Taoist principles of wellbeing, and wellness through exercise, diet and the four seasons.
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.