5 Keys: Reveal the Chinese Longevity Mystery

“有采女问道于彭祖，少得道，知养性，年一百七十岁，视如十五”
Translation: "A young girl inquired Peng Zu on Dao. Peng Zu found Dao when he was very young and understood how to adjust his body to stay young. He looked like 15 years old when he was in fact 170."

Peng Zu (彭祖) lived in Wuyi Mountain. He is a legendary long-living figure in China. He has supposedly lived since Yin Dynasty( 1400 B.C.). He lived more than 170 years old.

It’s a very rare case in the past since people didn’t have the modern medicine and comfortable living condition to protect their body to live long. One thing that Peng Zu mentioned about a lot in his writing is The Five Organ Talk. Liver (肝), Heart (心), Spleen (脾), Lung (肺), and Kidney (肾) are the five major organs that Chinese people really care about. Peng Zu believed that each organ can help others and each organ can reduce strength of others. Only when you adjust them well, then your body will become healthy.

In Peng Zu’s writing, he mentioned
1. Liver helps the heart but hurts the Spleen.
2. Spleen helps the Lung but hurts the Kidney.
3. Kidney helps the Liver but hurts the Heart.
4. Heart helps the Spleen but hurts the Lung,
5. Lung helps the Kidney but hurts the Liver.

He has also mentioned about the keys to adjust them. These keys are the five tastes, sweet, salty, sour, and bitter and piquant.
These five tastes could affect the five organs dramatically; they can either help or hurt the five organs.

1. Sweet goes to Spleen.
If you eat too many sweets, it will benefit your spleen, but a very strong spleen will hurt your kidney. Weak kidney will cause sore waist, and knees, so older people are not recommend to eat too much sweets.

2. Sour goes to Liver.
Sour hurts the spleen. Too much sour in food can cause digesting problem which cause diarrhea.

3. Piquant goes to Lung.
Too much piquant hurts the liver which can cause dizziness.

4. Salty goes to Kidney.
If you have short breath or chest pain which caused by a weak heart, don’t eat salty food, because salty goes to kidney and hurts the heart.

5. Bitter goes to Heart.
If you have taken too much bitter food, it will hurt your lung, which means it will cause coughing. If you are coughing, don’t eat bitter food.

On the other hand, the five tastes can help you. For example: when a woman is pregnant, she doesn’t have enough blood in her liver. She need eat a lot of sour food to help her liver. Balance your intake of five different tastes, and then you can have a much healthier life.

P.S. I am not a Chinese doctor, but I did some research to put together this post for people who are interested. It’s for your reference only and something to put in mind to balance your daily life when eating.

Copyrighted Huan's Tai Chi 2010

How to boil the water for your tea in the right way

I drink tea every day and I make my tea in the right way. It’s essential to know how to cook water for your tea. Not enough time to cook or overcook the water will affect the taste of the tea. An experienced tea drinker needs to know how to boil his/her water to preparing the tea in the right way.

Lu Yu’s ( Tang Dynasty) once wrote in his book “The Tea Bible”. “Once the water boils, the bubble will shape like a fish eye with a little sound, we called this the first boil; If the water shapes like linked pearls, we called this the second boil. When the water starts to wave, we call this the final boil.” Any time after those three, we consider overcooked water and you can’t make tea with this water any more.

Zhang Yuan ( Ming Dynasty) wrote in his book “The Record of Tea”, “There are three major ways and fifteen minor ways to tell about the water for your tea. Shape, sound, and steam are considered to be the 3 major ones. Shape is from inside of the water. You can hear the sound without near the water. Steam can be checked quickly by vision. Water bubble shapes like shrimp eye, crab eye, fish eye or linked pearl means the water is still not ready. Once the water start to have wave, then it’s ready. When you first hear the boiling sound, or higher pitch and even vibrating sound, the water is still not ready. When these sound has been gone, then it’s ready. When the steam first appear, or appears more, floating above the pot, it’s not ready. When the steam goes straight all the way up, then it’s ready.

How have I cook my water? To cook the water, you need to put the stove on high heat. Pour water into the pot with cover on. Once you hear the little boiling sound, it’s time to take the cover off and check the water on shape, sound and steam.

Warm your tea cup once with small amount of boiling water, remove the small amount of the water. Put dried tea leaves in, pour the rest of the hot water in, put the cover on. Wait till the tea leave expand and sink to the bottom of the cup.

Now you can RELAX! Open the tea cup cover. Have a small sip. Enjoy your tea and rest of the Year!


Copyright by Huan's Tai Chi 2009

Diet Plan for Tai Chi Practitioners & Rest of Us

While I was doing a Tai Chi Seminar, one student asked me,
“What do you eat for your daily life, what food is good for Tai Chi?”

My advice would be
“Don’t eat too much on one kind of food at once, even on some super food”.

For Example: Vitamin C is really good for your body, but if you take one bottle of Vitamin C, what will happen? Your diet should be a combination of Vegetable, grain, fruit and meat. You need to be careful about taking in different food. You should never eat too much. In Chinese, we say 80% full. Too much food will give a lot of work to your stomach and hurt your stomach in a long run.

We should not do Tai Chi with Empty stomach. If you have an empty stomach before doing Tai Chi, you should eat a little bit food, so you won’t feel dizzy or get a stomach ache while doing Tai Chi. Although it is not necessary to eat only vegetables, eating too much meat is not good for you since meat is acid and hard to digest. Don’t drink too much wine if you doing Tai Chi. Yang Chen Fu said that you shouldn’t do Tai Chi after too much wine.

Another very important reminder is that while exercise with Tai Chi, your breath will become long and deeper, which means a breath will go deeper to your chest. Strong wind and humidity can get into your body in this way. Yang Chen Fu also says to wear long sleeved clothes and not to perform in the wind. If you sweat, don’t take clothing off or take a cold shower, it will hurt your body. In the Ming Dynasty book “Talking of Cabbage Root”, it mentions that

“If you are always sick when you are old, it’s because you didn’t take care of your body when you were young.”

When you are young, you think you are ok to walk in the cold rain, you have fun under the strong wind while driving the boat, but these are actually hurting your body. It didn’t show because you are strong while you are young. These activities plant the seeds for sickness in you and they will occur in the future when you are older. When you know how to take care of your body while you are young, you will enjoy it more while you’re getting older.

Copyrighted By Huan's Tai Chi 09