The Yijinjing (易筋經) — Sinew-Changing Classic

The Yijinjing (易筋經, Yìjīnjīng, "Sinew/Tendon-Changing Classic") is the most famous conditioning manual in Chinese martial and health culture — a set of daoyin (導引, "guiding and pulling") exercises for changing the sinews: building strength, flexibility, and the circulation of qi through breath, stretch, and held posture. It is also the textual carrier of the great Shaolin origin myth — the book through which the story that Bodhidharma founded Shaolin kung fu entered the world. The exercises are real and still widely practiced; the Bodhidharma authorship is a forgery, and the honest history is the more interesting one.

What it is

At its core the Yijinjing is a twelve-posture form, best known by its opening, 韋馱獻杵 ("Wei Tuo Presents the Pestle") — Wei Tuo (Skanda) being the armored guardian deity of Chinese Buddhist temples. The movements are not fighting techniques but isometric daoyin postures: standing holds with limb extension, breath regulation, and focused intention, working the body zone by zone. A companion text, the 洗髓經 ("Marrow-Washing Classic," Xisuijing), is named alongside it in the legend — but the authentic Xisuijing did not survive; what circulates under that name appears only inside later combined editions, and scholars dispute whether the two were ever one work at all.

The twelve postures, in the classic order:

1. 韋馱獻杵 (1) — Wei Tuo Presents the Pestle

2. 韋馱獻杵 (2)

3. 韋馱獻杵 (3)

4. 摘星換斗 — Plucking Stars and Exchanging Dippers

5. 倒拽九牛尾 — Pulling Nine Oxen by Their Tails

6. 出爪亮翅 — Showing Talons and Spreading Wings

7. 九鬼拔馬刀 — Nine Ghosts Drawing the Saber

8. 三盤落地 — Three Plates Falling to the Ground

9. 青龍探爪 — The Azure Dragon Displays Its Claws

10. 臥虎撲食 — The Crouching Tiger Pounces on Its Prey

11. 打躬 — Bowing Down

12. 掉尾 — Swinging the Tail

Who really wrote it

Modern scholarship is clear: the Yijinjing was composed around 1624 by a Daoist — Zining Daoren (紫凝道人, "the Purple-Coalescence Daoist") of Mount Tiantai — not by Bodhidharma, and not in the sixth century. The earliest surviving printed edition dates to the 1820s (the Shiyinzhai 市隱齋 woodblock, which the historian Tang Hao tied to Zining Daoren; sources give 1823 or 1827).

The book all but announces its own fraud to anyone who reads its prefaces:

• One preface is forged in the name of the Tang general Li Jing (李靖) — and names, as a lineage master, the "Bushy-Bearded Hero" (虬髯客), a fictional character from a Tang romance. It dates events to a reign-year in which the Shaolin Temple did not yet exist (Shaolin was founded in 497 CE; the preface's date falls about a decade earlier).

• A second preface is forged in the name of the Song general Niu Gao (牛皋) — who mentions a temple not built until twenty years after his supposed writing, and who claims to be illiterate (an odd boast from the author of a preface).

The Qing scholar Ling Tingkang (凌廷堪, 1757–1809) saw through it two centuries ago, dismissing the unknown author as an "ignorant village master."

The Bodhidharma legend — and the honest history

The historian Tang Hao (唐豪) traced the whole "Bodhidharma founded Shaolin boxing" idea, in the 1930s, precisely to the Yijinjing's forged Li Jing preface. The scholar Ryuchi Matsuda found no mention of Bodhidharma in any Shaolin martial text before the nineteenth century. And Meir Shahar (The Shaolin Monastery, 2008) reads the Yijinjing as a late-Ming fusion of therapeutic daoyin, military training, and religious cultivation, with the Bodhidharma link manufactured through those fake prefaces. From there the legend leapt into the popular imagination through a novel — The Travels of Lao Can (老殘遊記, 1904–1907) — and the 1915 boxing manual Secrets of Shaolin Boxing.

For the wider story this myth belongs to — Bodhidharma's "eighteen hands," the staff-before-fist history of Shaolin, and the many forms that claim the legend — see the companion article:

The Eighteen Luohan Hands (十八羅漢手) — the other half of the Bodhidharma legend

What is inside

Beyond the postures, the Yijinjing carries a body of theory — the essays 總論 ("General Discussion"), 內壯論 ("On Internal Strength"), and 膜論 ("On the Membranes") — grounding the exercises in a Daoist-Buddhist physiology of essence, qi, and spirit. The General Discussion opens (in the text's own framing as a "translation" from Sanskrit — itself part of the fiction):

譯曰：佛祖大意，謂登正果者，其初基有二：一曰清虛，一曰脫換。能清虛則無障，能脫換則無礙。 The translation reads: the essential meaning of the Buddha-patriarch is that, for one who would reach the true fruit, the foundation is twofold — first, to purify into emptiness (清虛); second, to slough and be remade (脫換). Purify into emptiness, and there is no obstruction; slough and be remade, and there is no hindrance.

From Shaolin to the internal arts

The genuine, documented link to Shaolin is late, not ancient: the most respected standardized version descends from Wang Zuyuan (王祖源), who in the nineteenth century recorded learning a twelve-posture moving form at the Shaolin Monastery on Mount Song.

The Yijinjing's deepest influence, though, was on vocabulary. Its triad — 易骨 (changing the bone), 易筋 (changing the sinew), 洗髓 (washing the marrow) — became the ladder that Sun Lutang mapped onto his three grades of internal power (明勁 obvious, 暗勁 concealed, 化勁 transforming) in his 1923 capstone, fixing the "sinew-changing, marrow-washing" language at the heart of the internal martial arts. (See, on the sister taiji wiki, Sun Lutang's Quan Yi Shu Zhen.)

Today the Yijinjing lives on as one of the four standardized Health Qigong sets promulgated by China's sport authorities (alongside the Five Animal Frolics, the Eight Brocades, and the Six Healing Sounds) — a twelve-movement health routine practiced worldwide.

Training & demonstration video

The standardized Health Qigong 易筋經 (12 movements)

• Health Qigong Yi Jin Jing — full mirror-view demonstration — the Deyin school (Faye Yip lineage); the clearest follow-along.

• Yi Jin Jing — complete routine — a continuous run-through of the standardized form.

• 易筋經十二勢 — full demonstration with verse-formula and benefits — each of the twelve with its 歌訣 (mnemonic).

Traditional Shaolin 易筋經 (少林易筋經)

• Yi Jin Jing — full routine — Shi Heng Yi (释恒義) of Shaolin Temple Europe; strong lineage provenance.

• Yi Jin Jing 1–12 — posture-by-posture, with subtitles — the companion instructional to the above.

See also

The Eighteen Luohan Hands (十八羅漢手)

What is Kung Fu? — legend versus history across the styles

Northern Kung Fu Styles — including Northern Shaolin

Sources

The Yijinjing's original text and woodblock illustrations are public domain. The text traces to a composition of c. 1624 by Zining Daoren (紫凝道人); the earliest surviving edition is the 1820s 市隱齋 woodblock (scanned at Wikimedia Commons). The full Chinese text of the expanded Damo Xisui Yijinjing (達摩洗髓易筋經) compilation is freely readable at the Chinese Text Project (ctext.org) and Chinese Wikisource (zh.wikisource.org/wiki/易筋經); the dedicated twelve-posture illustrated edition (王懷琪, Commercial Press, 1917) is scanned on Wikimedia Commons. The verbatim passage above was cross-verified across ctext and Wikisource.

The historical correction rests on Tang Hao (唐豪), Study of Shaolin and Wudang (少林武當考); Ryuchi Matsuda; Meir Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts (University of Hawai'i Press, 2008); and the Qing scholar Ling Tingkang (凌廷堪). The earliest-edition date differs slightly between Tang Hao (1823) and Matsuda (1827).