Shaolin Qi Gong Xi Sui Jing – Bone Marrow & Brain Cleansing

Welcome to Xi Sui Jing, the Shaolin Marrow Washing Classic.

In Chinese medicine, the marrow is the deepest layer of the body. It fills the bones, it runs through the spine, and it gathers in the brain, which the classics call the Sea of Marrow.

The kidneys create it. The spine carries it. The brain is nourished by it.

Xi Sui Jing works on exactly this system. With slow movements, breathing and attention, we guide Qi into the bones, along the spinal cord, and up to the brain.

Traditional practice describes strong bones and joints, a supple and healthy spine, deeper breathing, better sleep, and a calm, clear mind.

The method is old. It was kept for centuries within the Shaolin Temple. In this course you learn it step by step, and you practise it with me.

Ten minutes a day is enough to begin. Let us begin.

Xi Sui Jing means the Marrow Washing Classic.

The legend says it was left at the Shaolin Temple by Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brought Chan Buddhism to China in the sixth century.

After he departed, the monks found an iron box in his meditation wall, with two scrolls: the Yi Jin Jing, for the muscles and tendons, and the Xi Sui Jing, for the marrow and the brain.

The Yi Jin Jing stayed at Shaolin. The Xi Sui Jing was passed on in secret, to a few disciples in each generation.

That is the legend. The written record tells a different story.

No source from Bodhidharma's own time mentions any exercise.

The oldest dated text of the Yi Jin Jing is from 1624, with a postscript by a Daoist of Mount Tiantai.

Its prefaces, attributed to famous generals of earlier dynasties, were shown to be later additions.

Its methods come from daoyin, the ancient Chinese art of guided stretching and breathing, which reaches back to the Han dynasty, two thousand years ago, and from the medicine of the Yellow Emperor's Classic, where the kidneys make the marrow, and the brain is called the Sea of Marrow.

The Xi Sui Jing appeared later, as the inner companion of the Yi Jin Jing.

It became a practised exercise in the nineteenth century: in 1858 the twelve postures were printed as a health method, and in 1895 the physician Zhou Shuguang published the Yi Jin Jing and the Xi Sui Jing together, with illustrations of the exercises.

In the twentieth century, Shaolin monks and other modern teachers   brought the practice to the world.

What you will learn here is this living tradition: an old method, refined over centuries, for the bones, the spine and the mind.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine the marrow, Sway, belongs to the six extraordinary Fu organs, the Chee Heng Jer Foo. It is the substance that Xi Sui Jing is named after, and the whole practice is built on how it is made and where it flows.

The classics, beginning with the Huangdi Neijing, describe the brain not as an organ locked inside the skull, but as the top of a single vertical system. The marrow takes three forms, and they communicate directly with each other.

The first is the bone marrow, Goo Sway, which fills and nourishes the bones.

The second is the spinal marrow, Jee Sway, which runs inside the spine.

The third is the brain, Now Sway. In Chinese medicine the brain is formally called the Sea of Marrow, Sway High, because all the marrow of the body gathers there.

The root of this system is the kidneys. The classics say: the kidneys govern the bones and generate the marrow. The kidneys store the original essence, Jing. When kidney Jing is abundant, rich bone marrow is produced. That marrow nourishes the bones, rises through the spinal cord, and fills the brain, the Sea of Marrow.

Xi Sui Jing turns this process into practice. Using breath and concentration, the practitioner leads the chee and the kidney Jing deep into the bone marrow and into the spinal cord. The aim is to cleanse the marrow and, through it, to wash the brain itself: clarity of mind, and long life.

This is why the form is built the way it is. Part one fills the three Dan-tien and wakes the marrow of the arms. Parts two and three work the spine, the river of marrow. Part four beats the heavenly drum over the Sea of Marrow, and wakes the marrow of the legs and the kidneys, the root of the whole system.