The Essence of Health Preservation: Not Seeking Much, But Seeking Less

A person's life generally goes through a process of addition and subtraction. Before middle age, full of energy, one is always diligently "adding" all sorts of things to one's life. After passing middle age, or after a serious illness, one realizes the importance of "subtraction."

The ancients of China held that stillness nurtures life while restlessness harms it, and there is truth in this.

I have practiced TCM treatment of cancer for many years, and many of the cancer patients I have seen—especially those who developed cancer after middle age—objectively had life attitudes and lifestyles that were important contributing factors to their illness.

People's constitutions differ from birth: some are born weak, others endowed with strength. These differences are congenital. But are the naturally strong longer-lived than the naturally weak? The answer is no.

Those born weak, knowing they are not robust, cultivate themselves in stillness; though they look frail, many in fact live long. The naturally strong, relying on their good constitution and not cherishing their bodies, with many desires and a turbulent life, find that by middle age their bodies must pay the price for their earlier excess.

To be moderately lazy and unambitious is not a bad thing. Zhuangzi held that one should live between "the useful" and "the useless." From the standpoint of physical health, this attitude Zhuangzi advocated is the most suitable. One cannot be too "useful," for that means a lifetime of toil; one cannot be too useless, for that means not being able to survive. The moderate state is best.

The Xiao You Jing states: "Less thinking, less pondering, less desire, less activity, less speech, less laughter, less sorrow, less joy, less delight, less anger, less fondness, less aversion—these twelve 'less' are the great essentials of health preservation. Much thinking wearies the spirit; much pondering scatters the will; much desire damages wisdom; much activity exhausts the body; much speech stirs up qi; much laughter injures the viscera; much sorrow weighs on the heart; much joy overflows the mind; much delight brings confusion and forgetfulness; much anger unsettles the hundred vessels; much fondness leads to obsessive fixation; much aversion causes anxious torment without joy. If these twelve 'much' are not removed, they become the root of losing one's life."

This passage reflects the basic attitude of China's ancient health-preservers: nurturing life means consuming less of one's essence, spirit and qi, and preserving one's original qi. If a person has many affairs, many desires and many emotions, body and mind inevitably suffer; when body and mind are overtaxed for too long, they cannot recover.

The Ming Yi Lun holds: "Illness arises from the five consumptions. Once the five consumptions are at work, two viscera are first damaged; the heart and kidney receive evil, and the zang-fu organs all fall ill. The five consumptions are: first, consumption of will; second, consumption of thought; third, consumption of heart; fourth, consumption of care; fifth, consumption of fatigue. From the five consumptions arise the five extremes: first, extreme qi; second, extreme blood; third, extreme sinew; fourth, extreme bone; fifth, essence; sixth, extreme marrow. The six extremes become the seven impairments, and the seven impairments give rise to the seven pains. As illness, they cause excess of evil qi and deficiency of upright qi, sudden changes of joy, anger and sorrow, aversion to food and drink, failure of the flesh to grow, lusterless complexion, withered white hair; in severe cases they cause windstroke, hemiplegia and contracted sinews, obstruction of every joint, emaciation and shortness of breath, and pain in the waist and legs."

This passage shows that the ancients of China already recognized the harm that overwork does to physical and mental health. We often read reports of overworked people dying suddenly; that is only the tip of the iceberg. Many more overworked people do not drop dead but develop various chronic and occupational diseases, and in middle and old age they pay the price for their earlier toil.

The Qingniu Daoshi advocated another line of health preservation: "Do not eat until overly full; thus the Daoist eats before he is hungry. Do not drink too much; thus the Daoist drinks before he is thirsty. After eating, walk several hundred paces—it is greatly beneficial. After the evening meal, walk about five li before lying down; it dispels illness. In eating, first take hot food, then warm food, then cool food. After the hot and warm food, if there is no cool food, take one or two swallows of cold water—it is excellent. If one can always remember this, it is the essential secret of nurturing nature. When eating, be calm, inhale slightly, swallow one or two times, then eat; it prevents illness."

Thus health preservation requires not only fewer affairs, desires and emotions, but also eating less and exercising after meals. In ancient Chinese health-preserving theory, one view holds that eating less should be reflected not only in the amount eaten but also in the variety of foods.

This may conflict with modern nutritional theory, but in recent news reports one can see that among the world's long-lived elderly there are many who ate an extremely narrow diet all their lives.

Emma Morano, an Italian woman of 117 who died on April 17, 2017, at one point held the record as the world's oldest person. She ate extremely simply all her life, eating the same food every day—three eggs a day—and ate no fruit at all.

I have a centenarian relative who is still alive; all her life she has eaten only two meals a day, skipping breakfast, and at lunch and dinner she mostly eats what the rest of the family leaves over. But because her life is simple and happy, she is still alive and still does housework.

So from the standpoint of health preservation alone, the rich and colorful life of our modern society is not necessarily a good thing. If a person is cooler in temperament, stays away from the arena of fame and gain, lives more leisurely, and spares body and mind from toil, that benefits both his family and himself, with no downside.