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title: 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 Bodhidharma authorship is a debunked forgery, not history.** The Yijinjing is the single text most responsible for spreading the legend that the Indian monk Bodhidharma founded the Shaolin martial arts. We present that legend as a story the tradition tells about itself, and keep the record straight beside it.
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:
## 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*](https://taiji.openmindspace.org/taiji-sources/sun-lutang-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
Curated links to public demonstrations — for reference, not re-hosted. Two living traditions are shown: the standardized **Health Qigong 易筋經** (the modern state 12-movement form) and the **traditional Shaolin 易筋經**. "Authentic / 正宗" labels are the uploaders' own.
**The standardized Health Qigong 易筋經 (12 movements)**
- [Health Qigong Yi Jin Jing — full mirror-view demonstration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6nn1-7U4kY) — the Deyin school (Faye Yip lineage); the clearest follow-along.
- [Yi Jin Jing — complete routine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WtXtOB6NmY) — a continuous run-through of the standardized form.
- [易筋經十二勢 — full demonstration with verse-formula and benefits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRF_cglZIiQ) — each of the twelve with its 歌訣 (mnemonic).
**Traditional Shaolin 易筋經 (少林易筋經)**
- [Yi Jin Jing — full routine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvQUttWLVWc) — Shi Heng Yi (释恒義) of Shaolin Temple Europe; strong lineage provenance.
- [Yi Jin Jing 1–12 — posture-by-posture, with subtitles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez6NYcasyhs) — the companion instructional to the above.
## See also
## 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](https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=993903)) and **Chinese Wikisource** ([zh.wikisource.org/wiki/易筋經](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E6%98%93%E7%AD%8B%E7%B6%93)); 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).