48. Pulling a Silk Thread

YI XIAN CHUAN

Brief description*

*Excerpt from the book: Jin Jing Zhong. Authentic Shaolin Heritage: Training Methods of 72 Arts of Shaolin. ISBN: 978-1440474170

This Shaolin exercise has another name: “Da Mo crosses the river”. It is also called “Flight over water”. The common name is “Walking on a cord”. It is the Shaolin skill (SHAOLIN GONG FU) that is called “Going over a water obstacle on small duckweed” (DENG PING DU SHUI) and “Walking on snow without leaving traces” (TA XUE WU HEN) in novels about knights. The skill belongs to a section of exercises “Light body” (JIN SHEN SHU), it is “soft” and develops the internal power ...

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... After that it is necessary to stretch a rope across a river. If you can freely go on it even in this case, you have gained full success. Now you can go on the surface of a pond, though you need to use some thing, for instance a bamboo splinter, wooden small stick, reed etc. Place it on water surface, stand on it and advance! If duckweed, water grass, water chestnut or lotus grow in a pond, you can walk on them too. Once upon a time our forerunner Da Mo crossed a river alone on one reed after the sermon of his teaching. That is really the present type of GONG FU. It takes more than 10 years of labor to attain the aim. It is necessary to train yourself quietly and diligently.

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