Shi Yan Ming
Published via Rodale; May 2006;$29.95US/$39.95CAN; 1-59486-400-four
Copyright © 2006 Sifu Shi Yan Ming
As I go through my day nowadays, I will remind myself to relax. Stay unfastened.
Be flexible in my frame and mind.
It’s maximum vital to stay unfastened and relaxed in mind and frame. To experience your existence, you ought to be comfy. When we were children, our bodies had been free, at ease, and flexible. We could do splits, flips, jumps, and twists without considering it. We had been pure thoughts in babies’ bodies.
But you’re never too vintage — we just get too disturbing, too stiff. We assume an excessive amount of. One of the most vital classes you could learn doing the Shaolin Workout is a way to get returned that childlike relaxation and flexibility — to be at domestic in your frame again. It makes no distinction if you are for your twenties, fifties, or eighties. Relax. Never sense antique. Tell your self you are not growing old each yr — you’re getting younger!
Sifu explains that there are varieties of meditation: movement meditation and no-motion meditation. In the West, we’re maximum acquainted with the no-action kind. We can all form pics of Buddhist clergymen sitting with their legs crossed and their eyes closed, nonetheless and silent, for hours and hours, as they attempt to attain enlightenment.
The best hassle is that too much no-motion meditation may be as awful in your joints, your lower back, your neck, as sitting at a pc all day. This is what Da Mo noticed occurring to the priests at Shaolin. They spent a lot time sitting in meditation that their bodies have been as stiff as timber dolls. He saw that Ba Tuo had now not given them the right gear to evolve Buddhism to Chinese existence. Why will we meditate? To cleanse our minds and open our hearts. But if we burden our our bodies with tension and pain, our minds and hearts can not be cleansed. Your mind and your coronary heart and your body are inseparable.
Kung fu is movement meditation. The aim of kung fu is to loosen up your body and your thoughts, to extend your frame and your thoughts, to cleanse your frame and your thoughts. To be relaxed on your frame, and cozy to your existence, is the way you live absolutely inside the present, experiencing this second, here and now.
In our current world, there may be any other gain to motion meditation. We all have lives, jobs, families. We have high-quality things entering our lives each day. Who among us has the time to take a seat and meditate for hours an afternoon, like clergymen in a monastery? As you’ll discover, a half of-hour of movement meditation can be as freeing, for your body and your mind and your heart, as numerous hours of no-motion meditation.
Kung fu and martial arts represent a refined shape of motion meditation. But any exercise software can be a form of action meditation — jogging, swimming, gambling tennis, driving a bike. In the West, we communicate of that factor in an exercising recurring in which we "get inside the zone," in which we "release endorphins," where we reap "the runner’s excessive." Those are all Western methods of drawing near the identical idea: movement meditation. A comfortable mind in a at ease frame.
As you go through your day nowadays, loosen up. Stay unfastened. Be flexible in your frame and to your mind. Enjoy your stunning lifestyles every minute of the day.
Reprinted from: The Shaolin Workout: 28 Days to Transforming Your Body and Soul the Warrior’s Way by way of Sifu Shi Yan Ming © 2006 Rodale Inc. Permission granted by using Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available anyplace books are bought or immediately from the writer by way of calling (800) 848-4735 or visit their website at www.Rodalestore.Com.
Author
Sifu Shi Yan Ming, a thirty fourth-generation Shaolin warrior monk, is reputable not handiest within the martial arts world but additionally within the enjoyment world by stars like Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Wesley Snipes, and the Wu-Tang Clan. His kung fu instructions had been featured in USA Today, The New York Times, New York Daily News, and Entertainment Weekly. Brian Gray of Inside Kung Fu mag has called him a "dwelling treasure of China." He has also regarded at the Discovery Channel, MTV, and CNBC, among different fundamental networks. Sifu Shi Yan Ming lives in New York City.