Longevity Services

"We sang beside a riverbank, golden crowns upon our heads,
until we grew old and shrank beneath our clothes. Our skeletons fell to the ground
and the song went into the earth. Up through the reeds it sprang and was sung
by children as they passed through." —Unknown

Nourishing Life: Longevity Sciences of Chinese Medicine

Longevity sciences are a foundational element of Chinese philosophy and medicine. The search for long life is as wide and as old as the medicine itself! Longevity and health are intertwined notions. Nobody desires to live long if they must endure pain and disease. Long life is only desirable if we feel well and have full use of our faculties. Due to better food, an easier life, and better medical care life expectancy is already on the rise. However as Baby-Boomers age, the largest segment of the American population demand information about how to not only live longer, but how to age in a qualitatively fuller and healthier way, and about all the small and large ways they can contribute to nurturing their own health and longevity.

Translated literally, "Yangsheng fa" means "Principles for Nourishing Life".  It is rooted in the experience of the great sages of ancient China, followers of the philosophy of Taoism (dao 道), one of the three great philosophical schools which permeate traditional Chinese thought and culture, along with Confucianism (ru 儒) and Buddhism (shi jiao 释 教). Nourishing Life means understanding how to maintain and protect health, prevent disease, and live a healthier life with ease.

Chinese medicine has a very particular view of what causes aging and how we can prevent it. The essence of Nourishing Life is to shift away from exclusively focusing on symptomatic expression and to pivot towards the generation, cultivation, and conservation of healthy, vital, life-energy. Pivoting happens through the process of becoming conscious of how your life is being lived, and the habits; physical, emotional and mental that bring about symptoms and disease.  Breaking free of habits and entering life consciously moment by moment is a key feature to Nourishing Life. We perpetuate our own pathology by living unconsciously, blind to all of the ways that we contribute to our imbalances.

Each and every action, physical, emotional or mental acts as a seed that is planted that will later sprout as a current or potential health problem. By becoming very clear about how we are living our life, we can either nurture or starve these seeds. Every moment is related to being healthy. Which seeds are you planting?

Some ancient descriptions of "secret" Nourishing Life methods:

• Self-control - the way of food and drink, reactions, and clinging
• Vital breath movement - the way of transformation of energy into spirit and the reverse. Learn how to rejuvinate your energy on a daily basis.
• Guarding the Oneness - the way of keeping the perfect oneness in the three elixir fields (the three main energy centers in the body).