Longevity is more than just living a long life. It’s also living well as we age.
One of the hallmarks of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is how to re-think your normal as you transition through the seasons of your life. If you’re thinking that your choices in your 20’s are still appropriate behaviors in your 50’s, then something is way off!
In ancient wisdom traditions there is a very clear path toward living long and living well. In TCM, we call this yang sheng, or the nourishing life tradition.
According to the principles and practices of yang sheng, we can choose to help OR harm our health potential. Of course, some circumstances and disease patterns are outside our control. For example, you may have inherited a disease state from your ancestors (think genetics here) or your fundamental constitution may make you predisposed to some disease manifestation. But in all reality the bulk of our health challenges are behavioral in nature. In other words, we choose to be unwell.
Believe it or not, that’s good news! That means that we also have the power to change our body trajectory.
Health is built on behaviors. And when we bring conscious attention to our current reality we can shift our daily practices to evolve our health in a good way.
(Side note – this should feel empowering! You have a key role to play in your own health maintenance!)
Traditional Chinese Medicine lays out three key ways that we can amplify our own wellness potential. They are:
- Avoid Harm
- Daily Practices
- Self Cultivation
Avoid Harm is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, don’t do obviously bad things for your health! Instead, stop smoking, don’t eat tons of sugar, stop self-medicating with alcohol, don’t be mean to yourself or others, and the list goes on.
Daily practices are those ancient healing techniques that we work into a daily, monthly, or seasonal rhythm. These are the time tested behavioral changes that will streamline your path toward better living, thinking, and feeling. (Hint: these are NOT the latest fad diet or exercise routine! Instead, they’re traditional healing practices that help prevent diseases from showing up in the first place.)
Self Cultivation is the process of growth and liberation from old ways of being. This takes deeper understanding and commitment to the unfolding of personal, community, and ecological health. It also assumes that we are intimately connected to the natural world and those around us. Self Cultivation allows us to lean deeper into our own potential.
Depending on where you’re at in your human journey will dictate your starting point. I tend to think of these as concentric circles with Avoid Harm nested at the center, layered by Daily Practices, with an outermost ring of Self-Cultivation. Here’s a visual:
