Daniel Reid - The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing: Guarding the Three Treasures

Thorough, clear, and informative.

Booklist

An incredibly thorough guide... Reids tome provides great coverage of the healing arts and is a wonderful sourcebook for the Taoist theory underlying such practices.

NAPRA Trade Journal

This is among the most highly enlightening books on Chinese health practices I have ever come across. Reid integrates a myriad of highly complex concepts and translates them to the reader with simplicity and clarity.... I highly recommend this book to my colleagues, patients, and anyone interested in the path of Chinese health and healing.

Christina Stemmler, M.D., President, American Academy of Medical Acupuncture

Through his thorough research, in-depth scholarships and insightful ways of penetrating into the heart of the matter, Reid has written a book about Chinese health and healing that is sure to become a classic resource for everyone.

Chungliang Al Huang, author of Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain

Always interesting, Dan Reid is one of the most respected authors in the field of Chinese medicine.... He draws upon his scholarly background as well as extensive clinical experience, making a complicated subject clear and fascinating to read.

James Ramholz, publisher of Oriental Medicine

ABOUT THE BOOK

Here is the first complete manual of Chinese medicine specifically written for the layperson. Filled with illustrated exercises and recipes, this book offers a unique, integrated system of preventive health care so that now anyone can promote good health, longevity, and spiritual awareness using these traditional techniques.

Included are:

• Key concepts of Chinese medical theory
• Dozens of illustrated Tai Chi and Chee-gung exercises
• The Chinese approach to healing common ailments
• Authentic secrets of Taoist sexual yoga
• Therapeutic food recipes and herbal tonics
• Alternative treatments for diseases such as AIDS and cancer
• Resource listings: teachers, schools, centers, stores, and mail-order suppliers

DANIEL REID is a leading Western authority on traditional Chinese medicine and Taoist healing practices and has studied and practiced Chinese medicine for over twenty years. He is the author of The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing; A Complete Guide to Chi-Gung; The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity; The Tao of Detox; A Handbook of Chinese Healing Herbs; and The Shambhala Guide to Traditional Chinese Medicine.

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The COMPLETE BOOK of CHINESE HEALTH and HEALING

Guarding the Three Treasures

DANIEL REID

Illustrated by

Dexter Chou and Jony Huang

SHAMBHALA

Boston

2013

This book is not intended to replace the services of a licensed health care provider in the diagnosis or treatment of illness or disease. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and sole responsibility.

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1994 by Daniel Reid

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress catalogues the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

Reid, Daniel P., 1948

The complete book of Chinese health and healing/Daniel Reid; illustrations by Dexter Chou and Jony Huang.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2373-0

ISBN 978-0-87773-929-6 (acid-free paper)

ISBN 978-1-57062-071-3 (pbk.)

1. Medicine, Chinese. I. Title.

R601.R34 1994 93-26702

615.530951dc20 CIP

for

Chou Tung

This is the second book Ive written on traditional Taoist systems for cultivating health, vitality, and spiritual awareness. Although both books discuss all three facets of the Three Treasures of human lifeessence, energy, and spiritThe Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity (hereafter referred to as The Tao of HS&L) deals mainly with the physical and biochemical factors of essence, while The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing focuses more on the dynamic and functional manifestations of energy. In order to avoid redundancy, information and ideas discussed in detail in The Tao of HS&L are only briefly mentioned in this book. Therefore, readers who wish to study and practise the whole system should read both books, though not necessarily in the order they were written. Together the two books cover the essence and the energy of the matter, which constitute the basic pillars of practice. I hope the proficiency of my own practice will progress sufficiently to produce eventually a third volume that uncovers the spirit of Taoist metaphysical science, or alchemy. That spirit sprouts from the seed of your own original inspiration to cultivate the Tao, is nourished by the essence and energy of your basic practices, and finally blossoms up to heaven from its roots in earth, like a lotus blooming towards the sky from its roots in muddy waters.

Western science and philosophy adopt a dualistic view of such apparent contradictions as body and mind, heaven and earth, sacred and profane, scientific and spiritual, magic and mundane, and thus divide them into mutually exclusive realms. Taoists view and deal with opposite forces and phenomena as complementary aspects of the same basic polarity that runs throughout the entire manifest universe and is known as the Great Principle of Yin and Yang. Thats why theres no fixed boundary between science and philosophy, physical and spiritual, yin and yang in Taoist tradition. In addition to viewing opposite forms and forces in terms of complementary polarity rather than antagonistic duality, Taoists also regard polar opposites as being mutually transmutable and actively interdependent. The dynamic balance, functional harmony, and cyclic transformations among these basic forms and forces are what make the world go round. Theyre also the basis of the internal alchemy which lies at the heart of chee-gung, meditation, herbal medicine, sexual yoga, and other traditional Taoist practices.

As modern transportation and communication breach the borders of time and space which once divided the human species into isolated enclaves, the cultural and philosophical boundaries separating East from West are also being slowly but surely erased, despite the stubborn opposition of die-hard traditionalists in both camps. Nowhere are the walls falling faster than in the field of human health, for it is becoming abundantly obvious that the traditional healing arts of the East and modern medical technology of the West are complementary branches of the same tree, and that together they provide a far more complete picture of human health and offer far more effective therapies for human disease than either one can possibly do alone.