Yangsheng
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Prepare for Winter in the Summer
There is a saying in Chinese medicine: winter diseases are best treated in the summer “dong bing xia zhi” 冬病夏治. Traditional Chinese health practices are attentive to the interconnections between humans and the cycles of nature. Here, the notion is that disharmonies which tend to present themselves in the winter, especially in those who have a tendency towards yang deficiency, are best dealt with by taking preventative measures in the late summer, particularly a special period referred to as San Fu Tian 三伏天 (sometimes translated as the “dog days of summer”). San Fu Tian, which occurres in three phases that span around forty days, is the optimum time for growth…
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What is Yijinjing 易筋經?
Yijinjing 易筋经/易筋經 refers to a collection of methods of powerful Chinese neigong 内功 (“internal skill”). Legend has it that it originated from the Indian monk Bodhidharma (Damo 达摩) who came to China and founded Chan 禅 Buddhism (the form of Buddhism which later became known as Zen in Japan) at the Shaolin Temple. In fact, neigong containing the Yijinjing principles and signature movements can be found throughout China within various traditions. The word Yijinjing consists of three Chinese characters: Yi 易: The character’s two components are 日 “sun” and 勿 “not.” The sun represents constancy, it was the most constant thing in one’s visible surroundings. Putting the two characters together,…
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Mountains and Rivers of the Human Body
The Chinese saw the universe as unfolding from the Unity of the Dao into the multiplicity of diverse processes and objects that we see around us. This unfolding was understood and expressed through various organizing principles including Yin and Yang, the Five Phases (“Five Elements”), and the trigrams and hexagrams of the Yijing, among others. These universal patterns were seen as operating throughout nature, at all scales, so the idea of macrocosmic and microcosmic correlation was natural. As above, so below. This so-called “correlative cosmology” lead way to the idea that the human body is a miniature cosmos, because indeed, the patterns of natural expression found in the universe at…
