Katie Brindle - 18 Apr

This book is dedicated to my mother.

A drop of prevention is better than a bucketload of cure. ANCIENT CHINESE PROVERB

_______ Yang sheng may be the most important concept in Chinese medicine youve never heard of. The direct translation is nourish life. To explain a bit more fully, yang sheng will help you balance your whole self for a long, wise and happy life.

Sounds like a big promise? You might think its even bigger when I tell you that yang sheng is the self-care part of Chinese medicine a self-healing system which means you can do all the treatments yourself, most of them completely for free, putting yourself in the driving seat of your health.

BETTER ENERGY, SLEEP & MOOD

Its my dream to help people discover yang sheng techniques. These simple but powerful habit and lifestyle changes have transformed my life. I know the knowledge in this book can do the same for you. Living the yang sheng way will improve the way you feel in so many ways, from your sleep and digestion, to your skin and energy levels. Yang sheng has mood benefits, too: getting into balance will bring you closer to a default state of calm and quiet contentment. And you can get all of these benefits in just a few minutes a day.

This book will explain the principles of yang sheng, which is currently relatively unknown in the West. But, most importantly, it will show you how to fit this system into your life, easily and effortlessly. You can use the book as the beginning of a journey deep into Chinese medicine or you can simply add a few of the suggestions to your daily routine.

Chinese medicine is ancient, yet its still relevant today. It has helped millions of people and it can help you, too. Life has evolved, but the mechanisms of our body havent really changed. The actual techniques have stood the test of thousands of years. What I have tried to do is to bring them up to date with a modern format and instructions. I only ask that you keep an open mind and give it a try.

BENEFITS OF DAILY HEALTH MAINTENANCE

Yang sheng has such a different way of thinking about the body, but this is precisely why its valuable. Western medicine tends not to focus on disease prevention. We, in turn, take our good health for granted until were ill; at which point, we treat the symptoms collectively rather than looking for a root cause.

If you fell sick in ancient China, it was regarded as a failure of preventative medicine. The principle of yang sheng and indeed of Chinese medicine is that if you eliminate small health niggles as they arise, youll prevent bigger ones happening. Theres an ancient Chinese proverb: Waiting to treat illnesses after they manifest is like waiting to dig a well after one is thirsty.

When you adopt yang sheng as a daily practice, you are being proactive about your health maintenance, using what I consider to be the most powerful and time-tested of techniques. Think of it like this: regular yang sheng will do for your wellbeing what tooth brushing does for your mouth. You wouldnt dream of not brushing your teeth each day and once you see and feel the benefits of yang sheng, you will want to continue doing it every day, too. It is daily maintenance for your body, mind and spirit.

ARE YOU IN BALANCE?

Chinese medicine has a sophisticated understanding of how the body works physically, emotionally and spiritually, but also energetically, because it says you are all of those things wrapped up together.

The philosophy is that any disease starts with a disruption of energy flow, which happens before you notice any symptoms. The good news is, you can treat those subtle energetic imbalances before they progress and cause obvious physical symptoms. As strange as this may sound, I have seen in practice that it really works.

A disruption of energy flow can manifest in all kinds of ways before you become ill. For example, are you sleeping well? You may not be a hardcore insomniac, but do you wake up exhausted? You may not be sick, but are you quite well every day? Do you feel strong? Are you calm? Do you bounce out of bed ready for action? Sadly, most of us feel under par at least some of the time. Our modern lifestyle leaves us as out of balance as a single person on a seesaw.

Maybe thats why youve picked up this book you dont feel quite right but you cant put your finger on a cause. My patients often come to me because of poor sleep, low energy, depression or chronic pain. These are all conditions Western medicine cant resolve easily, but which have left them desperate to find a solution.

I often see patients suffering from low libido, too. Sex is often a casualty of modern living. Think about it like this: you can live without your fertility, so its usually the first bodily system to get shut down when the body is stressed and needs to conserve resources. Which, given how life-affirming sex can be, is a huge pity.

The more symptoms of ill health you have, the more out of balance Chinese medicine will assess you to be. You dont have to understand exactly how and where you are out of balance to get yourself back into alignment another of the joys of Chinese medicine. You just have to learn and understand a few of the right things then do them.

Good health is not something you achieve with an hour a day in the gym (although exercise has its place) or by depriving yourself of your most-loved indulgences. Rather, health is something to nurture with a series of little moments, the yang sheng techniques Ill be showing you, throughout the day.

LESS IS DEFINITELY MORE

Id say most of my clients are probably doing too much. You know yourself when youre doing too much worrying, too much work, too much socialising. According to Chinese medicine, less can be more. Sometimes, you may be delighted to hear, a nap is better than a workout. You can actually overexercise and have too many rules about what youre eating and which foods you are giving up.

Often, people come into the clinic having changed their diet and started taking supplements, but they still feel exhausted or anxious. As I explain to them, its because they dont have the full picture of what it takes to nurture their health. Yang sheng is the full picture. Yes, food and digestion are important but so is the right kind of breathing and exercise, self-massage and looking after your emotions and spirit, too. Once you have all these elements in place, youll be in balance. And then there will be no need to ban the small things that sweeten life such as the morning coffee you treasure or the glass or two of red after a tough day.

That said, when you try yang sheng, youll notice life begins to go a little more smoothly. There will be more good days. Even better, youll want to adopt yang sheng techniques because they are, in themselves, pleasurable. Its time to take steps to look after you.

WHERE YANG SHENG COMES FROM

Most likely what you already know of Chinese medicine is herbs and acupuncture, but there is so, so much more this ancient wisdom can teach us about nurturing the body, mind and spirit to be in harmony with natural rhythms and universal laws.

So why arent we all using yang sheng already? It comes from classical Chinese medicine, which has a history of over 5,000 years. However, after the Peoples Republic of China was established in 1949, the landscape of health care in China shifted dramatically and much of its knowledge barely survived. While the new Ministry of Health paid attention to the practical side of Chinese medicine such as acupuncture and herbal medicines to treat disease, classical Chinese medicine was widely ignored.