The following is an excerpt from the book The Shaolin Workout
by way of Sifu Shi Yan Ming
Published by means of Rodale; May 2006;$29.95US/$39.95CAN; 1-59486-four hundred-four
Copyright © 2006 Sifu Shi Yan Ming
As I undergo my day today, I will remind myself to loosen up. Stay loose.
Be bendy in my body and mind.
It’s maximum essential to live free and at ease in mind and body. To revel in your existence, you ought to be comfy. When we have been children, our bodies were unfastened, cozy, and flexible. We should do splits, flips, jumps, and twists without thinking about it. We were pure mind in babies’ our bodies.
But you’re never too old — we just get too disturbing, too stiff. We suppose an excessive amount of. One of the maximum critical lessons you could examine doing the Shaolin Workout is a way to get lower back that childlike rest and flexibility — to be at home to your frame once more. It makes no difference if you are for your twenties, fifties, or eighties. Relax. Never sense antique. Tell your self you are not ageing each yr — you’re getting younger!
Sifu explains that there are varieties of meditation: action meditation and no-motion meditation. In the West, we are maximum acquainted with the no-motion type. We can all form photographs of Buddhist monks sitting with their legs crossed and their eyes closed, nevertheless and silent, for hours and hours, as they try to attain enlightenment.
The simplest trouble is that too much no-action meditation may be as horrific in your joints, your back, your neck, as sitting at a laptop all day. This is what Da Mo noticed taking place to the monks at Shaolin. They spent a lot time sitting in meditation that their bodies had been as stiff as wooden dolls. He noticed that Ba Tuo had no longer given them the proper equipment to adapt Buddhism to Chinese life. Why can we meditate? To cleanse our minds and open our hearts. But if we burden our our bodies with anxiety and ache, our minds and hearts cannot be cleansed. Your mind and your heart and your frame are inseparable.
Kung fu is movement meditation. The intention of kung fu is to relax your body and your mind, to extend your body and your thoughts, to cleanse your frame and your mind. To be relaxed in your body, and relaxed to your lifestyles, is the way you live absolutely inside the present, experiencing this moment, here and now.
In our current international, there may be every other gain to action meditation. We all have lives, jobs, households. We have superb things entering our lives each day. Who among us has the time to sit and meditate for hours a day, like clergymen in a monastery? As you’ll discover, a 1/2-hour of action meditation can be as freeing, on your body and your mind and your heart, as numerous hours of no-movement meditation.
Kung fu and martial arts represent a cultured shape of motion meditation. But any workout application may be a form of movement meditation — going for walks, swimming, gambling tennis, riding a bike. In the West, we communicate of that factor in an exercise recurring in which we "get inside the region," in which we "launch endorphins," where we obtain "the runner’s excessive." Those are all Western methods of approaching the equal idea: motion meditation. A at ease thoughts in a at ease body.
As you undergo your day today, relax. Stay loose. Be flexible to your body and in your mind. Enjoy your lovely lifestyles every minute of the day.
Reprinted from: The Shaolin Workout: 28 Days to Transforming Your Body and Soul the Warrior’s Way by means of Sifu Shi Yan Ming © 2006 Rodale Inc. Permission granted through Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available anyplace books are offered or without delay from the publisher by calling (800) 848-4735 or go to their website at www.Rodalestore.Com.
Author
Sifu Shi Yan Ming, a thirty fourth-technology Shaolin warrior monk, is reputable no longer only inside the martial arts global but additionally within the entertainment global with the aid of stars like Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Wesley Snipes, and the Wu-Tang Clan. His kung fu classes have been featured in USA Today, The New York Times, New York Daily News, and Entertainment Weekly. Brian Gray of Inside Kung Fu magazine has called him a "living treasure of China." He has also regarded at the Discovery Channel, MTV, and CNBC, amongst different predominant networks. Sifu Shi Yan Ming lives in New York City.