The Art of Yang Sheng: Nourishing Life the Chinese Medicine Way

From the President A thank you to Mr Jim Olds

What is Yang Sheng?

Yang Sheng is the Chinese Medicine art of self-healing. The literal translation of Yang Sheng is Yang / “to nourish”, Sheng / “life, vitality”. Simply put it means nourishing life. This ancient art has its historical roots in Daoism and Chinese Medicine: practices that are over 2,500 years old.

Yang Sheng is holistic; cultivating the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of who we are during this human experience. Traditional cultures understood balance and harmony and practised it in their day-to-day lives. There was an understanding of the close connection between nature, the universe and man. Yang Sheng’s wisdom is available to everyone.

Prevention is Better than Cure:

Yang Sheng is a preventative medicine. Practising it, we are developing optimal opportunities for good health before disease arises. Even if mild health symptoms develop, the practice of Yang Sheng enhances the possibility of symptoms moving quickly through the body and retreating like the tide.

Today humans increasingly face confusion, stress, sleep issues, digital bombardment, chronic diseases, and ever-evolving health issues.

An old Chinese proverb states “waiting to treat an illness after it manifests is like waiting to dig a well after one is thirsty” – Yang Sheng, offers health guidance to live long and live well.

Practical Ways to Cultivate Yang Sheng in Your Life:

Peter Deadman, in his book ‘Live Well Live Long: Teachings from the Chinese Nourishment of Life Tradition’, talks about three main ways to cultivate the principles of Yang Sheng. They include:

• Avoiding behaviour that causes harm like eating processed fast foods. Excess in any area including drinking, smoking or emotional states that are prolonged and unresolved.

• Promoting a healthy lifestyle through social connection, and exercise. Working with our emotions and resolving unresolved trauma. Resting and movement according to our age and stage of life and dependent on the work we are involved with.

• Internal practices such as meditation, and qigong cultivate wisdom, serenity and balance. So, as we face life events good, bad and challenging, we bring a more neutral poise to these life situations. Choosing these practices can lead to inner enquiry into the nature of who we are beyond our personality and identity, with a more internal focus while still being in the world of work, family and life responsibilities.

Deadman talks about the four legs of the chair or the four pillars: mind and emotions, diet, exercise and sleep.

If we only focus on one of the legs, we have an unstable chair.

This guidance is practical and is common knowledge for healthcare practitioners. The question is, how can we guide our clients to embrace it?

Many of the challenges that make it difficult for people to change are due to habitual patterns that are rooted in our psyche and emotional states. Some of these patterns have become hardwired. We can be likened to a computer that has not updated its software, running an old program that no longer serves the hardware (us).

The Role of Emotions on Our Immunity:

Much has been written about the Chinese Medicines’ perspective and understanding of emotions and the connection to the organs and the fiveelement system. Chinese medicine classical texts offer a rich and extensive body of knowledge of emotions and their contribution to our health and wellbeing.

In the past couple of years, the global community has publicly faced numerous health concerns and with this has come a plethora of information on social media, in books, articles and webinars on immunity from multiple health perspectives.

Taking a modern view alongside the traditional wisdom and art of healing from Yang Sheng, we can combine these perspectives and explore our health from a term I have developed and come to use, Emotional Immunity.

What is Emotional Immunity?

Emotional Immunity refers to a form of resilience and capacity to bring awareness to our emotional state of being.

In my clinical practice as an acupuncturist, I have noticed an exponential increase in clients’ levels of anxiety, fear, and sense of hopelessness since the pandemic. This is due to a number of factors that have been impacted by

• Social media and generally negative news reporting.

• A social division that was created by what choices people made relating to their personal health choices during that time.

• Isolation from friends and family and wider social connections.

For some people, this has resulted in a sense of loss of identity, fear, anxiety, and depression.

When we develop Emotional Immunity, we become in touch with what is happening inside us. We can experience emotions but rather than being reactive, Emotional Immunity offers an opportunity to be present and centred on what is arising.

How Do We Do This and What Are the Benefits?

What are the potential consequences for staying for prolonged times in states of fear, anxiety and helplessness?

Emotions and trauma left unchecked including intergenerational trauma can develop into a wide range of symptoms if not expressed. Through the practice of Yang Sheng and developing Emotional Immunity, we can impact our biological immunity in a positive way.

Caroline Myss a well-known medical intuitive and writer once said, “our biography becomes our biology”.

Teaching Emotional Immunity may well be the best health tool we can give our clients in an ever changing and unpredictable world.

The Health Benefits of Connecting with The Environment:

Nature has its rhythms and cycles and so does our life. Depending on our age and stage, we wax and wane according to our activities and our age tends to inform us what types of foods and exercise are most appropriate. As we reach the winter of our life (late aging), we may require lighter types of foods and less vigorous exercise.

“The elements of our body are fashioned in the stars. Were written into nature” - BBC TV science programme.

There is an increasing recognition now from Western science, of the connection between the individual and the universe. New fields of study including in the areas of Quantum Physics, String Theory, Epigenetics and Neuroplasticity are closing the gap between traditional medicine knowledge; a 3000-year history of man’s connection with nature.

Yang Sheng has a place in our modern culture as we recognise the significance of nature and the environment to enhance our health and state of wellbeing.

Japanese people have embraced this with the practice of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) a term coined in the 1980s and adopted by the Japanese Government as a physiological and psychological exercise to increase health and wellbeing contributing to balance and harmony within the individual.

The practice of Yang Sheng offers balance in all areas of our lives; what we eat, how we eat and when we eat. Emotions are recognised and validated. Through exercise, movement and breath our very life force is expressed. It invites us to protect and preserve the essence of our being, including our blood, qi, yin and yang, which is the foundation of Chinese Medicine.

To find out more about Emotional Immunity and Yang Sheng and how to apply it in your life check out Barbara’s website www.schoolofgreenmedicine.com

In March 2024 Barbara will be launching her 8-module course Discover the Chinese Healing Art of Yang Sheng; 8 Steps to Health and True Immunity, with CPE points available for ANTA Members.

The article was written by Barbara Malarski (M.Ac (Acupuncture), Dip Teaching, PostGrad in Teaching).

Barbara Malarski is an acupuncturist and the Founder of the School of Green Medicine, a new paradigm of medicine. She has been in clinical practice for 25 years. Barbara has a teaching background establishing a Natural Therapies program at Cairns Tropical North Institute of TAFE and trained over 700 students in Remedial Massage and Oriental Health Medicine. Barbara has been an accredited assessor for the Chinese medicine accreditation committee for over a decade.