Home / Daoist practice / Yǎngshēng
養生 ·
Nourishing life.
The maintenance work that keeps everything else sustainable. Unglamorous, and the part most likely to still be useful in thirty years.
The practice
What yǎngshēng means
Life 生 can be supported, maintained, cultivated and nourished 養. The tradition organises this around the three treasures — jīng 精, qì 氣 and shén 神 — and around the ordinary business of sleeping, moving, resting and paying attention to the season you are actually in.
It is the oldest and least exotic part of the curriculum, and the one that makes the rest possible. A body that is worn out cannot sit still for long.
Daoyin 導引 — the two sets
Two sequences carry most of the dǎoyǐn work here, and each has a page of its own.
Qìgōng 氣功
Qigong — also written chi kung in the older romanisation. Time-tested sets rather than a rotating menu — the standing Eight Brocades 八段錦 and the Yìjīnjīng 易筋經 alongside the two seated sequences above. The aim is that a small number of sequences become genuinely familiar — familiar enough that the attention can go somewhere other than remembering what comes next.
Dǎoyǐn 導引
"Guiding and pulling": guided stretching and movement that opens the joints and works along the channels. Older than qìgōng as a term, and the direct ancestor of much of what is now taught under that name. It overlaps closely with the opening work in the Eighteen Lohan Palm, which is one of the places the two traditions meet.
Breath work
Natural breathing first, watched rather than managed. More structured methods come later and only when the body provides the conditions for them — which is a real precondition rather than a formality. Forced breathing on an unsettled structure produces tension, and occasionally worse.
Self-massage and patting
Simple, repeatable work on the limbs, back and abdomen at the beginning and end of a session. It costs nothing, needs no equipment, and does more for most people's practice than any amount of theory.
Rest, and the season
Sleep, pacing and knowing when not to practise are part of the work rather than a concession to it. Attention to season is treated in the tradition's own terms: what the texts say about spring, summer, autumn and winter, presented as what the tradition says.
Yǎngshēng is a practice, not a treatment, and nothing here is medical advice. If you have a health condition, take proper advice and tell the teacher so the work can be adapted.