Beyond Kung Fu
The Heart Connection in Shaolin Temple of Canada
On every Sunday afternoon, students from different countries gather on the wooden floor, learning Chinese kung fu under the guidance of Shaolin Temple Canada.
Karla Mendoza came to Vancouver from Mexico and has been training at Shaolin Temple of Canada for almost two years. She first joined simply because she wanted to try a martial art, and the beginner-level class made her stay.
She started from the basics: simple standing poses, light kicks, and fundamental training.
“If I compare my first class to now, it’s amazing. You never imagine what your body and mind can do until you start practicing your flexibility, strength, concentration...everything changes,” she said.
Now, kung fu has become something she returns to every week, a routine that keeps her grounded in Vancouver.
Interview with Students
Shaolin Temple of Canada
Perhaps many people don’t know that Canada is home to an official overseas branch of China’s Shaolin Temple. As part of a global network of Shaolin centers established in more than 60 countries.
The temple is led by Abbot Shi Yandi, a 34th-generation disciple of the Songshan Shaolin Temple and an ordained Chan Buddhist monk. He is joined by Master Shi Yanyan, also a 34th-generation disciple, who serves as the head instructor for martial arts training.
Together, they oversee the transmission of traditional Shaolin kung fu and related cultural practices to students in Canada.
Master Shi Yandi entered the Shaolin Temple at eight, a time when almost everything felt difficult: the early morning practices, the winter cold, and the movements his body could not yet manage. With distance, those struggles look different to him now.
“Many difficulties stop feeling like difficulties when you look back,” he said.
Over the years, he understood practice not just as physical discipline but as something threaded through ordinary life.
“Eating, sleeping, even working, any of these can be part of one’s practice,” he said. That view follows him into his teaching in Vancouver, where adjusting to a new language, culture, and daily routines became a continuation of his training rather than a break from it.
Only at the end of his reflection does he name the part that still feels most challenging.
“The hardest thing to master,” he said, “is one’s own heart.”
The spirit of Chan and Kung Fu
“What training truly shaped was my heart,” Master Shi Yanyan said.
“The forms only require time, but the heart is the part that’s hardest to calm. Over the years, kung fu just became part of my life. ”
Since arriving in Vancouver, he has taught more than two hundred students: children, teenagers, and adults, many of them from Mexico, the United States, Europe, and across Asia. The diversity, he says, has never changed the atmosphere of the classroom.
“They come from different places,” he said, “but they share one thing: a heart that wants to learn.”
Across cultures, kung fu moves differently, but the work of the heart remains constant.
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