Health and Fitness

There was a famous Ch'an teacher called Dogen Zenji who said: "Hitting the mark is the result of ninety-nine failures." This means it's okay to fail. We need failure to lead us to success. Thinking in this way means we will never be discouraged with our practice but able to use each experience to enrich it. What makes our Qigong or Kung Fu practice go deeper is the day-by-day effort of taking time out and practicing. If we talk about it all the time then it's just a dream. It's the doing that matters. People sometimes ask me, Why do I still do Shaolin Steel Jacket? I'm thirty-six now. I no longer fight in competitions. I don't need it for my daily survival. But I want to demonstrate to my students that we are far more than we think we are. I want my students to go beyond their limitations, the limitations people set on them or the limitations they set on themselves. Interestingly, it's usually our mind that we have to work on, more than our body. ...

Instant Health and Fitness is about using what we do as a pathway to wholeness and inner peace. It's about understanding that the inner health of our body is just as important as the outer health. When I was a boy at the Shaolin Temple my master taught me that when I practiced kung fu I did kung fu meditation, when I ran I did running meditation and fighting meditation and eating meditation... This act of meditation helps us to stay calm, free and anchored to the only place of power which is the now. My name is Shifu Yan Lei, I’m from China and I came to the UK in 2000 to help my brother open an authentic Shaolin school in London. I found that the Shaolin class not only increased my student’s health and fitness levels but also their confidence and sense of happiness. This is why I started to make Qigong and Kung Fu DVDs and books . My mission is to share with as many people as possible authentic Shaolin. Though sometimes I prefer not to call what I do Shaolin or martial arts becau...