The Shaolin Temple is famous for its hard Qigong styles such as Iron Shirt or Shaolin Steel Jacket. When a student comes to me and asks to learn, I ask, what is your motivation? Our motivation is one of the most important aspects of this practice. Some people think of Iron Shirt as something cool to do or an experience like sky diving or a way for their ego to believe this is a high form of Qigong and therefore by doing Iron Shirt they're an accomplished martial artist
Iron Shirt can only be practiced after training in the preliminaries. The student must have exceptional fitness, mastered - at a minimum - The Eight Treasures Form and all of the Shaolin stances. If a student can run 10k then train intensively for an hour afterwards, only then, may they be ready to learn.
Shaolin training is some of the hardest in the world. Anyone who trains with my kung fu DVDs experiences this first hand. If they become disheartened this means they are not training with belief in themselves. If we don't challenge our mind and body then our mind and body will never achieve inner peace and internal and external strength. Under no circumstance should you lose hope in what your mind and body can accomplish. Shaolin training is like the fire that forges metal, forging our mind and body, cutting away our ego and our desire for an experience. It's only then that we enter the real practice which is to practice just to practice.
I made my Iron Shirt DVD with reluctance. Disturbed by the misinformation I saw on the internet and encouraged by my faithful students who have been studying with my graded DVDs for many years, most of whom I've never met, I decided that it was time to share my more than twenty years knowledge of Iron Shirt.
Iron Shirt Qigong is only for those martial artists who dedicate their life to the art. It's boring. It's lonely. It's tough mentally and physically. It teaches us the limits of our mind and body and how to go beyond them. It's potentially dangerous and if we're not careful we can easily get injured.
If you're thinking of learning, ask yourself, what is your motivation? Have you mastered 8 Treasures so you know it so well you can do it backwards? Have you trained in Upper and Lower Body Qigong? This is a combination of hard and soft Qigong. You can still use the metal brush for these practice as a massage before moving on to Iron Shirt so long as you warm up with the bamboo brush. This will give you a taste of what hard Qigong is. We live in a shopping market culture where there are many things on offer. We must use this information wisely and not get lost in it. Learning lots of new things only keeps us busy. It's best to master one thing and know it well.
For more information on the graded path to Shaolin please visit: www.shifuyanlei.com
