Iron Shirt Qi gong

Hi,
I started Iron Shirt Qi Gong training a month ago. I am doing 3 times a week at sunrise for 30 minutes.
Does anyone wants to share comments, feelings, .. from his own experiences

I also just started some iron shirt chi kung last Friday.

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...and did you experience anything different
I am sleeping and eating less and my TC is getting better (more Jing).

Hi !


No one else on this forum have experiences to share regarding to iron shirt Qi gong practicing

I'd love to hear discussion of it. I haven't been told that it is taught at my school, but I have overheard information about it being discussed to some of the senior disciples. I'm sure its the same thing, but it was called Iron Body or Iron Vest. I can't remember exactly.

Out of curiousity, how are you developing this particular skill Internally or Externally or a combo of both

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Qi Gong is totally internal, it involves breathing, vizualization, intention, energy flow and so on ...

The Iron shirt or Iron shield that I was taught is kind of internal and external mixed. It involves summoning chi from the dantien with normal buddhist style breathing by expansion. I mean you expand the dantien "chi ball" for lack of a better term until it conforms to the torso, filling it with energy. With each breath in you inhale to the dantien and flex the muscles in the torso as hard as you can. Then with each breath out you basically "trick" your mind into thinking the torso has relaxed when it hasn't, you keep the same amount of flexation in the muscles there. Then with the next breath you do it again creating a mroe solid, harder shield with your body. Basically forcing it to flex twice as hard as you normally can do. The breath out and the "tricking" of the mind is the improtant part since it will teach your body to remain flexible and able to move while keeping the iron shirt up. The idea I was taught was to be able to eventually do the entire shield instantly. Though it takes a lot of practice of just the exercise I described until you can attain the same iron like shirt with only a single breath, and eventually just on command. I hope someday I get there. It still takes me a few breaths to be able to do it, though I have progressed from like 20 breaths down to about 5 or 6 (depending on the day). I practice it a bit each day just like you guys. What are your meditations like for it

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I do some iron shirt, though I usually don't meditate, but rather hours and hours of intense training. Results are worth it!

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Nick Tien

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi

Keeping a lot of "inaware" (can you fool the body, or do you fool the mind) tension in the muscles is a wai gong skill that is not very reputed in internal circles. Simply because once you can bend muscle tension of the normal type with another sort of internal practice founded muscle power, you can crush such a "shell" with not a lot of trouble. Also, it slows down all muscle movements. Ever realized how slow such muscle monsters move, compared to really fast people Whenever someone of that waigong circles tried to demonstrate his skill to xing-yi people, it didn't have really much of a happy end.

Internal iron body is producing a massive amount of jing skills, a lung that can contract so hard that it prevents ANY sort of intrusion into the chest structure so ribs never are bend inward, and a reflex that fires jing independend from ANY sort of consideration when something intrudes ones sensing range, or puts load on a joint. Most of the practice is _softening_ the body to enable rapid contraction by doing slow moving or standing stuff. Another part you should not begin before you can fajing against incoming load is, to hit yourself hard into the torso using elbows. Obviously you hurt yourself if you can hit with your elbows stronger than you can hold structure. Also, it is not a good thing if you feel headaches from the compression of the blood flow leading to a higher pressure upward in the channels going to the brain. This is why you first have to practice breathing exercises that do a mild pressure from the lung to the vessels, so they can sustain against rapid massive hits to the chest. A kind of magic is usually never involved in such practices, just putting stress on the structures (beginning with _LOW_ stress!!!!!!), AND giving the body a means to REALLY cope (=resolve, not "forget")with it using inside fajing.

"The Iron shirt or Iron shield that I was taught is kind of internal and external mixed."

The Iron Shirt Qi Gong I have been taught is totally internal.
You "root" your feets on to the ground, feeling the energy flowing from earth to your body, breathing calm and deeply.
Next you pump on the chi, raising your arms very slowly and keeping a golden cord connection from the lower tantien to the middle tantien until the arms get all openned embracing the universe.
Then you keep embracing the tree feeling the chi flow from one arm to the the other, circulating through your body, always having the golden cord connection between the tan-tiens.
No attention to the muscles, it goes on naturally with the chi flow !

It was nice to know from "eight fist" that there are an external practice too.

But I would lke to know if you fell something different in your body since you started to practice it ...

Nik said something I think is very important,
"a kind of magic is never used in these processes"
These techniques do not happen over night, because you are tough. But build up over hard training for years! Through perserverence. Muscles are trained and shaped to perform this way, taught to withstand certain things. That is the way the body works as well, for all things including disease. Hard work is the only Magic in MA

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*blink blink*

What about the flying and energy blasts!

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"You must eat bitter before you can taste sweet"- Iron & Silk
"I see no virtue where I smell no sweat"
"Arm yourself because no one else here will save you" - Chris Cornell

richorta;
I started by doing the same way as you.

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Hi fuzzy30,

Nice to know, so we can share experiences of the "road" !

I think that there are a lot of exercises, one for each stage. This last week I learned a second one, but my sifu doesn't talk what goes next, we just keep on doing the practice day by day,... I think this is the chinese way to teach, ..., hard for western people understand, ... but change ones's mind is also a part of TC training !

Nice discussion this!

I too have been doing standing practice frequently (actually, i'd describe it as one of the foundations of what I do - the other being circling). Both the generic "embracing tree"/ "holding ball" posture (as with most things Chinese, different names abound), and linked sets of specific postures pracitced in series. Both have very different feelings:

holding ball: fires up MingMen, connection to earth and heaven, strong flow in circle through the arms (both directions simultanesouly) and Microcosmic orbit. Concreat and solid feeling in lower Dantian, filling up and growing denser, expanding. Definite slow irresistable sort of _motion_ associated with it. Strong Qi feelings in palms, hollowed chest and between sholder blades, face, under the arms and round a bit in the direction of the abdomen (sort of under the lat. dorsae), deep in the hip joint (kua), soles of the feet, lower back ... after some time practicing, feeling spread out to embrace all the body

standing sets: generally the same as holding ball, but much more "shaped" with a form flowing up and out towards the middle of the exericse, and routing back down at the end. Feelings vary significantly from one exercise to the other as each exericse attempts to be meridian specific. Such sets/ individual exercies can also be used to treat illness from the organs. My understanding of these sets is still limited

circling: strong feelings in the palms, up and down the spine (Tai Ji pole as it is sometimes called), vortex like feeling in the lower dantian. Strong flow, but rhythm varries. This is the most fruitful part of my practice by far.

marrow exercises: flow of qi through the bone marrow is felt. Blockages explored to, dissolved if appropriate (various methods -none of them forceful), qi condensed in the marrow - flow increases, density increases, more tangible feelings, strengthen. The condensing practices can cause spontaneous movement and shaking from the inside out. Incredible feeling of release and freeing of blockages after such movement. Body feels cleaned from the inside out, fresh, alive, rejuvinated (if previously feeling tired)


I mention all these as they also relate to the "iron body" practices within my art. Once the body is healthy, qi flow is unobstructed etc, qi can be instantaneouly brought to bare at any point to protect against incursion. Also, wei-qi field "firms up" and thickens (_not_ stagnates) which also acts as protection. This really _begins_ when you can get a good full body senstation when practicsing holding ball. This is when the body is fundamentaly sound and without major blockages. Now you can start to learn how to use the qi flow. The ultimate aim is for it to all happen automaticaly - or else what protection for that sneeky hit from behind (though that would show poor awareness - which is another topic )

As Nik mentions, the ability to FaJing (emit Jing) can be powerfully used as protection. For example, as a fist nears the chest in a strike, qi is gathered beneath the projected point of impact, and FaJing'ed outwards to meet the incoming fist. The result is a buffer zone that soaks up the force of the impact - at higher levels this zone can get so hard that it reflects back the incoming force, resulting in injury to the striking hand (fracture is possible, though I can only attest to sprain). Sneaky people can pass the emitted qi up through the hand and into the elbow (or beyond, but that is a very high level)

Anyway, richota and fuzzy were asking if anyone else was doing iron body stuff from an internal point of view, and what they had felt while doing so. The above is my feelings both in terms of what exercises and tangible qi feelings within them. Be interesting to continue the debate...

RT