Health and Fitness

It's not necessary to be a Buddhist to practice Shaolin. But it is necessary to understand why you practice. Martial Arts is not a sport but an art, and like all art, it changes your internal makeup. If it's not working the mind as hard as the body then your training need to be adjusted. Martial Arts is not for the feint hearted because it's not an easy skill to master. I started studying when I was thirteen years old and I'm still a beginner. But one thing I understand is that our training goes through three vital stages. They are similar to traffic lights: red, amber, green. But the green is when we are stationery and can sit peacefully with ourselves because we know ourself. The Three Stages Of Zen Training In Martial Arts 1st Stage: Jian Chi - Never Give Up You need willpower, belief and knowledge of your goal so you don't give up. Having a goal means we know which direction our training is going and we have something to work towards. This helps us to Never Give...

Sixpack Abdominal does not come just like that. But that does not mean you have to do hundreds of crunches every day that you get a sixpack stomach immediately. Not enough with regular practice, you also need to implement the lifestyle and habits that will support the creation of your sixpack stomach.  4 The following habits are good habits that will help you have a sixpack stomach craving more quickly.   Start Your Morning With Water. Drink water after you wake up at least 2 glasses of water. A recent study found that drinking water after waking up can increase your metabolism by 24% for the next 90 minutes. Moreover, muscle cells grow faster when they are well hydrated. Consumption of water every day is recommended to help shape your sixpack stomach.   Combining Protein and Carbs Although carbohydrates can be stored so fat that can cover your abdominal muscles, your body needs carbohydrates remain as an energy source. When combined with protein, carbohydrates can ...

Martial Arts is a way of being in life. It's very difficult in the beginning to make your practice into a habit and even when you've been doing it for many years, there can still be a struggle. But this is good because it shows your practice is constantly challenging you. The key to rising to the challenge is to make a strong commitment to your martial arts practice from the very beginning. This commitment automatically makes you practice, and any thoughts that go against your practice can be more easily dismissed. In order to gain something you have to give up something. For example, you can't eat chocolate cake every day and lose weight. It's true that a martial artist does not have as much "freedom" as a non-martial artist because so much of your time is taken up with the practice. But what exactly is freedom? Martial Arts helps us to be. If you can just be then you don't have so much desire for external things. If you can be, the Buddha says, all of yo...

When I was seven years old, my mother asked me if I had dream? I said, "Yes, I want to become a martial artist." Then she asked me, "Do you know which is the highest part of your body?" I said, "My head and my hair." My mum said, "No, it's your hands." She told me, "Your mind make your dream happen but your mind cannot make your dream come true, only your hands can do that. This means, you can't just think, you need to do."  Life is about doing, not thinking. Action not words. I'm a martial artist. A martial artist doesn't just teach people, he also trains. If you only teach and never train then you never learn new things and you can't grow as a teacher. I want my students to make a decision: know what you want to do, make a strong plan and challenge yourself to make your body healthier and healthier.  Take action today.  Shifu Yan Lei teaches a graded path of Shaolin Kung Fu & Qigong. For more details of ho...

Researchers are finding out that mindfulness has been shown to increase happiness. Originally a Buddhist term, the word mindfulness  is now becoming as ubiquitous as the word Zen. But what exactly is it? Going to the gym and running on the running machine while watching TV is not being mindful. Going through a Qigong or Kung Fu form while concentrating on the breath and the movement is. I’m not judging the person on the running machine. It’s okay to be mindless every now and again, but if our goal is to be happy then factoring in more sessions of mindfulness and less sessions of mindlessness will help us to achieve this.  A student came to me the other day and said that she’d been meditating for 20 minutes every morning but she didn’t feel any different. For true transformation to occur, we need to integrate mindfulness into our day to day life. The Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, advises us to use a ringing phone or a red traffic light as a tool to remind us to come back to ours...

1) Get Moving The more that you sit in front of a computer, the less you will want to workout. At the end of your working day your body will tell you that it's tired and give you another excuse to skip your workout. But if you can motivate yourself to push through your tiredness, once you begin to move, you will be surprised to find that you feel energized. This is because movement and exercise unleash your body's energy. We are born to move. We are not born to sit down all day. The Shaolin Temple movements help us to bring our body and mind in harmony. It's only when our body and mind are working in harmony that we can feel truly energized and happy. 2) Use Your Shaolin Workout As A Refuge We are so goal focused and driven in our work that I think it's good to take the pressure off when we do our workouts. Use this as a time to tune out of your daily life and tune into your body. Each of your workouts gives your body a different experience. There is the challenging ana...

In last week's post I wrote about the 3 essential ingredients, here I show how to make these ingredients work for you.  Strength People sometimes think if you want to make your shin and feet strong you need to kick hard things all the time but this is  wrong. If you want to make your leg hard then the first thing you need to do is have good stamina, if you don’t have stamina it’s not possible for your leg to be strong as you won’t have energy. It’s like a car without petrol, it simply can’t move, you won’t be able to lift your leg up or kick therefore you have lost everything. This is the reason why stamina is so important. After you have gained stamina you then work on your flexibility and then you can work on your speed and power and then you can start on the conditioning training for your leg. Iron Leg The best way to warm up is to do the Si Bi Quan form from my Workout One DVD . This form consists of two ingredients: stamp and punch, the more power you can use with the st...