Teachings From the Shaolin Temple 🥷🏻🐉
5 Habits I'm Continuing From Shaolin Camp
Teachings From the Shaolin Temple
I spent 2 weeks in Otterberg, Germany at the end of June at the Shaolin Temple Europe. You may know of it because Shi Heng Yi has been quite popular lately on social media. Here is a video of him teaching us how to generate power in punches.
It was the ultimate test of my recovery from long covid. This year I felt more of my energy coming back and I started strength training again. I also started doing kungfu again (which I did as a kid along with lion dancing). I do Wing Chun here in Amsterdam which is a type of kungfu. The martial art was brought to Hong Kong and then the rest of the world by Ip Man, with Bruce Lee being the most famous student.
5 Habits I'm Continuing From Shaolin Camp
1. Eating in complete silence. 🧘♀️
So…at first this was a bit..challenging haha. And admittedly sometimes while we were in line for food I would literally forget we weren’t supposed to talk. But there was something so serene about the ritual of praying. We’d say “I will solve a matter of life and death” 3x before bowing and lining up for food. Older people got to eat first. Then we’d either head over to the tables (everything is outdoors) or I’d wander off to eat below a tree in the sun. ☀️ I also found that when you’re surrounded by people constantly, I greatly appreciated the lack of social pressure to talk for this brief time period. Instead, I was in a peaceful bubble of enjoying nourishing my body. And we were hungry because of all the training. 😜
2. Go completely offline. Digital detox.
I have never been so offline. I went in with the intention of focusing completely on the Shaolin camp. You kind of have to since you are there from 6am to 6pm, often later. I usually got back to my hotel around 8 or 9pm. There’s no service at the temple and my hotel also “had internet” but it didn’t work for me. This meant I basically would be offline all day, come back to my hotel and use my phone service to respond to just the people in my close social circle who messaged me for updates. It was wonderful to be so in the moment. I plan to continue to find a day (likely on the weekend) where I go totally offline. I do also schedule my content with Buffer and that helps with being a creator.
3. Eating enough protein for recovery.
How we fuel the body is how we perform. The guys I was around may have influenced me haha but they were constantly searching for more protein. The temple is vegetarian. We often ate food like oats, rice, curry, salad, etc. and while this was not unusual for me, people were hyper aware they were not getting enough protein. Luckily some of the guys had cars so we could go shopping for groceries or pick up powder but it made me also think about how I intentionally incorporate protein into my meals especially on the days when I have heavy ballet or martial arts training. As a vegetarian, I also take B12 daily.
4. Intentionally connecting with people.
One of the wonderful things about this Shaolin camp was I went with the intention of improving my kungfu and I walked away with a new community of wonderful people with the same interests. I particularly enjoyed building strong connections with guys who were very emotionally vulnerable in sharing their life with me. No “tough guy” act. Some were on a path of spiritual discovery and it was an honor to witness and support. It also made me aware of who reached out to me from my own family and friend group in that period. My older brother regularly sent me texts asking “still alive?” 😆 I also realized because I was constantly around people the whole day, I needed moments to myself and my meditation practice was something I looked forward to as a result. I’d sneak away to the buddha room after lunch and meditate in silence.
5. Workouts and movement throughout the day. Not just 1-2 hrs.🚶🏻♀️
My god. I have never moved so much…never worked out so much in a day I should say. We had 3 major training periods:
Before breakfast — running, running drills, kungfu, qi gong
Morning — chinese drills and forms
Afternoon — combat
Evening — evening buddhist ceremony, sometimes qi gong
This meant we were doing the most with our body and the first week I was exhausted and also slightly injured my knee playing football (soccer) post practice. ⚽️ Anyways the chance of injury or extreme fatigue working out this much is probably a given. Then people started getting sick. 😳 So the second week I ended up with a cold. Nonetheless, I pushed through and the second week, I was smart about resting and taking naps in between training sessions.
You might think after 2 weeks of brutal training, my take away was that this was too much for the body…but actually I thought,
“This is how it’s meant to be. Humans are meant to be outdoors and move our body…”
Humans are not meant to sit behind a computer for 8 hours... do you agree?
Human bodies are energy made to move and connect with nature. 🌳
No wonder people develop chronic illnesses from neglecting their body and living too much in the mind. 🧠 Initially waking up at 5am and training from 6am to 6pm was challenging, but surprisingly you get used to working out so much fairly quickly.
2 weeks later, I’ve found ways to continue incorporating my practices from the Shaolin Temple in a way that is also realistic with working and prior commitments. 🙏
A big big thank you to the Shaolin Temple Europe and the Shifu — Shifu Heng Zheng, Shifu Yan Lei, and Shifu Shi Heng Yi.
In the words of Shifu Yan Lei "you lazy, you die."
Behind the Scenes of Training
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Tea Story Series on YouTube
I’ve started a new series on YouTube called “Tea Story” where I talk casually about things requested by the audience. You can check out the first one here and lmk if you have requests.
(Tea is a habit I’ll be continuing — it was a pleasure to share my tea time with tea master Sofian and to share Japanese tea with the Shifu.)
P.S. I made a new Instagram. You can find me here.
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