Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
1. After the dog days (sanfu) begin, spleen deficiency and excess dampness often cause the tongue coating to become somewhat yellow and thick. Take a little over 10 grams each of smoked plum (wumei), raw hawthorn, and dried tangerine peel, boil them into a decoction, and drink it warm before bed; after two doses the thick yellow coating will disappear.
A suitable amount of white sugar can be added to this recipe, and it can then be drunk in the evening as sour plum drink—best of all for nurturing health. Sour plum drink nourishes yin through its sour and sweet flavors, gathers in floating fire, and also transforms damp turbidity and strengthens the spleen's transport. It is most suitable in the blazing heat of summer for people who sweat profusely and whose appetite has declined.
2. Qi is the commander of the blood, and blood is the mother of qi. So to tonify the blood, use one part angelica root (danggui, a blood medicine) to five parts astragalus root (huangqi, a qi medicine), making Danggui Blood-Tonifying Decoction. The relationship between yin and yang is similar to that between qi and blood: yin is within, as the guardian of yang; yang is without, as the servant of yin.
By extension, to tonify yin one should seek yin within yang. One can thus consider using one part yin medicine with five parts yang medicine to tonify yin. The yin tonified in this way should be living yin, which sustains the life system and moistens the organs, generating life without cease.
3. Yang is fiery qi. Yang loves warmth and hates cold, so one should use warmth and heat, not cold and coolness. Moxibustion is best at warming yang: it borrows the fire of moxa directly to warm and open the body's yang qi. Since yang is to be nurtured in spring and summer, this is just the right time for moxibustion.
Drinking some fresh ginger and brown sugar water every morning warms and raises the yang qi for the whole day; eating a few slices of sugar-candied ginger is also very good.
Soaking the feet in hot water before bed is recommended to drive out cold from the feet.
4. Many people drink a lot of mung bean congee in summer. Mung beans are cold in nature, can resolve all kinds of toxins, and are good at clearing summer-heat. But people with a deficient, cold spleen and stomach (a pale, bluish complexion, a tendency to diarrhea, cold hands and feet, and a general liking for warm food and dislike of cold) must drink less mung bean congee to avoid damaging the yang qi of the middle burner.
Moreover, eating a lot of cold food in the heat of summer can also clog the blood vessels, and in women it most easily leads to menstrual cramps, amenorrhea, and other discomforts. Bitter flavors can clear fire—celtuce stems, celtuce leaves, bitter melon, and the like—but people with a deficient, cold constitution should not overeat them either.
5. In the dog days one should nurture health with heat: eat hot food, drink hot drinks, bathe in hot water, and soak the feet in hot water. This is using heat to dispel heat. On the other hand, if one seeks coolness by eating and drinking cold things and taking cold showers, it is very easy to damage the middle yang and to constrict the defensive qi, so that sweat cannot come out, leading to all kinds of uncomfortable symptoms.
Besides, sweating appropriately in the heat of the dog days lets pent-up heat out of the body, which is good for health. People who usually fear cold, have cold limbs, and a pale, bluish complexion in particular can take advantage of the dog days to give their yang qi a good boost.
6. How should one relieve the heat once the dog days begin? Drink hot tea—green tea, black tea, scented tea, dark tea, and so on, preferably warm or hot. Tea is the best drink for relieving summer-heat. But do not drink any iced drinks, especially when drenched in sweat. Cold drinks relieve the heat only briefly, but they do the most harm to the yang qi of the spleen and stomach in the middle, and they also close the pores, so that the heat pathogen cannot get out properly, adding to the summer-heat.
From afternoon to evening you can drink smoked plum and white sugar drink. This drink nourishes yin and gathers in yang, and it is most helpful for people with a naturally yin-deficient constitution who dislike heat in getting through the blazing summer.
7. Human beings are closely bound to heaven and earth and to the movement of the four seasons. In the morning the sun rises and yang qi ascends, and in people the liver blood warms and rises; in the evening the sun sets and yang qi gathers and descends, and in people the lung qi cools and descends. If one lives according to this pattern of yang qi rising in the morning and descending in the evening, one will grow ever healthier; if one goes against it, one will grow ever weaker.
For example, drinking ginger and sugar water or eating some warm-natured food after getting up helps raise the yang qi. Some people like to eat soft tofu pudding for breakfast; it is cool in nature and harms yang if eaten over a long time, so it must never become a long-term breakfast.
8. Some people normally do not sweat, not even when exercising or in hot weather. This is strong defensive qi with weak nutritive qi: the balance between the nutritive and defensive has been lost. One can take advantage of the dog days, when yang qi is at its strongest, to treat it by warming yang and opening the exterior.
The methods are: take decoctions of the ephedra and cinnamon-twig type, with codonopsis added to support the upright qi; or apply moxibustion at Dazhui to open the yang qi of the Governing Vessel, at Zhongwan to strengthen the source from which qi and blood are generated, and at Guanyuan to aid the root of prior heaven; or apply dog-day plasters (sanfu tie) at the Feishu, Dazhui, and Pishu points. When qi and blood are ample and the nutritive and defensive are in harmony, the illness will heal of itself.
9. What are the healthiest times of day to eat? From the standpoint of Chinese medicine, 7 to 9 a.m. is the time governed by the stomach, so breakfast is best eaten in this period, when appetite is strongest and it does the most to nourish the stomach. We usually eat lunch after finishing work at 12 noon, but the time governed by the small intestine is 1 to 3 p.m.; the small intestine governs separating the clear from the turbid, so eating lunch at this time is best for digestion and absorption. As for the evening, which is governed by the pericardium and the triple burner, eat as little as possible or nothing at all.
10. Chinese medical wellness advocates moderate exercise, ideally to the point of a light sweat, not drenching sweat. When yang qi spreads outward, the nutritive yin seeps out through the flesh and skin as sweat. When one sweats lightly, the nutritive and defensive are harmonized and yin and yang are in balance, which is good for health.
If one sweats profusely, yang qi drains away heavily with the sweat, and both yin and yang are damaged. People weakened by long illness can also exercise; feeling a light sweat on the body is the right amount.
If you feel tired after sweating heavily, you need to gather in yang and tonify yin; smoked plum and white sugar drink is very good for this.