I’ve been behind on books I’ve been wanting to review, so I figured that I’d kick things off again with a review of my newest acquisition, and then I’ll work backwards to some other East Asian medical texts and then some more books on martial arts. So, enjoy this review, and hang on for more to come soon!
Exercise Prescription in Sui China (581 – 618 CE)
By, Dolly Yang and Mugen Chiang
Purple Cloud Press, 2024
I initially became interested in East Asian medicine through my own practice first of martial arts, and then later my introduction to and subsequent engagement with body centered practices such as Qigong. To me, these played a big part of my own views and practice of East Asian medicine. In my own training at the New England School of Acupuncture we did have an all too short class on Qigong, but while there I was surrounded by other people for whom internal martial arts and Qigong were essential to their own version of East Asian medicine, such as my friend and mentor Rene Navarro. Yet, as I started teaching East Asian medicine outside of the New England area, it became clear to me how very limited most acupuncturists’ exposure to movement therapies was. For example, for several years I taught a combined Qigong / Taiji course at the Pacific College of Health and Science in New York, and there, students got a single 28 hours long class as their only real exposure to these arts during the almost 4 years of their master’s degree!
As a result of all this, one of my personal interests is improving the teaching of Qigong and related arts, and encourage their use by licensed East Asian medicine professionals. My fantasy would be eventually to have a school of East Asian medicine here in the United States have movement therapies such as Qigong and Taiji be a focused course of study, like a university major. It will come as no surprise then that I was extremely pleased when I found out that this book, Exercise Prescription in Sui China, was slated for publication by Purple Cloud Press.
Exercise Prescription is an outgrowth of Dolly Yang’s PhD dissertation completed under Vivienne Lo at University College London. The text is based on the Zhu Bing Yuan Hou Lun 諸病源後輪 – the Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Medical Disorders (hereafter “Treatise”), a very influential medical text compiled during the 7th century at the behest of Emperor Yang Di. What the Treatise did was categorize and explain diseases that were known at the time, giving treatment options for physicians encountering said disorders. However, the most important thing for our discussion was the systematic inclusion of Dao Yin as a treatment modality for an incredibly wide range of diseases.
To put this in better context we should remember that by the Sui period there was no such thing as Taijiquan (Tai Chi), and the term Qigong is essentially a neologism that would not be used for over 1000 years still. Dao Yin is a term that describes a wide range of movement, breathing and visualization practices, and many of these would make their way into the modern category of Qigong. Also, prior to the Treatise, most texts on Dao Yin presented them as aspects of Yang Sheng, i.e., disease prevention and health maintenance. What is so revolutionary about the Treatise, is that it basically moves Dao Yin out of the realm of prevention and elevates it to a remedial therapy that can be prescribed based on a specific patient’s complaints. As such, it is THE granddaddy of all books on what we today would call Medical Qigong, or Clinical Qigong.
What Dr. Yang does in Exercise Prescription is significant and I think will be monumental to the reestablishment of Qigong-like practices to their once major role within East Asian medicine. In this book Yang starts with introductory material that describes and defines Dao Yin, and then analyzes various practices associated with Dao Yin such as postures, movements, breathing patterns, self-massage, and visualization. She also gives a brief overview and background of the Treatise, which will help situate the material historically.
After the introductory material, and in the main sections of the book, Dr. Yang translates all of the Dao Yin sections, disease by disease, that are given in the Treatise. Thus, we are given Dao Yin prescriptions for the treatment of a wide range of disorders from musculoskeletal problems, to disorders of the internal Zang and Fu, to diseases of the sensory orifices, and to just about everything in between. The material is copious, with the current book coming in at about 500 pages in length!
One problem with the original Treatise though is that there were no diagrams, and sometimes it is difficult to discern exactly what a movement pattern is from the written word alone. To overcome this, Exercise Prescription includes illustrations by the very talented Mugen Chiang. Thus, the original text is brought more to life by the visual interpretations created by the partnership between Yang and Chiang.
I do think that this book will become a defining text in English on the prescription of Dao Yin and Qigong, and is destined to be a very important work. This is definitely my kind of book, and honestly to me it is one of the most exciting publications I’ve seen in recent years. For anyone interested in East Asian medicine it is a must have, and my hope is that it will contribute to bringing this aspect of medicine back to the prominent place it once historically had in East Asian medicine.
My last suggestion is that purchasing the book directly from the publisher (here) puts more money in the hands of the authors. While it is listed on Amazon, please let’s all support small independent publishers by shopping directly with them. For information on my own classes on Clinical Qigong for licensed East Asian medicine providers please go here.