Friday 30 March 2018

WTY-14: Yangsheng and Self-Expectations

30 Mar 2018

In most cases, our self-attitude is closely related to, and often results directly from whether we meet our self-expectations, or how we define 'success' for ourselves. If we feel 'successful' and live up to our own expectations in life, we will be able to maintain a happy or self-satisfactory mood and, by natural extension, a 'reasonably' good physical health. However, if we feel far from self-content or satisfactory, we will definitely live a depressed and unhealthy life.
So, for many, if not most, of us, whether we can live a happy and healthy life depends heavily upon how to meet our own expectations, or how to define 'success' for ourselves.  

Wednesday 28 March 2018

YE&T-14: Squatting

28 March 2018

The '2' in Zhu Zongxiang's '3-1-2 Meridian Exercise' (3-1-2 qigong) refers to the squating part. This is how: reach out your arms forward horizontally while keeping your thighs and lower legs at an angle of about 90 degrees; repeat this squating posture 36 times each time. This part of the exercise can be performed together with the other two parts, or simply alone at any time of your choice.  

For a live demonstration, please take a look here at youtube::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYxsox69BaI

Monday 26 March 2018

GYH-14: Drinking Warm Water

26 Mar 2018

It might be a typical Chinese thing to do, but drinking boiled water regularly every day while it is still warm is a really good health habit. According to yangsheng experts, boiled water, traditionally called 'white soup,' is a natural therapy, which is helpful in more than a dozen ways. For example, this habit can help prevent cancers, improve blood circulation, digest foods, make bowl movements, lose weight, keep hair fit, slow down the ageing process, decrease dandruff, prevent acne, stop stuffy nose and reduce dysmenorrhoea.

Saturday 24 March 2018

WTY-14: Life Objectives and Longevity

24 Mar 2018

Most, if not all, ageing people live a retired life. During retirement, if you have clear or specific life objectives and still keep pursuing them, you are sure to live a happier, healthier and longer life than those who spend their last years idly just to kill time. Fan Xuji, former president of Shanghai Jiaotong University, offers a good example. Despite his old age, he was still busy teaching and supervising his Phd candidates right before his death at age 102 in 2015. For him, it was more important to continue his scientific research at his lab than to enjoy leisure at home.

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Wednesday 21 March 2018

YR&T-13: Chives Fried with Eggs

22 March 2018

- ingredients
1. 100-150 g of chinese chives;
2. 3-4 eggs;
3. salt, edible oil and sesames seeds

-methods:
1. wash the chives and cut them into short pieces;
2. break the eggs and scramble them together with the chives well;
3. put oil and salt into the pan;
4. spread the mixture evenly onto the pan and bake it for a minute or two until it solidifies;
5. turn over the mixture and bake it for a minute or two until it solidifies;
6. cut the mixture into pieces into the size and shape of your choice and put it into the container

note: this dish is highly delicious, and particularly good to your liver system in springtime.

熱鍋加入3匙的油,將蛋液加入,以中火去煎,先不要去翻動,約3分鐘後再翻面,煎至熟成。

Tuesday 20 March 2018

BHH-13: Drinking Too Much Milk

20 March 2018

In developed or western countries, almost everyone drinks a great deal of milk. As a natural or organic dairy product, milk may be helpful to young people and those 'yang-bodied'. However, for others, milk actually does more harm than good. From yangsheng point of view, milk belongs to yin food; drinking too much milk will definitely destroy the balance between yin and yang (ph  or the balance between acid and alkaline in a narrow but more scientific sense) within the body, and thus may cause many different kinds of diseases.  At least, drinking milk can cause the loss of calcium and thus bone problems. Such being the case, we, especially ageing and yin-bodied people, should drink milk with high discretion.

Friday 16 March 2018

WTY-13: Yangsheng and Self-Attitude

5 Mar 2018

For all yangsheng practitioners, it is not only helpful but simply necessary to develop and maintain a sound attitude towards themselves. Indeed, whether we can live a healthy and happy life often depends heavily on the way we look at who and what we ourselves have been. If we treat ourselves well and fairly with all the love and respect we deserve, we will surely become accomplished yangsheng practitioners.

Wednesday 14 March 2018

YE&T-13: Abdominal Breathing

14 Feb 2018

Abdominal breathing is what the renowned yangsheng expert Zhu Zongxiang calls '1' in his '3-1-2 Meridian Exercise'. For him as well as for all of us, it is a helpful health exercise to practice abdominal breathing 10 mintues at least each time, twice every day. During the past decades, Zhu has been doing this breathing exercise persistenly while lying down on bed, once before getting up in the morning, and once after goint to be at night. This exercise can be done singlarly, separately or together with the other two - point massaging and squatting. For Zhu, it has been particularly helpful to remain young physically.

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Monday 12 March 2018

GYH-13: Regularly Keeping Windows Open

12 Mar 2018

It's a good habit to open windows regularly every day to let in fresh air. The best time to do so is believed to fall between 9 and 11 am, or 2 and 4 pm. Usually, an hour or so would be long enough to change the air indoors for the whole day. Some people keep the bedroom window slightly open even at night, and this is certainly not a bad habit, since most bedrooms are more of a tight enclosure during sleeping time.

Saturday 10 March 2018

WTY-12: The Key to Longevity

10 Mar 2018

As clearly revealed in the scientific research work done by Elizabeth Blackburn, the well known Australian-American Nobel laureate, the key to slowing ageing or increasing one's life expectancy lies 25 % in what one eats, 25 % in other factors combined, but as high as 50 % in what may be called one's psychological equilibrium. That is to say, to develop and maintain a 'good' mentality is to live a healthy and long life, whereas eating and doing exercise are secondary.

Examples in real life are abundant. According to many statistic studies carried out in and outside China in recent years, those who have been living up to more than a century, a much longer life than the vast majority of us are almost unexceptionally 'good-natured': no matter what reason, they seem to have been born to be cheerful, optimistic, and relatively easy to feel satisfied.

So long as you and I manage to have a balanced psychology, we can live longer than at least we ourselves are 'meant' to.

Thursday 8 March 2018

YR-12: Steamed Pear for Cough

8 March 2018
This is one of the many heabal/natural recipes for cough, especially caused by a cold:

- ingredients:
1. one pear;
2. 15-20 peppercorns (or 15 - 20 g of tendrilleaf fritillary bulb micro-powder);
3. 2 lumps of crystal sugar  ( or a spoonful of honey)

-methods:
1. wash the pear well and cut the top;
2. dig out the seeds and put in the peppercorns or the powder);
3. put back the top;
4. steam the pear for about 30 minutes;
5. eat the pear and drink the soup twice daily

【花椒蒸梨】亲自实验,咳嗽有效方

Tuesday 6 March 2018

BHH-12: Often Getting Drunk

6 March 2018

When drinking liquors, wine or even bear, some people habitually get drunk to varying degrees. This is undoubtedly a bad habit, because each time you drink even slightly more than your body can manage, you will do as much damage to your liver system as a hepatitis does. If you begin to feel dizzy, you have already drunk too much. However, as a popular saying goes, sipping may do you some good, but over-drinking is definitely detrimental to your health.

Friday 2 March 2018

WTY-11:Emotion Control and Positive Mentality

1 Mar 2018
Anyone who hopes to develop a positive mentality or seek happiness self-consciously has to learn how to manage his or her emotions. People might punch walls hard in anger, yell aloud in depression or get drunk in sadness. Such ways to deflate one's pent-up emotions may prove temporarily effective, and certainly less destructive than become physically violent, but there are always more constructive ways to release our intensive negative feelings. For example, we can seek professional help from psychotherapists or detract our attention by engaging ourselves in various expressive or creative activities (like singing, writing, painting, working, meditating, exercising, etc.).
No matter what, only those who have developed a strong enough innerself can control their emotions in the healthiest and most natural way. Put another way, to develop a positive mentality, one must learn to transcend one's immediate experience through spiritual cultivation.
Growing strong inside is the 'best' way to build a positive mentality. Having a truly powerful innerself is as helpful as having a strong and sincerely religious faith for yangsheng.