Taoist Routine: How to keep young in China, spending 1 hour a day on it

Taoist Routine: How to keep young in China, spending 1 hour a day on it

These practices will help restore vital energy and rejuvenate.

physician, specialist in Chinese Taoist medicine

“Taoism is a philosophical and religious current of China. Adherents of this worldview, Taoists, believe that our body works on the energy of Qi. Daily replenishing it, you can significantly improve the quality of life and preserve youth for many years. Followers of the idea insist that time spent on maintaining the body should be kept to a minimum – about one hour a day. So what does their daily routine look like?”

What we’ll tell you about

• Morning ritual

• Evening routine

Morning ritual

Upon waking up, the first thing a follower of the Taoist tradition does is drink a glass of warm water with lemon. This is a ritual that starts metabolic processes in the body.

After that, he starts a light workout, for example, performs 10 squats or push-ups. However, the main activity of Taoist practices – authentic breathing, which corresponds to the breathing of a child at the age of three months. It’s done simply:

• lie on a mat, bend your legs at the knees, relax your lower back and press against the floor;
• put a light object on the belly, like a book;
• inhale, expanding the abdomen, as if pushing the book up to the ceiling;
• breathe like this for a few minutes, transferring attention to the abdomen;
• repeat the exercise in a sitting position, placing the palm of your hand on the lower abdominal area;
• perform for 3-4 minutes.

This breathing practice relaxes the abdomen, lower back and pelvis, improving the circulation of energy in these areas.

After that, Taoists take a shower. Next, they perform patting self-massage: palms of hands pat the whole body – not hard, but palpable: from feet up to the stomach, from hands to the chest, and then from bottom to top the stomach and chest, and the back – wherever they can reach. If the breath replenishes the stock of Qi, this procedure normalizes the circulation of energy and activates immunity.

Women do an additional procedure: facial massage with a guasha scraper. This is a stone plate that creates a flow of Qi upwards: it is massaged from the base of the neck to the chin and further along the massage lines of the face, slightly taking upwards. It is believed that in youth the energy beats fountain from bottom to top, and with age the vector of its movement in the body changes: Qi begins to flow downwards. Guasha massage restarts this process, bringing back our youth.

Evening procedures

According to Taoist ideology, it is important to release accumulated tension in the evening to restore flexibility and mobility to the body. For this purpose, evening practice must necessarily include the technique of Sing Sheng Juang.

This set of exercises works the active points of the spine. Each of them triggers cascading relaxation of all muscles. At the same time, the practice is performed very slowly, with concentration on relaxation.

One of the basic exercises includes the element “Dragon’s Head”, relaxing the area of the seventh cervical vertebra – the largest vertebra at the base of the neck.

• Stand up straight, feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent;
• palms of hands on the waist, with the top of the head reaching upwards;
• start rotating the head with a small amplitude – as if you were describing a small circle with the top of your head;
• repeat 10 times in one and the other direction.

After performing the exercise, the Taoists devote five minutes of time to meditation before going to bed. To do this, you need to sit down, return attention from the outside world back to the body, find inner silence, ground yourself. This will normalize the psychological state and improve cognitive functions.