Taoist principles of wellbeing, and wellness through exercise, diet and the four seasons.
In autumn yang wanes and yin grows, and wellness follows the principle of nurturing gathering-in. This article covers the mind, daily routine, diet, and exercise in autumn, explains “autumn cold,” and presents an autumn breathing exercise from the Taoist Canon.
Four classic autumn tonics—lotus seeds, fox nuts, chestnuts, and peanuts—with their natures and benefits, how to choose them, and common ways to eat them for the heart, spleen, kidneys, lungs, and blood.
Master Li Yulin of the White Cloud Temple Taoist Medicine Clinic explains spring wellness: rising early, loosening clothes, fostering life rather than harming it, the Five Phases correspondences of spring with the liver, wind, wood, sourness, the eyes, and anger, and how spring's pathogenic winds cause illness.
Nine Taoist pointers for eating well in spring: nourish the liver first, keep meals light with plenty of vegetables, eat to beat spring fatigue, use water and honey against spring dryness, and favor whole grains, dark greens, poultry, fresh foods, and antioxidant foods.
After the solar term Grain Buds, the weather turns hot and rainy. This article gives eight keys to wellness at this time, from strengthening the spleen and clearing dampness to massaging acupoints and calming the heart, with two food-therapy recipes.
A Taoist-medicine guide to summer wellness: nurturing yang in spring and summer, guarding against summer-heat at midsummer and dampness in the long summer, the six excesses of Chinese medicine, and avoiding air-conditioning illness and too much cold food.
Summer makes people prone to internal fire. This article describes the symptoms of fire in the heart, lungs, stomach, liver, and kidneys, with a Taoist-recommended food remedy for each, from lotus seed and gardenia soup to pork kidney soup with goji and cornus.
Rainy early autumn leaves the body heavy with dampness. This article introduces six acupoints suited to gua sha scraping for clearing dampness—Fenglong, Xuehai, Yinlingquan, Diji, Zhongwan, and Tianshu—with their locations and benefits, needing only three to five minutes a day.
The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic calls the three winter months the season of “closing and storing.” This article explains its guidance line by line, showing that winter wellness centers on storing yang qi and avoiding needless dispersal.
Major Snow is a prime season for tonics. This article explains the name of the solar term, urges moderation and balance in nurturing health, and advises on exercise, preparing the spleen and stomach, salt water and honey water, sleep, root vegetables, and choosing foods by nature and nutrition.
The dog days of summer bring the strongest yang and the heaviest damp-heat. Taoist medicine offers ten methods for this season, from clearing dampness and warming yang with moxibustion to fighting heat with heat, hot tea, well-timed meals, and moderate exercise.
Following the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, this article explains how to nurture health through the four seasons—when to sleep and rise, and which emotions to guard against in each—and why the Winter and Summer Solstices call for special care.
Modern “diseases of affluence” largely stem from overnutrition and excess fat. This article explains how high blood lipids burden the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, and kidneys, identifies mental tension causing qi stagnation and blood stasis as an inner cause of disease, and advocates the Taoist natural way of simplicity, light vegetarian food, and grain avoidance.
A speech given by a yoga teacher at the 1997 European Vegetarian Congress. Drawing on the yogic understanding of chakras, glands, and hormones, he argues that the food we eat shapes our mental tendencies, and uses the three energies—sentient, mutative, and static—to explain why spiritual practitioners choose a vegetarian diet.
Ten everyday dietary essentials advocated by Taoism: follow nature, avoid picky eating, cut back on high-sugar and high-fat foods, get enough protein, supplement calcium, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12, avoid over-refined foods, choose fresh ingredients, limit artificial seasonings, and eat less pickled and salty food.
Porridges can dispel wind, clear heat, nourish the stomach and spleen, and moisten dryness, and suit the middle-aged and elderly especially. Here are seven moistening porridges recommended by Taoists—black sesame, white wood ear, apple, chrysanthemum, carrot, goji, and potato—with ingredients, methods, and uses.
Red dates help nourish the organs and replenish qi and blood. Taoist medicine recommends five ways to eat them for health: red date and wood ear soup, red date and honey paste, red date and rice porridge, red date and ginger tea, and red date and Job's tears soup, with methods and benefits.
Pharyngitis is a common inflammation of the throat. This article presents four homemade drinks that can help relieve pharyngitis and a dry, itchy, sore throat—monk fruit tea, water chestnut and pear soup, platycodon and licorice decoction, and fresh ginger and radish juice—with how to make each, its benefits, and cautions.
Peanuts are nutritious and can be eaten in many ways. Here are five healthful peanut recipes—boiled peanuts, black sesame and peanut soy milk, red date and peanut soup, papaya, fish tail, and peanut soup, and peanut and pig's trotter soup—each with ingredients, method, and benefits.
Dendrobium, recorded as early as Divine Farmer's Classic of Materia Medica, benefits the stomach, promotes fluids, nourishes yin, and clears heat; modern research finds it aids digestion and slows aging. This article covers dosage, decocting, and soup-making, and cautions certain groups against it and against long-term use.
This article introduces dietary health cultivation in Tang Taoism: food as the foundation of nature and life, eating in accord with the Tao and virtue and with proper etiquette, harmonizing the five flavors and treating with food before medicine, methods of drinking water such as well-flower water and talisman water, and the Shangqing practice of swallowing saliva.
Many Taoist priests do not eat meat and urge others to eat less. Starting from the Taoist teaching that “the way of immortals values life” and Sun Simiao's admonition against killing for medicine, this article lists the harms of meat and explains how vegetarians keep a balanced diet through protein complementation and calcium, iron, and vitamin B12.
Beginning with a personal case of an “unexplained high fever,” this article presents the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic on diet, emotions, and the five organs: the phase, nourishing flavor, causes of injury, and signs of excess and deficiency of the lungs, liver, kidneys, heart, and spleen, and urges balanced eating and a calm mind.
A plain-language retelling of Sun Simiao's teachings on diet and health: eat warm food in small, frequent meals, rub the belly and stroll after eating, avoid eating at night, do not favor any one flavor, and drink in moderation, with sayings of Zhang Zhongjing and Bian Que on treating with food before medicine.
Wheat is sweet and neutral, and the ancients called it “the most precious of the five grains” because it holds the balanced qi of all four seasons. This article describes its benefits for qi, blood, heart, and spirit, and how to use wheat, floating wheat, and raw malt for restlessness, sweating, and weaning.
Health-nurturing standing meditation is simple, easy to learn, and needs little space, suiting frail people who should “replace big movement with subtle movement.” This article covers the basic posture and details for the hands, head, and tailbone, the sensations of practice, and which direction to face morning and evening.
The Xuanmen Rejuvenation Exercise is a Taoist practice that has become popular among ordinary people in recent years; long-term practice lightens and strengthens the body. This article describes its steps—the preparatory exercise, abdominal deep breathing, whole-body shaking, and shoulder rolling—with their movements, breathing, and repetitions.
This Taoist daoyin and qi-circulation method, drawn from the Seven Slips from the Cloudy Satchel, uses simple movements centered on regulating the breath. Its nine steps combine facing east, breath-holding, massage of the ears, eyes, and nose, teeth tapping, and various lying postures.
Taoist health cultivation includes three methods of swallowing in qi: the qi of heaven, the qi of earth, and the qi of mountains. This article explains the stance for each, how the mind draws their qi into the mouth and swallows it into the belly, and where to practice.
Opening the Eight Extraordinary Vessels, also called “Regulating the Eight Vessels with Ten Breaths,” uses ten breaths and the mind to lead qi through the eight vessels in turn. This article gives the method's verse formula and explains its uses and key points of practice.
Four Taoist lying exercises for health—the sacral exercise, the lumbar exercise, the abdominal-organ exercise, and supine shaking—each with its effects, preparatory and starting postures, repetitions, and cautions, suitable for people of all ages and constitutions to practice in bed.
The Eight Pieces of Brocade is a traditional health exercise of eight movements, concise and moderate in effort, that clears the meridians and regulates the internal organs. This article explains the purpose and key points of each of the eight movements, from “Holding Up the Sky” to “Drawing the Bow.”
This article presents Chinese medicine, the practice of inner alchemy, and the internal martial arts as three ancient paths of health cultivation, traces the internal arts' roots in Taoist inner alchemy, and identifies common misconceptions: performing routines without real training, mistaking strength for inner force, studying books without a teacher, and misunderstanding softness and hardness.
Four Taoist “heart–kidney communication” health methods: sounding the heavenly drum, massaging the Tingwen point, rubbing the soles with the palms to replenish kidney water, and covering and rubbing the ears. Each is explained with its technique and cautions, for tinnitus, deafness, sleep, and rising deficiency fire.
Drawing the inner-skill lines is an entry-level practice for cultivating one's nature, traditionally attributed to Lü Dongbin. This article first explains the key sites involved—the Three Passes, three fields, six lines, and four planes—then describes how to cultivate the nature line, reflection line, life-cultivation line, strength line, and severing line.
The Sinew-Changing Classic activates the twelve sinew channels through specific standing postures, thereby clearing the twelve meridians. This article gives the general principles, “leading with the head” and “relaxing the body,” then explains the twelve postures, such as Weituo Presenting the Pestle and Nine Ghosts Drawing the Sabre, in four sections.
The “Eighteen-Form Qigong Massage” was devised in 1987 by the traditional Chinese medicine health expert Yan Bozheng to strengthen the body and extend life by harmonizing the nutritive and defensive qi and clearing the channels. This article lists the whole sequence and details four of its forms.
The Taoist Longevity Health Exercise derives from Taoist cultivation methods and is especially suited to older people. This article covers its postures; exercises for the head, abdomen, hands, legs, spine, and waist and hips; relaxation guidance; breathing methods; benefits; and practice precautions.
Grain avoidance (bigu) is a Taoist practice of fasting for a set period while drinking only water. This article covers its types, timing, setting, preparation, common reactions, and how to resume eating, and recounts a day of the author's fast in the mountains of Sichuan and the health changes after three fasts.
Written by the Tang-dynasty physician Sun Simiao and excerpted from Seven Slips from the Cloudy Satchel, this text covers self-caution, taboos from the immortals' scriptures, the ten failures and ten precepts, daoyin, qi circulation, guarding the One, and the five stages and seven signs of refining qi.
An introduction to Ge Hong, known as Baopuzi, his theory of immortality and his contributions to alchemy, followed by his discourse on nurturing life: governing the body like a state, removing the “six harms,” practicing the “twelve lesses,” and living, eating, and doing good wisely.
A discourse on nurturing life attributed to Pengzu, the legendary long-lived sage. It warns that excessive thought, sorrow, emotion, toil, idleness, and eating wear down body and spirit, and gives rules for daily living and diet, urging harmony with the four seasons and balance among the five flavors.
Sun Simiao, the Tang-dynasty “King of Medicine,” goes month by month through the year: the waxing and waning of the organs' qi, which flavors to increase or reduce, foods and winds to avoid, and auspicious and inauspicious days for bathing, fasting, plucking white hairs, and travel. A short biography opens the text.
Attributed to Lord Lao the Most High and said to have been passed by Hua Tuo to his disciple Wu Pu, this text has four parts: the Five Animal Frolics, six-sound breathing to treat illness, the true secrets of removing the “six harms” and practicing the “twelve lesses,” and methods of qi ingestion with diagnoses and cures for organ ailments.
A classical Taoist discourse on nurturing life. Starting from heaven, earth, and humanity and the importance of nature and life, it describes the ten months of gestation, warns against excess in thought, emotion, toil, food, and temperature, and sets out rules for guarding health and longevity.
A treatise on nurturing life by the Tang-dynasty Taoist Shi Jianwu, known as Qizhenzi. After a sketch of his life, it examines common errors among those who pursue the Tao—knowing calm emptiness but not its wondrous use, or taking herbs and minerals indiscriminately—and teaches that qi is kept by moving it and spirit by using it.
Zhu Quan, seventeenth son of the Ming founder, turned to Taoism in later life and taught “nurturing life through the Tao, governing the heart through the Tao.” This article examines the Tao as natural law, method for the heart, spiritual awareness, and life faith, with his Song of Realizing the Tao.
Excerpted from chapter 35 of the Taoist compendium Seven Slips from the Cloudy Satchel, this collection gathers sayings on nurturing life from the Scripture of the Western Ascension, the Dayou Jing, Baopuzi, Ji Kang, Qibo, and others, stressing that nurturing spirit outweighs nurturing the body and virtue outweighs medicine.
Chinese medicine and Taoism both grew from pre-Qin Taoist thought: “medicine and the Tao share one source.” This article traces their shared origins, complementary values, and how Taoism carried medicine and medicine carried the Tao in theory, techniques, and people, and what this tradition offers today.
As modern imbalances of body and mind grow worse, Taoist health cultivation values both spiritual practice and physical training. This article explains the Taoist “study of the body,” which tackles problems of body and mind starting from the body, and its dual cultivation of nature and life bridged by essence, qi, and spirit.
Qiu Chuji, leader of the Quanzhen school, wrote a treatise combining organ theory with the Five Phases to explain how to adjust mind, daily routine, and diet through spring, summer, autumn, and winter, along with care of the liver, heart, lungs, and kidneys, disease prevention, and simple practices such as teeth tapping.
This article analyzes five features of Taoist health cultivation through medicine and food—unity of heaven and humanity, yin-yang and the Five Phases, the middle way, inner and outer cultivation, and treating root and branch—reviews contributions by Ge Hong, Tao Hongjing, and Sun Simiao, and considers what this fusion means for Chinese medicine today.