Yangsheng (Daoism)

In religious Daoism and Traditional Chinese medicine, yangsheng (養生, "nourishing life"), refers to various self-cultivaton practices aimed at enhancing health and longevity. Yangsheng techniques include calisthenics, self-massage, breath exercises, meditation, internal and external Daoist alchemy, sexual activities, and dietetics. Most yangsheng methods are intended to increase longevity, a few to achieve "immortality"— in the specialized Daoist sense of transforming into a xian ("transcendent", who typically dies after a few centuries, loosely translated as "immortal"). While common longevity practices (such as eating a healthy diet or exercising) can increase one's lifespan and well-being, some esoteric transcendence practices (such as "grain avoidance" diets where an adept eats only qi/breath instead of foodstuffs, or drinking frequently poisonous Daoist alchemical elixirs of life) can ironically be deadly. The word yangsheng is a linguistic compound of two common Chinese words. Yǎng (養) means

1. Nurture; rear, raise, foster; nourish; tend, care for, look after.
2. Support by providing basic necessities; provide for; maintain, keep in good condition; preserve; watch over.
3. Train; groom; educate in the proper way of carrying out one's responsibilities; cultivate.
4. Nurse; treat so as to aid in recuperation. (Kroll 2017: 533, condensed) Besides the usual third tone reading yǎng this character has an uncommon alternate fourth tone pronunciation yàng (養) meaning "support and take care of (especially one's parents)". For instance, yàngshēng occurs in the late 4th-century BCE Mengzi, "Keeping one's parents when they are alive [養生者] is not worth being described as of major importance; it is treating them decently when they die that is worth such a description." (1.13, tr. Lau 1970: 130). Note that the regular and seal characters (e.g., 養) combine a yáng (羊, "sheep", originally picturing a ram's head) phonetic component and shí (食, "food, feed") radical denoting "feed animals", while the ancient oracle and bronze characters (e.